It’s been a year since the death of George Floyd, and the cycle of violence is becoming fixed in our minds and in our streets. Police are being targeted while protestors cheer, and black men fear that racist police are looking for reasons to kill them. Fear plays a significant role in this deadly dance, and it’s not hard to see how the fear, on both sides, is justified. Empathy might, if nothing else, provide us with a vantage point from which to understand both sides.
Consider, first, the perspective of the black man. Since you were a child, you have been told stories of innocent people killed by racist cops. You know their names: Michael Brown, Freddy Gray, George Floyd and, you are certain, as one website puts it, that there are “thousands of other names we don’t know.” Famous people like Lebron James see the same thing: “We are scared as Black people in America. Black men, Black women, Black kids. We are, we are terrified.” You’ve grown up knowing the perils of “driving while black.” You know in your bones that if a policeman pulls you over, things could quickly go bad. As Ibram X. Kendi puts it, “I had to learn how to keep racist cops from getting nervous.” Cops pull black men over a lot. This is because most cops are racists, and they explicitly target black men. “They clearly want to arrest us. They suspect that just because we’re black, we are violent criminals. When I see a cop, I gotta admit, I feel a sinking feeling in my stomach. I just want to get away.”
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