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| After the execution of Troy Davis. |
This haunted my husband. Haunted him. Gave him nightmares and everything. We sat on the couch together after the kids were off to school and I listened to my husband saying over and over again, "This could happen to me. Totally. This was right here where we live. It's crazy."
And I just nodded and thought about how Harry felt. I also thought about the day when Harry was driving his (own) car down Ponce de Leon Avenue and got pulled over by a cop. That cop hollered in his face with spit flying out of his mouth and demanded Harry to lay on the asphalt. Right next to this busy Atlanta street.
Lay on the who?
Any who know Harry either in real life or virtually through this blog know that Harry wasn't about to get on nobody's ground. But that officer kept pointing and bellowing in his face something about how some "black guy" had just carjacked a woman in a white BMW. Now. Seeing as my husband is in fact a black person--or "black guy" depending on who you ask--who happened to be driving that overpriced white car, then surely it was him, right?
Okay, maybe there was a wee bit of doubt, but still. Not enough to stop this cop from making this grown ass man lay down on some dirty Midtown concrete. Or at least try to make him.
That story ends with Harry telling that officer his most respectful version of "hell naw" and letting the accuser know that he might really want to check the registration on this car before asking him to "get down" and "put your hands where I can see them."
Registered to a Harry A. Manning. And a "black guy," too. Imagine that.
No apology. Just some mumbling about how "it's our job to protect" and some other mess about having a good rest of the day.
Look. I'm no dummy. I know that there have been some instances--okay maybe a lot of instances--where a "black guy" committed some sort of crime such as robbing a car or even shooting at a cop. But I'm here to stomp my foot and say that, dammit, there's a whole lot of other "black guys" out there who aren't. Like my man or my daddy. Brothers who go to work, come home, love on their wives, and pray to their Lord. Every single day. And I can testify that some of them are working hard to train up their own little "black guys" to do great things in this world. They are. They're doing it with all of their might and trying their damnedest to get it right.
It's terrifying to imagine that after all of that, somebody could potentially roll up on one of them one day and force them out of their car and onto some asphalt. Just for looking like they look or being where they are. But what gives the real nightmares is the thought of someone locking them up for two decades and ending their life. . . . .all in the name of the "job to protect."
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| Look, Mr. Officer. It's our job to protect, too. |
We've since gotten rid of that overpriced car. See? We should've known that anything with that high of a note and that cost that much to fill up was nothing but bad news.
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