Black Men Keep Getting Killed Blair Kelley Respectability , Accountability Jacksonville , Florida December 2014
D I ' '
So for decades , black families have asked that their sons and daughters learn the way to be safe . To be courteous if they are stopped by the police , to keep their hands out of their pockets , to quickly and completely comply with every command , even to change the way they dress and speak in order to be seen by white people as a black person who can be trusted - and not as a threat . Now we ' re asking that our boys give up their toys to not be seen as a threat . I understand this impulse . It ' s the expression of our desire to believe that somehow , there could be something that we could do to buffer our fan1ilies , to keep our daughters and sons safe in an unjust world .
But in just the last few months , we ' ve seen too many instances - like the dash-cam footage of a police officer shooting a black South Carolina man - that remind us that even courteous compliance is not enough when you are faced with a person detennined to see something that is not there . What difference do the rules make when even our compliance looks like resistance ?
So this week , when people are organizing across this country to continue to protest the non-indictments in the killings of Eric Gamer and Michael Brown and the shooting death of Tamir Rice , I want us to focus on what police jurisdictions must do . Let ' s not just keep adding to the list of what we tell our sons and daughters to do to be safe . Let ' s keep our eyes focused on justice .
' ' We ' ve seen too many instances in
which even courteous compliance isn ' t enough when you ' re faced with someone determined to see a threat that isn ' t there .
Blair L . M . Kelley is an associate professor of history at North Carolina State University and the author of the award-winning book Right to Ride : Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship in the Era of Plessy v . Ferguson . Follow her on Twitter .