By Melissa Waite
I pray you are all well. I am writing to you because I recently had an epiphany. When we in the black community experience an escalated crisis, we often exclude our white friends from our conversations. We do so because we believe that it is doubtful that you can understand our struggles and consequential pain because you are not black. On the other hand, your silence sometimes is misconstrued as not caring about our pain. I think more times than not the silence is more accurately the result of not knowing what to say, how to say it, or uncertainty about whether you are even “allowed” to say anything. Basically, we are not communicating effectively when it comes to race relations and in an attempt to improve this communication, I desire to include you in our conversation.
When I was in grade school in the 70’s, my dad sat my brother down in order to have the “white cop” talk. My brother was told that he needed to be exceedingly compliant if he ever encountered a white cop because killing black men is what they do for sport. Thirty years later, my husband and I were compelled to have the identical conversation with our son. By the way, the “white cop” talk in black households is standard and usually comes before the “sex” talk or the “don’t do drugs” talk. Police brutality in our community is clearly nothing new but now because of technology, these videos of police brutality go viral for the world to see. I can assure you that George Floyd also got the “white cop” talk and even though he was compliant, he was murdered nonetheless. Can you even imagine the countless times that our sons, brothers, fathers, and nephews have succumbed to the same untimely death and it wasn’t videotaped?
Kaepernick took a knee in order to protest this same type of police brutality. Taking a knee is a very passive and peaceful form of protesting. However, those protesting in this manner were called “sons of bitches” by the leader of our nation and many of my white friends were appalled because they felt that taking a knee during the national anthem was disrespecting the flag. The reason for the peaceful protest was lost and it became apparent that the symbolism of the flag was more important than Black lives being brutally destroyed.
Did you know that the blue canton on the USA flag stands for JUSTICE? So, is taking a knee during the national anthem in order to protest police brutality a betrayal of the flag or have the George Floyds that have been killed unjustly been excluded from the symbolic protections that the flag affords White America and therefore betrayed by the very justice that the flag represents? Yes, we are angry, frustrated, sickened, inconsolably saddened and simply exhausted. My 19-year-old daughter showed me a video of the Minneapolis police third precinct building ablaze and her words were telling. She said, “Mom, I don’t advocate violence but the police department on fire represents how much anger I feel right now.” Buildings are ablaze right now because we desperately want to be heard and I plead with you to not be more appalled by the destruction of property than you have been by the destruction of Black lives. Martin Luther King, who did not condone violence, once said that riots are the language of the unheard. I am asking you, my white friends, to please hear us.
