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My Dad Warned Me About the Myth of Racial Progress. He Was Right.
My father, who grew up in the segregated South, reminded me how far we have to go
A few days ago, I got a call from my father, Louis, and immediately felt a pang of anxiety. He was the one who called me several months prior, bawling, to let me know that my brother had died suddenly. I still haven’t been able to shake that sense of dread when his name flashes on my phone screen. “Who’s dead now?” I wonder.
But he called this time with a question — and a warning.
“Are you still running?” he asked me. I had been going to the gym consistently since the beginning of the year, then began running around Berkeley for a bit after the gyms closed to Covid-19. But no, I told him, I hate running, so I’ve been going for longer walks around the neighborhood.
“Well, still — I know I’ve told you this before, but be careful when you’re out there,” he said. “They are out here killing us all out in the open. They don’t give a shit. They’re calling the police on us for nothing.”
I’m in my early thirties, and I would normally bristle at this type of protectiveness from either of my parents, but I understood why he said what he said.
He was talking about the uptick in news about Black people all over the United States who’ve had their Black bodies threatened or attacked for simply existing.
He was talking about Ahmaud Arbery, who was chased, shot, and killed by two white men while running in Georgia.
He was talking about Amy Cooper, the white woman who threatened to call the NYPD on Christian Cooper, a Black man, after he tried to reinforce the rules in Central Park’s Ramble.
He was talking about Breonna Taylor, who was shot to death in her own home in Louisville by the police in mid-March.
He was talking about Tony McDade, a trans Black man who was shot to death by police in Tallahassee.
He was talking about George Floyd, who was killed when a Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for eight minutes, despite Floyd’s protestation, “I can’t breathe.”
