I had started carrying a knife my junior year of high school. It quickly became a running joke among my core group of friends that whenever someone would say something out of pocket or stupid, we’d say, ‘Get the knife,’ and I’d lay it on the table comedically. What those friends definitely didn’t know is I carried the knife because I was afraid I might get jumped making my daily walk from the train station to my house late most evenings. How could my white friends from suburbia ever understand that?
In the wake of the past week’s events, I’ve reflected on interactions with the police where part of that veil of black privilege I thought existed, but likely was only afforded to me because of my military affiliation. I was pulled over in a cemetery, less than one minute after getting back in my car after visiting a friend’s grave, only to be asked, ‘What are you doing here?’ The cop had been parked right by me the entire time, so he obviously had just seen me out at a gravestone alone. ‘Visiting my friend’s grave before heading back to school tomorrow, sir.’ The officer’s aggressive demeanor only changed after I told him I went to the Naval Academy, upon which we entered a friendly conversation about his days at Norwich. What stuck with me is what he could’ve done in those backroads of the cemetery without another living person in sight — no witnesses, no cameras.
Or another time when I had walked back to my best friend’s empty house after a party, and accidentally set off the alarm, bringing the cops buzzing to his door. I wonder if the only reason it went so smoothly is that I quickly identified myself as a member of the military, opening their ears to hear the full story of what was happening. Thinking of what might’ve happened if they mistook me holding my military ID in my hand as I walked out the door, for something else.
Another tough thing about looking at all this is realizing how little of it actively occurred to me when I was younger. When I was pulled over numerous times, often without cause, driving to a hockey game in Weston or parked talking to my white girlfriend, I didn’t consider that the cops might have had it against me. Or when these biases did occur to me, how quickly I brushed them off as insignificant.
I can remember being in early middle school arriving at our high school’s football game with a group of friends, all white, to find three or four policemen standing by the entrance. I greeted them with a ‘good evening officers,’ then quietly said to my friends, ‘You gotta befriend them so they are on your side later.’ My buddies thought it was hilarious, and I had succeeded in making the boys laugh. Looking back, I realize they really didn’t understand I was speaking to something legitimate. I was no older than twelve or thirteen, and I already understood the police would be inclined to be against me. It was funny to my friends because they had never had those sorts of conversations.
I think back to when my friends never understood why I wasn’t allowed to play with water guns or any toy guns for that matter when I was a boy. I would be so excited to be visiting a friend’s house and getting to use their airsoft gun in their backyard. I used to be so frustrated when my mom wouldn’t let us because it was ‘too dangerous’ for black boys to do that, and someone would mistake it for a real gun. When I was sixteen, Tamir Rice, a twelve-year-old boy was shot and killed while playing with a replica toy airsoft gun. I realized my mom was right.
