White people who want to be allies need to worry less about the George Floyd protests and more about the systemic racism that sparked them.
Get live updates from Los Angeles Times journalists as they report on protests across the U.S. after the death of George Floyd while in police custody. I am shocked and horrified by George Floyd’s death and Arbery’s death — and how Amy Cooper’s reaction to a perfectly reasonable request immediately exploded straight to racism so obvious and absurd it would have been funny if we didn’t all know that the story could have ended a whole other way.
With Christian Cooper in custody. Or dead. For asking a white woman toBeing white does not guarantee fair treatment by the police — just ask countless white rape victims — any more than being white is an automatic protection against COVID-19 or poverty or injustice. But white people do not live our lives in constant, thrumming low- to high-grade fear of the police. We do not worry about getting arrested or killed for being in the wrong neighborhood or because a white person committed a crime and we look like him because we too are white.We don’t worry about being pulled over or asked for ID for no apparent reason, or threatened with a drawn gun when we ask “What is this about?” White people do not worry that any chance encounter with the police could easily end with us, or our children, incarcerated or dead. And we are, or should be, very aware of this. God knows, police harassment of black people has become so normalized it is part of the popular culture. How many jokes/episodes/films/songs have depicted an act of institutionalized racism? How often have white people sat, full of righteous indignation, through stories — scripted and personal — of black men being asked what they’re doing in a “nice” neighborhood or driving an expensive car, or of a white person being pulled over for speeding, only to be asked if he or she is all right when the officer sees that the person in the passenger seat is black? How many times have we heard a black man say “It’s fine,” while he reaches for his ID and tries to calm us down because we, being white, are allowed the luxury of being furious at a clear example of racism.Actually, for white people the real luxury is that the outrage can pass, or hover at the farthest edge of everyday life. Because it is not part of our everyday life. Except it is. We cannot divorce ourselves from injustice simply because it is not happening at any given moment in front of our very own selves. Not only is that the very definition of “morally bankrupt,” it’s just plain wrong. Everything that happens, happens to all of us. Look at the news. Our cities are burning, in the middle of a pandemic, just like they have burned so many times before because systemic, continual injustice is at absolute odds with a peaceful society.
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