If you are like me — a straight, white, middle class, progressive-minded male — you are concerned/sympathetic/empathetic/angry about the state of African-Americans in this country.
But you rarely, if ever, get a chance to witness the daily truth of that state.
I did the other night.
I had been working late at the office — I’m a lawyer by trade (horrors!) — and was on my way home in the way-far-out suburbs, going up a one-way north street to the exit for the interstate. I was in the far right-hand lane, with a police officer in the lane beside me. There are five lanes at this point on the road — the far left-hand lane is for right-hand turns. Apart from me and the officer, there is one other car two lanes from me. If traffic were lighter, it’d been non-existent.
The officer slows down.
I watch him move over to the far left-hand lane — three lanes. Beyond him I see a young African-American guy — doo-rag, track suit, backpack — walking in the street, but very close to the curb, not impeding traffic, and clearly visible to northbound traffic.
The officer slows and comes up behind him. He fires up his lights — the ones on top of the car, you know the ones I mean, I think they’re called “flashers” (and yes, for a lawyer who does criminal defense work, it is embarassing not to know the colloquialism for them). I roll past them and make my turn, but I check the rearview, and see the officer already move on.
Well, my curiosity is piqued.
I come around the block to move up beside the young man, now walking on the sidewalk, and ask what happened.
Well you guessed it. The cop told him to walk on the sidewalk. I shook my head, expresse my incredulity, wished him well, and drove on. (I regret I didn’t offer him a ride — the product of middle-class whiteness, I guess.)
I suppose it could have been worse — the cop could have ticketed him, patted him down, ran the guy’s name through the computer. All possibilities far more outrageous and egregious in terms of violating civil rights. A minor inconvenience to the young man, as his rather nonplussed attitude to my question revealed, not worth even discussing, like an everday occurrence.
Still.
What was the dire emergency that required flashing those lights at the guy? Woulldn’t pulling up beside him (in a marked car and in uniform, by the way) and saying, “Son, it’d be a good idea to walk on the sidewalk. For your safety, you understand.” And how crucial was it to cross three lanes to do this? With no one else out, stopping and calling out to the young man would have sufficed.
An everyday occurrence.
WWB.
Walking While Black.
