“A voice is heard in Ramah [and in Minneapolis and in Brunswick and in Louisville and in New York and in Ferguson, and in every city across the land], lamentation and bitter weeping. Mothers weep for their children; they refuse to be comforted for their children, because they are no more.” (Jeremiah 31:15)
I have struggled with this post. Being silent right now means choosing the side of the oppressor and being complicit in the systemic racism in this country that has led to the deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless other black persons in America and countless other acts of violence and oppression. However, as a white person, I need to check my privilege and recognize it is not my voice that needs to be heard right now.
And so, I want to amplify the voice of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama in 2016, and his powerful opinion piece in the LA Times from this past weekend. I commend it to you as a place to start to try and understand what is happening outside our windows right now.
Op-Ed: Kareem Abdul-Jabbar: Don’t understand the protests? What you’re seeing is people pushed to the edge
Nam Y. Huh / Associated Press
By KAREEM ABDUL-JABBAR
MAY 30, 2020
7:29 PM
What was your first reaction when you saw the video of the white cop kneeling on George Floyd’s neck while Floyd croaked, “I can’t breathe”?
If you’re white, you probably muttered a horrified, “Oh, my God” while shaking your head at the cruel injustice. If you’re black, you probably leapt to your feet, cursed, maybe threw something (certainly wanted to throw something), while shouting, “Not @#$%! again!” Then you remember the two white vigilantes accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery as he jogged through their neighborhood in February, and how if it wasn’t for that video emerging a few weeks ago, they would have gotten away with it. And how those Minneapolis cops claimed Floyd was resisting arrest but a store’s video showed he wasn’t. And how the cop on Floyd’s neck wasn’t an enraged redneck stereotype, but a sworn officer who looked calm and entitled and devoid of pity: the banality of evil incarnate.
Maybe you also are thinking about the Karen in Central Park who called 911 claiming the black man who asked her to put a leash on her dog was threatening her. Or the black Yale University grad student napping in the common room of her dorm who was reported by a white student. Because you realize it’s not just a supposed “black criminal” who is targeted, it’s the whole spectrum of black faces from Yonkers to Yale.
You start to wonder if it should be all black people who wear body cams, not the cops.