Facebook Publication Date: 9/11/2020 7:09
Danielle here ~ I remember probably 5 years ago or so talking to a dear friend from my former church single’s group days. Four of us had gone on a mountain getaway together and were catching up on each other’s lives and I was talking to them about racism and bias and sharing a particular incident where a coworker of mine had the police called on him for driving slowly through a neighborhood. I work at a large law firm. He also works for the same firm and was delivering some documents to an attorney or client. Driving slowly because he wasn’t familiar with the neighborhood.
I said to my friends that the police were called simply because the man was black. I was passionately trying to get my friends to understand how it must feel to be treated as though you are violent and dangerous just because you are black.
And I’ll never forget this one friend responding “But why though!? WHY are people more afraid of them?” I can’t convey tone while typing, but her words were not a sincere question. They were a ‘gotcha’ moment. She was conveying to me that she believes like Abby Johnson (the activist who said “Statistically, my brown son is more likely to commit a violent offense over my white sons, okay?”) – that we are afraid of black people because statistics show that black people are more violent.
But that isn’t what statistics actually show. Statistics show that white people commit more violent crimes but that there is a pervasive bias running through all arms of our “justice system”.
This is just a piece of what systemic racism looks like.
https://www.theroot.com/a-judge-asked-harvard-to-find-out-why-so-many-black-peo-1845017462?utm_campaign=The%20Root&utm_content=1599775152&utm_medium=SocialMarketing&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwAR02dC2xDEzed5bpEvJ3WqCUY8qsUvK_K7AOfVrYx-AQxu_8mO7NJdu_wrY
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