Week of 08/06/2018

“While Black” Is Not A Crime! Stop Treating It As One!
– by David Matthews 2

I have a real simple message to my fellow Americans.

Stop calling the police on African-Americans for existing!

I am deadly serious about this.  Stop doing it.  Just stop.

We all know the story of two men who were sitting in a Starbucks when the police were called on them simply for being there.  They were waiting on a third party who was late, they hadn’t purchased anything yet, but the management still didn’t want them there.  So the police were called and they were arrested simply for doing what Starbucks had long encouraged others to do.  The only difference between them and anyone else doing the same thing in that establishment is their skin color.  “Waiting While Black.”

So Starbucks apologized and shut down all the stores for “retraining” and they made sure that the “rules” were made crystal clear: anyone is welcomed to be there.  Anyone.

Now you would think that would be it, right?  This should have been a “teaching moment” for us all.

But it’s not.

Because the stories keep coming up.

Certain students are having to explain themselves to the police simply because of their skin color.  “Studying While Black.”  A little girl trying to raise money to go to Disneyland gets the police called on by some plus-sized woman with a cellphone dubbed “Permit Patty”.  “Selling While Black”.  Several young men in a community pool were accosted and even assaulted by a plus-sized woman with a cellphone dubbed “Pool Patrol Paula”.  Police were called on a woman who was in a residential pool by a man dubbed “ID Adam”.  The police were called on a man for wearing socks in a pool.  All three instances, “Swimming While Black”.  A family had the police called on them by a plus-sized woman dubbed “BBQ Becky” for the “crime” of having a barbecue in a public place.  “BBQing While Black”.  A candidate for public office was stopped by the police for the “crime” of meeting the voters in a certain neighborhood.  “Campaigning While Black”.    A CVS manager called the police on an elderly woman for using a coupon.  “Couponing While Black”. 

The common factor in all of these are the skin color.

But perhaps the most egregious of offenses came when actor Ving Rhames recounted an incident in 2016 when the police were called to his home by his neighbors (plural) who said a black man had broken in.  The police responded with guns drawn.

The “intruder” was Ving Rhames.  The “crime”, as reported by several residents, was living in his own home.

“Living While Black”.

Enough!

I’m not going to try to pretend that this is something “new” or something “recent”.  I have some idea about the history of race-based laws, especially here in the American South, where police would arrest someone for “loitering” or “vagrancy” by using the flimsiest of excuses with a “wink and a smile” that just happen to target only people of a certain melanin level.  Laws and practices that weren’t as blatant as the old Jim Crow segregation but just as effective in driving in that idea of racial superiority and racial inferiority.  These are harder to get rid of because they have the pretense of legitimacy than the more open discrimination of Jim Crow.

But certainly these practices are coming to light now with the predominance of cellphones and social media exposing these habits on-the-spot.  The same technology that the perpetrators are using to call the police is also being used to record the victimization and post it for the world to see and be disgusted by it.

Let’s get brutally honest here... these disgusting practices of racial profiling and racial discrimination need to end, and they need to end right now.  By all rights, it should have come to an end after the Starbucks incident, and the fact that it hasn’t, the fact that it continues to go on with more and more and more people doing it, is proof that we haven’t learned a damn thing.

And spare me the “I’m not a racist” crap!  Your actions tell the world more about you than your rhetoric ever will!

What “BBQ Becky”, “ID Adam”, “Permit Patty”, “Pool Patrol Paula”, Ving Rhames’s neighbors, and all of the other people who call the police for this crap are doing is more than just showing their true racism.  They are diverting police resources.  For every call on someone doing something “while black”, the police are not there to catch speeders or respond to accidents.  The running joke used to be that the cops weren’t doing their jobs because they were at the donut shop; now we have to wonder if they’re away dealing with a “nuisance call” because the closet racist worker doesn’t like “those people” in his or her store.

Plus, by using the police as your personal goon squad to enforce your closet racism, you’re demeaning their image in the eyes of others.  How are we supposed to trust the police if they’re out arresting people for no reason other than their skin color?  Even worse, how are the non-white community supposed to trust the police when it comes to legitimate crimes?

It’s really no different than swatting, when someone anonymously call the police on the false pretense of a violent crime being committed, knowing full well that the police will respond aggressively on their intended victim.  These self-appointed bigoted social vigilantes may not “intend” to have violence done to their victims, but the method is still the same.

That’s why I think that people like “BBQ Becky” and “ID Adam” and “Permit Patty” and the rest of the sorry lot should be criminally charged for calling the police for needless reasons.  We charge people for calling in fake bomb threats and fake fire alarms and we send them to jail.  This should be no different.  You are using the police for your own personal purposes and taking them away from doing their rightful jobs.  And if there is a crime that happens or an accident that happens and someone dies because the police were out doing your dirty discriminatory work, then that should also be on you.

We need to be clear that doing anything “while black” should never be considered a crime in America.  To tell someone that they can’t barbecue in a public park like everyone else, or sit in a coffee house like everyone else, or swim in a pool like everyone else, or shop with a coupon like everyone else, or attend college and reside in that college like everyone else, or to reside in your own home like everyone else simply because of their color, you are telling that person that they do not have a right to exist.  And that is truly a crime against humanity if there was one.