I Can Feel That Knee On My Neck, Too

Now THAT'S Symbolism.

I received an early morning call today from a dear friend in Metro Detroit. She was consumed in tears.

“How are you?” she asked urgently. “How are you feeling?”

During her morning walk while her mind was free to wander, she flashed back to an incident some years ago that I had all but forgotten. She had invited me to join her and her husband one Sunday morning for brunch and asked me to pick up a few bagels on my way to their home. Maybe some lox, too.

At the time I could have used some friendly company. I was recently divorced and so wiped out financially that I was driving an old raggedy Ford Taurus I borrowed from another friend. (Friends are great, BTW.) I bought the bagels and headed for their house in the affluent community of West Bloomfield.

Driving slowly while searching for their house number, I was suddenly accompanied by flashing red-and-blue lights behind me. Profiled. DWB.

The officer informed me that my license plate tag had expired — hey, wasn’t my car — and he could not allow me to drive the vehicle. It would have to be impounded. That put me in the unbelievably embarrassing position of having to call my friend to explain my situation. She and her husband came out to find me, we all watched as my car was towed away and, after a very animated and melancholy meal, they drove me home.

Today my friend was overcome by the memory, by the "what if." As humiliating as that experience was, she knows now — and I knew then — it could have been far, far worse.

The unforgivable Memorial Day murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers has galvanized, inspired and inflamed our nation like no time since perhaps the civil rights movement of the 1960s. It is triggering individual flashbacks. And the other morning while rinsing the soap out of my silver goatee in the shower, where apparently I do my best thinking, it suddenly hit me: there is a clear connection between all the cataclysmic events of 2020, from the spread of COVID-19 to the worldwide protests and shameful property destruction in the aftermath of Floyd’s death. 

It actually made my brain hurt a little bit when the revelation hit me. I’ll share my theory with you in a minute. 

First, though, I have to acknowledge that my West Bloomfield caller was not the first Caucasian contact I’ve received on this issue in the past 10 days. It’s no shock, really: in the little West Michigan village where I grew up, I was the only black student in the entire school system. I lived among them. I learned their ways. Sometimes I felt like Jane Goodall should study me. Thus, in confusing and chaotic times like these, some white friends instinctively reach out to me for answers or perspective.

Now, I've read numerous columnists over the years (Thaddeus Howze and the great Leonard Pitts come to mind) who say they're sick and tired of trying to explain to white people what it's like to be Black in America. I couldn't disagree more. 

Growing up where I did, I am certain that for hundreds of people I may be the only Black person they know –– or at least, the only one they feel they know well enough to ask serious, direct questions about race. Just like my journey through kidney disease and a successful transplant has made me "Kid Kidney" for many with renal concerns, so have I become the official African American Advocate to many Caucasian acquaintances. It is not a responsibility I sought out, but it's one I would be a fool to renounce.

My standard response used to begin, "Well, speaking for all Black people everywhere…." However, I've come to appreciate that when someone musters up the courage to ask a sensitive, uncomfortable question of someone they consider a friend, sarcasm should not be the first response. And if they don't comprehend the answer the first time, that's no reason to quit. 

White people in America, from the richest to the wretchedest, have been cloaked in a protective layer of privilege since birth, and many don't even understand it or acknowledge it. When they respond with that wide-eyed vacant stare, like a child or a foreign visitor, you may need to repeat the message several times before comprehension is achieved. 

Earlier I received a text from a high school friend who requested some clarity. Actually, she was posing a question from her neighbor, the mother of two young boys. "She is trying to explain to her four- and seven-year-old sons how a police officer could be arrested," she wrote. "The real issue is, how could a police officer do something so bad?" 

She was referring, of course, to Derek Chauvin –– what a perfectly ironic surname ––  the discharged, disgraced, soon-to-be-divorced white Minneapolis police officer who now owns the most famous left knee in America. 

Chauvin, whose criminal charges have been upgraded to second-degree murder, and three other officers detained Floyd May 25 for allegedly passing a counterfeit $20 bill. In the ensuing detainment, the other officers (whose names aren’t worthy of mention here) held him in place, face down on a city street, while Chauvin pressed his left knee into Floyd’s neck for eight minutes and 46 seconds.

To the surprise of some people, Floyd died.

In the video that now has been viewed worldwide, Chauvin appeared nonchalant, almost casual while cutting off his victim’s breath. He had his hand in his pocket, staring into space and staring down onlookers. This week, the three other cops involved also were charged with crimes in connection with Floyd’s death.

Forget what I said earlier about not being sarcastic with my friends. I texted back, “I’m tempted to say that if your neighbor’s sons are white they have little to worry about, but that might be flippant.” 

And while I believe that to be true, and the sentiment was echoed this week by no less than former President Bill Clinton, I then got specific. “I guess the bottom line is, there are bad people in every walk of life: bad politicians, bad judges and, unfortunately, bad police officers. That doesn’t mean that everybody in a particular line of work is bad.

“Tragically, I’m certain Chauvin was employing his basic training techniques; he didn’t just make up that knee-on-the-neck move on the fly. And I’m just as certain he’s heard suspects gasp, ‘I can’t breathe” who were just faking it to get some relief. This time it went too far, and he was the one who got caught with his knee in a jackpot. It’s tragic and inhumane and gut-wrenchingly painful, but the more troubling question is: how many Black people have been treated the same way by police with no cell phone or video to record it?”

No human being should die like that. George Floyd lost his life lying prostrate in the street. In broad daylight. Like a dog. Over 20 bucks. Twenty bucks. And every African American person in this country knows, at some deep, elemental level, it could just as easily have been them.

It’s what gives Amy Cooper the unmitigated spite to sic the police on a Harvard-educated African American man in New York’s Central Park, guilty of no crime more serious than asking her to leash her dog. It’s what gives a pack of rifle-toting Georgia yahoos the self-proclaimed right to shoot down a Black jogger for stopping to inspect a house under construction. And it’s what gives almost every Black American a constant churn of uneasiness deep in their pit, knowing their personhood could be challenged at any moment.

Memorials to George Floyd Are Going Up Across the Nation.

Look, I fully appreciate that all things considered, I came out pretty well in the life lottery. I grew up in a solid two-parent home, received an excellent education from kindergarten through college, enjoyed a long, satisfying career. I have an amazing, caring wife. I sit on the Board of Trustees for my Alma Mater, Hope College. I have been asked to be considered for enshrinement in the Michigan Journalism Hall of Fame.

But on the wrong night, on the wrong street, in the wrong car, none of that would mean crap. 

Everybody knows that. And that’s the problem. 

Early in my career I spent several years covering the police beat for a newspaper in Grand Rapids, Michigan — I guarantee you the first person of color ever to have that assignment. I was at police headquarters every weeknight, went on ridealongs, got to know most of the officers by name. Yet to this day I remember the time I was driving home from work late at night, “minding my own business,” when The Man pulled me over.

The patrolman stepped out of his cruiser and strolled imperiously toward my driver’s window. I had been taught, as all young Black men sadly still should be, to keep my hands at 10-and-2 on the wheel and make no sudden moves for my license or registration until asked. I rolled down my window, he looked inside and muttered, “Oh. It’s you.” Then he turned around and walked back to his vehicle, visibly disappointed. I have always wondered: what did he have in mind?

Still, I have the utmost respect for law enforcement personnel. They’re the ones running toward the danger when everyone else is running away, they patrol neighborhoods you think at least twice before entering, and they see humanity at its most repulsive nearly every day. They probably should have mandatory sensitivity training at least once a week. 

They are walking, tightly-wound bundles of PTSD. And as the British politician Lord Acton said almost 200 years ago, “all power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” When the po-po stops you in your car, on the street, or crashes through your front door, for those moments they have absolute power. It’s always potentially volatile.

And lest you think the concept of systemic racism targeting Blacks in this country is fictitious or overblown, consider this: Chauvin’s wife Kellie, a former Mrs. Minnesota who can’t race to her divorce attorney fast enough, was born in Laos. She is a person of color. Yet whatever ethnic enlightenment Chauvin had developed through his marriage was forgotten on the streets of Minneapolis. 

We have seen the unjust murders of African Americans trigger large-scale demonstrations in this country before. So many, in fact, and in such rapid succession that it seems the hunting license for open season on Blacks has no expiration date. Yet the George Floyd protests feel more intense, more insistent, a movement spreading worldwide with no signs of diminishing soon. I think I know why. Here’s my theory:

Floyd’s murder came at just the time when the nation was beginning to loosen its “stay at home” quarantine caused by the coronavirus. The operative word here is disproportionate. 

COVID-19 has sickened and killed a disproportionate number of African Americans compared to other populations in this country. Meanwhile, as the economy nosedives, Blacks are losing jobs and income at a disproportionate level. Millions are filing for unemployment benefits. They’re confined in their homes day after day, getting sick or losing loved ones, watching their finances dwindle with no relief in sight. Pressure is building.

There are no public gatherings. No hugs. There are no sporting events for momentary diversion; and Kobe Bryant, the greatest male athlete many people in this generation have seen perform, dies in a sudden, shocking crash.

We have a clueless, heartless president who has given racists and white supremacists permission to emerge from their basements without fear of reprisal, and who now feels unleashing our armed forces on U.S. civilians is a solid plan. You remember that pressure cooker your mama used to have on the stove? The pressure is building, building. 

COVIDQuarantineJoblessnessKobeTrumpBreonnaAhmaud: it all runs together. A steady stream of 2020 indignities. Simmering, churning anger. Pressure. Time on our hands. We can't breathe.

Then America sees a video of a Black man with a white policeman's knee on his neck? The ultimate symbol of oppression? Oh, NO! The lid blew off! 

George Floyd’s death was not more important or egregious than that of other Blacks who have died at the hands of police this year. It was simply the release valve, a matter of timing, the perfect storm. His name is easily chanted; say his name. And the storm shows no signs of diminishing, certainly not before his public funeral service in Houston June 8 and private burial the next day. No one can breathe at the moment.

The only good thing about 2020 so far? It’s half over.

The bad news: it’s only half over.