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THE JOURNAL OF STEFFANIE RIVERS: Miles to Go
*While most people were preparing for a New Year’s Eve celebration last month, 23-year-old Robert Tolan lay in a Houston area hospital. Tolan was shot in the early hours of Dec. 31st by a policeman who falsely accused him of stealing the car he had just parked in his family’s drive way. Tolan’s parents owned the car and he is expected to recover fully.
Another man, 22-year-old Adolph Grimes III, died after he was shot 14 times, 12 times in the back, by a group of plain clothes officers in New Orleans in the early hours of New Year’s Day as Grimes sat in his car outside a family member’s house.
Around that same time another 22 year-old, Oscar Grant, of the Oakland area was shot in his back by a police officer in front of dozens of onlookers as he lay face down on a San Francisco area train station platform. He died the next day at a hospital.
All three of these victims are African-American men. The officers who shot Tolan and Grant are white. The nine NOPD officers who shot and killed Grimes haven’t been identified.
With the attention of most people focused on the upcoming inauguration of Barack Obama as America’s first Black president, people of color – especially Black men – are still being victimized by police officers in every part of this country.
As optimistic as I am about the future of race relations in America, realistically - in the words of one of my favorite poets Robert Frost - we have miles to go before we sleep.
The election of a Black man as president didn’t change how these three Black men were treated. It didn’t matter that Tolan’s father is a former professional baseball player who lived with his family in an upper class neighborhood outside of Houston and whose mother told the officer the car in question was not stolen and Tolan was her son.
It didn’t matter that Grimes, who survived Hurricane Katrina and was building a new life with his fiancé and infant son, sat in his own car outside his family’s home minding his own business.
And it didn’t matter that Grant, who was videotaped by onlookers offering no resistance to a team of police that had him face down on the cold, dirty train station platform, obviously was no threat. He was shot in his back anyway like an animal. How will his family explain that to his toddler daughter and the baby on the way?
Every police encounter has its own circumstances and the nature of the job has law officers on a mental edge every day. So I know those factors can cloud a person’s judgment. But there is no doubt that some police are overzealous to the point of reckless misuse of their authority when it comes to dealing with Black men as possible criminal suspects.
Now I use the term “possible criminal suspects” because every Black man who is suspected of a crime isn’t guilty. But most times Black suspects are more likely to be treated as guilty from the start. At the very least Black suspects are not given the same benefit of the doubt that most White suspects are given. What other reason is there that a disproportionate number of Black men end up shot or dead when they aren’t even guilty?
And when those rogue cops are not held accountable for their actions by termination and criminal prosecution for violating someone’s civil rights it sends a message to other people in authority and the general population that the lives of Black men are less valuable if it has any value at all.
In the case of Oscar Grant, an officer at the scene tried to confiscate the camera from a woman who later turned over her 20-minute video to a local news station. She got away because the doors of the trained closed and it pulled off before the officer could get on board. The video showed events leading up to, during and right after Grant was shot.
In case I’m totally wrong in my analysis, I welcome any examples of white men who, after being detained by police as a “possible criminal suspect” ended up shot or dead after police found them to be innocent and they offered no resistance in spite of their innocence.
Go ahead. Send me as many examples as you can come up with. I’ll wait, but I won’t hold my breath.
While the election of a Black man as the 44th president of the United States speaks volumes about the progress in this country, we cannot allow one win to overshadow the huge loss of life that people of color experience at the hands of bigots with badges everyday.
President-elect Obama can’t be all things to all people. He will have his hands full trying to untangle the financial fiasco called the American economy.
The whole thing sounds like a set up. But I digress.
This is a job for everyday foot soldiers to use the momentum of this unique time in history to change their own fate. The struggle for civil rights continues until everybody’s life has equal value in the eyes of everyone else.
Steffanie Rivers is a free-lance journalist living in the Dallas, Texas metroplex. See the broadcast version of her column at youtube.com/steffanierivers. To schedule speaking engagements or to send questions or comments email her at teamtcbadvertising@hotmail.com
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