What If She Had Emmett Till in Mind? (#BlackLivesMatter)

(Image Source: Police Sgt. Bret Barnum hugs 12-year-old Devonte Hart during a demonstration in Portland, Ore. calling for police reform after the Ferguson grand jury decision on Nov. 25, 2014.)

I want to share an interaction I had with my mom the other day -- one of my few non-racist, non-bigoted family members. This is such a perfect example of what I wish more people, of all ethnicities, would try to be more aware of. My mom is white, 70 and lives in the Deep South.

Perspective is everything.

She made friends with a middle-aged black gentlemen a couple of years ago, and no matter where they run into one another, they hug. She ran into him a few days ago and they hugged as usual. She never thinks twice about it.

She said the other day there was a black woman there who saw them hug and "if looks could kill, I would have been dead."

I asked how old the woman was. "Older, probably close to my age."

I said, "What if she had Emmett Till in mind when she saw you two hugging? She is of an age to remember that horrific violence."

Mom had never heard of Emmett Till, which surprised me. But then I asked a few people -- white people -- my age and older, people I thought for sure would know the name Emmett Till, and they had never heard the name either.

This is a perfect example of history affecting current behavior -- widespread, collective behavior -- yet far too many people are unaware of it.

(Please keep in mind that the last recorded lynching of a black man by the KKK was in 1981 -- the year I graduated from high school. Not 1881 -- 1981. That is how recent the blatant, dehumanizing violence was done publicly. It is still systemic...racism continues to be present in our institutions, which is why white people -- even poor white people -- have an advantage over people of color still. Look at the details of legal and justice statistics to see it in action. If anyone doubts this, I can spend time gathering the facts for you.)

Back to Emmett Till. In 1955, he was 14, a young black boy living in Mississippi. Someone said he flirted with a white woman. A group of local white men took Till away to a barn, where they beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, weighting it with a 70-pound (32 kg) cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire.

That story was repeated probably hundreds of times in the last century.

What if the black woman looking at my mom, a white woman hugging a black man, had an instinctive, conditioned reaction to the act: She feared for his safety, ESPECIALLY in the Deep South?

African-Americans as a community often parent differently than many white parents. We experience daily life differently based on many factors -- skin color is one key factor. In spite of White America's cries of horrible parenting in black communities, it is cultural for AA parents to be much more strict -- because the lives of their children literally depend upon it. Of course, it doesn't mean the kids always listen -- which is the case with ALL children, especially teens.

There are things passed down through generations, just as is the case for all cultures. For the African-American community, it is fairly common behavior for AA moms to downplay the success of their kids, especially their sons. "Oh, he is a mess. Don't pay any attention to him," even when he's done something very worthy of praise.

Do you know why this may be the case? Many of these moms don't even know where it comes from, other than seeing the older generation doing it. (I highly recommend Joy DeGruy's theory and book based on the same: Post-Traumatic Slave Syndrome)

During slave times, parents were terrified of their children being noticed -- even for something positive -- because it increased the likelihood they'd be sold and taken away from them.

If their kids acted up, even as young children, the potential for beating was tremendous -- by any white person, because they felt entitled to do so to any child who wasn't white.

Parents of children brown skin have to have "the talk" with their kids, especially boys: Don't walk too fast, don't walk too slow, keep your hands out of your pockets so they don't think you have a gun...if you're pulled over keep your hands in sight at all times, no sudden movements, yes sir/yes ma'am (yes, white parents often do the same concerning law enforcement but there is no such thing as driving or walking while white).

They are afraid for the lives of their loved ones, in ways that go beyond the typical worries we all experience. There is a historical precedent for these fears and subsequent behaviors that no one stops to consider when talking about the behavior of "those people."

There has been no space for this multigenerational trauma to heal. And we need MUCH more education in this country of Kardashian and Duck Dynasty watchers. The historical context of what is happening matters.
We see the trauma manifesting in different forms right now with the various incidents, the kind of incidents many of you are tired of seeing in the news -- Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, the latest being Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old AA boy with a toy gun shot in Cleveland within 1.5 to 2 seconds of the police car pulling up to him.

Racism may or may not be part of the scenarios on the part of police officers in the near daily deaths occurring; racism in the sense of law enforcement having a higher level of fear when confronted with a black man. However, how the deaths are treated (systemic, in the justice system) and the reaction of a significant portion of White America is racist. Young black men feel their lives do not matter which, by the way, often feeds a lot of the black-on-black violence some of you are itching to bring up as you read this. Forget about poverty and housing and other injustices; the fact that many AA citizens feel they are not valued as a human being because of the color of their skin often manifests in how they even treat one another.

Racism is alive and well in the United States -- IN ALL AGE GROUPS. You're fooling yourself and may be adding to the danger by denying it or wishing everyone was colorblind. Diversity is good...appreciating our cultural differences is healthy, using them to destroy, dehumanize and hate isn't.

Lives are literally at stake every minute, in ways that are preventable, so I feel a fierce urgency of now to speak up and do my best to educate. I feel qualified to do so, to a limited degree, because I've been around racist behavior (not only views, but behavior) my whole life. I know it when I see it. It doesn't mean the individuals are evil. Archie Bunker wasn't evil -- he was afraid. I want to try to do my part towards healing this, even with one person in this world.

If you're tired of listening to or watching all the talk about racism, imagine LIVING IT. I can't. As a white person living in the United States, I can't imagine living it.

‪#‎BlackLivesMatter‬


~ Dena

PRACTICAL COMPASSION | Sharing thoughts, ideas, and visions of a more compassionate, collaborative, joy-filled world.

Hey, White People with White Kids...

(For more information about the above image, click here)

UPDATED: 8/24/14

(Adapted from a Facebook post. I'm a white female, by the way.)

Is the title of this blog inflammatory? I don't think so. I believe true change comes from within and thus racism must be acknowledged and addressed by white people, by whom and for whom the vast majority of our systems and institutions were created, providing an advantage -- or at the very least not having a disadvantage -- based on the color of one's skin. This includes the growing numbers of white Americans living in poverty.

I'm especially talking to those of you predisposed to see young men like Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown as thugs. (I doubt you're even aware of the many other young black people killed nearly weekly, unarmed and committing no crime whatsoever, because the shooter felt threatened due to the color of their skin or made deadly assumptions about them.)

Neither of those young men had a police record or "rap sheet," in spite of what is floating around the cesspool that is often the internet.

There is no evidence whatsoever that Trayvon was committing a crime at the time of Zimmerman stalking and then ultimately shooting him. None.

Michael may or may not have committed a crime just before the encounter with Officer Darren Wilson.

Let's say he did. And let's say he absolutely unnecessarily and even thuggishly shoved that store clerk, for no good reason whatsoever. Let's say he behaved horribly, even though there has been no definitive connection between the incident at the store and his death at the hands of Officer Darren Wilson.

What if it were your child?

I know some of you from youth...and I know some of you shoplifted and committed petty crimes. Maybe some of your kids have done the same, at that same age. Doesn't make it right...I'm not defending any criminality. Just pointing out that a lot of things are done by people at that age that they're not proud of; they may or may not have gotten caught and suffered the consequences. Some of you didn't get caught, but you did the crime nevertheless.

But let's say your child, even a large male child, just committed the crime of stealing something from the corner store, not armed.

All you know and all you care about is that your child is lying in the middle of a fairly quiet street for hours. Dead. Shot AT LEAST SIX TIMES. You are forced to stay outside the police tape line, and don't see anyone attempting to resuscitate your child or even take his pulse.

What if this occurred in an environment in which local law enforcement has been known, for decades, to target and harass people who look like your son? So there is the added layer of a generational history of anger and mistrust and fear involved, built in to your personal tragedy.

Given the details, or lack thereof, and the sequence of events of how law enforcement has handled this shooting, wouldn't you feel you're losing your mind?

The outside events swirling around the death of your child don't matter. People are protesting and a small faction of criminals are being opportunistic, wreaking havoc by looting and stealing and behaving like horrible human beings even though they are NOT representative of the people in your community nor a reflection of your child.  (Click here to learn, as I have recently, about the straw man of "outside agitators).

That all matters not.


Your child is dead, at someone else's hands. And you don't know precisely how or why, and you're not getting answers.

The investigation is FUBAR. All efforts seem geared toward portraying your child as a white thug or distracting from your child altogether, and you know there are millions of people saying that because your child may have stolen something from the corner store, he's a thug. He's nothing else...he's simply a thug now, of no value.

Your child is like most kids: not an angel, not a devil. A human being. In this social media age, there may be images of them flashing the middle finger or vines using profanity or singing offensive lyrics or any number of things -- many of which, I might add, I see adults doing as well. It's interesting how the media chooses the images and stories which least represent your child and try to take away their humanity...and then strangers believe it and pile on. Even worse, they use pictures that aren't even of your child to try to dehumanize him. All of these horrible, horrible words and lies and even mistaken images are now on the Internet, forever. 

The officer who shot your son -- there is no question who shot your child -- wasn't even identified in the media for nearly a week. It appears the blue line was put into place quickly, deflecting to cast all blame on your child.

What if people were raising money to support the person who shot your child, without all the details having been revealed?

You would want attention given to this because you don't trust the authorities. I know I would scream to the high heavens, wanting answers, and justice. Wouldn't you?

Chances are if this happened to your white child, strangers who heard about the event wouldn't respond by demonizing your boy, and simultaneously demonizing all white people. (Chances are if this horrible travesty happened to your white child it wouldn't have garnered a lot media attention, because it's not a pattern in this country. The excessive force cases that I've seen, which involve white teens and young adults, are fairly expeditiously processed and the officers or private citizens charged and brought to trial. But if such an event happens to any child and justice doesn't seem to be served, I would hope we would all rise up, trying to put ourselves in the place of the parents and the community.)

How would you feel? Can you even attempt to have compassion and empathize?

I can't imagine...and thank God I can't. Thankfully I don't have the daily worry that because of the color of my child's skin she may be seen as a threat and a target. There are so many things we parents worry about already. What a relief to not have THAT particular worry. What a privilege. No one should have such a worry.

But that is not the reality of non-white parents. Or white parents with children who don't have white skin.

I've nearly lost my mind by witnessing these tragedies for decades and observing the absolutely hateful, vile, ignorant, dangerous responses to such events.

It's a deadly disease, racism, and we all need to acknowledge it, and work to prevent it and heal it. You can act like it isn't your problem, that it's all about "those people," but you really can't shield yourself from it. It's everywhere...it's systemic, it's institutionalized. For the sake of all you hold dear, please don't add to this disease and spread it. You never know how it may infect or affect someone you love, leading them to inflict harm upon other human beings.

What if it were your child?

PRACTICAL COMPASSION | Sharing thoughts, ideas, and visions of a more compassionate, collaborative, joy-filled world.