A couple weeks ago, one of my sons and a couple of his buddies took a back-country road to a nearby lake to go fishing for the evening. Being the teenage boys that they are, before heading down to the water’s edge, they grabbed the airsoft guns out of my son’s truck for a little battle in the parking lot, never considering that people in cars passing by would not realize the guns were toys. All they could see is big football-player-sized boys with assault-like weapons.
Fast-forward fifteen minutes and the boys were then down by the lake with their rods out. But at the sound of a siren speeding into the lot and a slamming car door, my son and one other went up to check it out.
“Hands up!” the officer called.
Completely confused, my son did as he was told. It’s no joke when an assault rifle is pointed at your head.
“Where are the guns?” the officer yelled. “And, who is with you?”
The rest of boys were summoned up to the parking lot to wait with hands up alongside my son until police back up arrived. Upon the arrival of the other officer, the boys’ licenses were collected, and the first officer asked to see the guns. It didn’t take but a minute for him to verify what my son had told him about the guns. They were in fact airsoft guns, and a salt gun to keep the flies away.
The officer shook his head, made a joke, and said they were fine. But it hit the boys when he got back to his vehicle and switched his gun to safety that throughout the entire encounter the gun was on FIRE.
Too rattled to fish, my son arrived home shortly after with this tale. For hours, his heart continued racing. Several times that night I woke up thinking, “My son could’ve been shot.”
With this I realize what my black friends, and white friends raising black children, know all too well. Had my son’s skin been different, had any of his black friends been with him, who is to say this story would’ve ended in the way it did.
My son might not have had the chance to defend himself had he been born differently. There might not have been the option to explain the mishap, for the officer to see for himself the guns were toys.
For those of us born with the privilege of not having to think about our skin color on a daily basis because racism and injustice is not part of our story, it’s time we put ourselves in our non-white brothers’ and sisters’ shoes. For them, ensuring another misunderstanding with a cop is not as simple as telling their teenager just not to play with airsoft guns in public anymore.
Recently, I interviewed my friend Shannon Polk for a podcast episode, More Than a Hashtag, and was saddened by what she shared as her normal, everyday experiences.
Friends, we need to stop saying racism doesn’t exist, or it’s only a few bad apples. There is a reason my friend knows to stay away from certain areas at night or has to consider how she fixes her hair and what she wears depending on where she goes. But as she said,
It’s easy to be indifferent when we don’t know people different than us. And while we don’t know what we don’t know, for things to change, we need to know, and we need to act.
Therefore, a few things we can do:
- We can start by befriending others different than us; having them over for dinner and getting to know each other. Listening to their stories.
- We must talk to our kids about racial issues. As Shannon says, “in the same way we shouldn’t leave sex education to someone else, why would we let someone else shape our kids’ values on race?”
- It means speaking up within our social circles when we see a bias and teaching our kids to do the same. For passive silence only perpetuates the problem.
I don’t know how the police that pointed the gun at my son would have responded if my son was black. What I do know now is a bit more of the fear that keeps other moms and dads up every night. And no parent should have to worry that way.
For the podcast conversation with Shannon, click HERE. And resources Shannon recommends:
