Weekly #168

This has been a brutal week.

In this space I'd normally write an innuendo-laden post about a sexy picture. But I just don't have it in me today.

I grew up in Detroit, and when I was a child, half of my friends were black. This was largely because half of the kids I went to school with were. My white friends and my black friends didn't seem "different" from each other. They were just people. Hatred isn't innate. It's a learned behavior. And no one taught it to me.

Fast forward to today. My brother-in-law is black. My nephews are black. (Well, officially they're half, but that's not going to make their lives any easier.) One of the men who works for me is black. And one of the women who works for me is married to a black man. My heart cries for what these friends and loved ones are going through. "Black Lives Matter" is more than just a hashtag in my household.

But what we've been seeing this week goes beyond racism and hatred. One of the women who works for me has respiratory issues and has been struggling because her apartment is next to a park. People staged a completely peaceful protest in that park--everyone on their knees with their hands up. And the police tear gassed them. Tear gas. Banned by the Geneva convention. It's literally a war crime to use it against your enemies. And our police regularly use it against our own citizens. The tear gas found its way into my coworker's apartment. Where was she supposed to go? We're quarantined against a pandemic that attacks the lungs...

Deep breath.

We've seen videos of police knocking down an elderly man and leaving him bleeding on the sidewalk. We've seen videos of police "keeling in solidarity" with the peaceful protesters, getting their picture taken, and then donning their gas masks and gassing the people they were just kneeling with. We've seen videos of police arresting journalists for doing nothing more than filming what is happening. We've heard chiefs of police giving press conferences where they spewed racism and homophobia so outlandish that if I wrote a fictional story and used the same words, you'd all say that my characters were unbelievable. 

This week has been unbelievable.

The police's job is to help the innocent by stopping the guilty. But what we've been seeing this week is them attacking the innocent because they, themselves, are the guilty. And, as terrifying as all this is to a middle-aged white woman living in the relative safety of suburbia, there's something I need to remember--something I need to never forget. The terror I'm feeling as I watch police fire indiscriminately into crowds of peaceful protesters? That terror is what black people feel every day.

"Black Lives Matter" is a minimum bar. We need to do considerably better. 

Tlaero

P.S. Thank you to Mortze for making this picture for me. I didn't ask for it, but he knew I was distraught and took it upon himself to make it.