The local NAACP appears to be set to take a more serious stance on the mass—and often racially disproportionate—incarcerations that have been devastating communities and families across the nation for decades.
While the stronger position is laudable, albeit late, the group may not be starting out with the greatest of ideas...
On Saturday, from 10 a.m. to noon, "Stops and Cops: A Youth Survival Guide for Police Encounters" will bring together police officers, judges, defense attorneys and young people, ages 16 to 21. Cops and youths will act out real-life encounters, including traffic stops, street confrontations and the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.More than 200 young people will evaluate and discuss what they see. Everyone will get a wallet-sized card with 10 tips for handling police encounters.
"You can be respectful but also understand that you have some rights," Melvin Butch Hollowell, general counsel of the Detroit Branch NAACP, told me Wednesday. "We don't want our young people to make mistakes that stop their careers before they start."
Frankly, I’m not sure what young people, especially young black men, are really expected to take away from events like this, nor do I have any clear idea what good these types of “education” programs really do.
How, for example, do you “act out” the Trayvon Martin shooting in any way that can be instructive for young people when we still don’t know exactly what happened? Yes, I am among the millions who truly believe that the Florida boy was stalked and murdered by a racist George Zimmerman, but my suspicions don’t translate into insight into intimate knowledge about the peculiars of the case. And no one “acting out” the shooting is any clearer than the rest of us.
So how then can someone reasonably expect to “recreate” the all-important details that led up the tragedy? How, really, can you turn such a case into an object, life-saving lesson for young Detroiters on how to deal with police—especially given that Martin wasn’t even killed by a cop? What, really, can you advise young people on about circumstances like this that doesn’t sound like more bullshit gushing from beneath Geraldo Rivera’s mustache?
“Don’t wear hoodies?” “Don’t walk to the store alone?” “Don’t try to get away?” “Don’t stand your ground?” “Stay silent when accused by strangers?” “Acquiesce to the demands of any random bigot who questions why you’re minding your business in a particular neighborhood?”
Giving young people a chance to talk about the Martin case—to explore the implications of race, violence and justice in America—could be valuable indeed. But there’re not many established details to rehash that would catalog and explain the deadly nuances of that fateful night. To pretend right now that we know Martin had any other choice but to die tragically is, in my opinion, dishonest and unhelpful.
But it’s not just the invocation of the Martin case that disturbs me. It’s also what seems to be a general presumption (in this program and many others I’ve seen like it) that, when it comes to actual encounters with real policemen, it’s black teens and young adults who most need to be taught how to behave.
Why should our children have to walk around with business cards containing 10-point programs on handling police encounters? Why can’t the same U.S. Constitution the covers everyone else be enough to ensure safety and fair treatment of young people in Detroit, too? Why can’t it be enough that these young men and women are American citizens, their parents taxpayers, all of them deserving of being “protected and served?” Why can’t police officers, the ones who are trained and paid to interact with these young people, be the ones held to the higher standard?
How will we ever stop the undeserving “criminalization” of young black people if we don’t first doggedly demand that they be extended the same latitude, the same presumption of innocence, as anyone else? Detroit cops don’t beat or kill white men for not being, as Hollowell puts it, “respectful.” How is it right then for black men to have to fear such repercussions, especially to the point where we have to plan for it with teach-ins and tip sheets?
No, give the cops the 10-point business cards. Our children deserve the Bill of Rights.
Some argue that, regardless of whether it’s fair to have to give kids behavior cues in the name of saving them, it’s still critically important. It not unlike the argument some make when defending unconstitutional weapons sweeps in schools, random drug checkpoints and even racial profiling. Somehow there’s this belief that the same rights everyone else in the country is supposed to take for granted should be happily curtailed in black Detroit if the cause is noble enough.
But the truth is, black people, black men especially, often have uneasy relationships with the police not because we “talk bad” to them—but rather because we live in an America that has been taught to see black bodies as suspicious and less deserving of respect. Because cops too often kick our asses day in, day out without cause or provocation. And because we all know they’re likely to get away with it.
Sean Bell, Oscar Grant, Amadou Diallo, Ramarley Graham—all symbolize the bloody toll that these encounters can exact. But they are still extreme examples. Far more common to these run-ins are instances of verbal humiliation, unfulfilled threats and very sad reminders that the police exist not to safeguard your black ass, but rather to keep you terrorized and in check.
In reality, toxic run-ins with the cops are more likely to resemble stops like this than they are to degenerate into a shoot out.
I grew up in a part of Detroit where police stops, deserving and not, were and still are an everyday occurrence for young people. I’ve been pulled over for everything from a broken taillight to “I felt like it.” I know firsthand that there are plenty of decent cops in the city—but I also know well that there are too many folks in blue who’re rotten and abusive, who have no idea how to treat citizens and who have no business whatsoever interacting with the public.
Police officers have a tough job, sure. But they are no more or less worthy of “respect”—or a lecture on how to “talk”—than a firefighter, librarian or city bus driver. And when officers don’t get that respect, the burden of how to respond lies not with some mouthy teenager who failed to listen to the NAACP, but with the paid law-enforcement professionals who should be trusted to keep that kid safe—even it’s from his own mouth or some cop’s tender feelings.
