Imagine

I'm just imagining a scene. I'm sitting in my car in front of my house reading a book and waiting for my daughter to get home. I may or may not have a gun in my car. It would make no difference. The police would wave as they drove by. I'm white and in a middle class neighborhood. They are here for crime prevention, not crime fighting. But if I let my imagination go a little further, I can see some other scenarios. Let's say I suffered lingering effects from a traumatic brain injury. I had just taken my medicine that makes me a little despondent. Some police drive by on their way to serve a warrant on someone that lives up the street. They think that I seem strange. They think that I might have a gun. They call for back-up. As back-up arrives, my wife walks out of the door and yells to the police that I have a TBI and had just taken my medication. I can clearly see in my mind just how one officer would fall back and respectfully approach my wife. He would ask for more information. As he saw the fear in her eyes he would yell to the other officers to hold tight. She would explain my despondency. They would ask her to talk to me. She would be allowed to yell to me while the police backed up just a bit. I would gain a moment to clear my head and realize the intensity of the situation. If I had a gun I would drop it. If I did not, I would slowly raise my hands. The officers would arrest me only if I had actually held the gun in a threatening way. If it had merely been in my lap, that would have been seen as legal and they would have left me alone. They might tell my wife that I should be more careful. If I did not have a gun, they would have apologized. Under no circumstance within my near infinite imagination can I arrive at a scenario in which the officers ignore my wife and I end up dead. This, my friends, is white privilege. And it stinks.



Reality can be found here.