This is going to be long. If you take the time to read even a portion of it, then I thank you.
6:45 am, September 26th 1996 - The day and time that Ryan, my brother, was killed in the drive thru of a Jack-in-Box in North Dallas. Four police officers, two from Dallas PD and two from Plano PD, Thirty-one shots fired in total. Fifteen bullets hit Ryan, all of them in his back. The only footage of the incident that exists that I know of is the grainy security camera video from the Miami Subs across the parking lot. He was declared dead on the spot.
To be fair, Ryan was running from the officers. They had attempted to stop him for what was initially reported as a traffic violation, though we later learned that one of his "friends" was a police informant.
Ryan's crime? Selling marijuana to rich white kids in Plano. Never mind that the Plano Heroin Epidemic was occurring at the time ( Texas Heroin Massacre - Rolling Stone (Thu May 27 1999) Heroin High - Newsweek - Jan 31 1999), apparently selling weed is deserving of an execution.
With the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement as a response to the highly publicized killings of Black men and women by law enforcement, we often hear the retorts of "All Lives Matter" or "Blue Lives Matter". Here's the problem with that: We KNOW blue lives matter, we don't need to be told. Whenever a police officer is killed or injured on the job, there are parades, memorials, flags at half mast, etcetera, etcetera. We're told how great of a family man he was, how she was a good mother to her kids, how dedicated to the community they are, on and on. And clearly "All lives" do not matter, not when the black and Hispanic ones can be snuffed out with impunity.
However, when the police kill a black man or woman, or they mysteriously turn up dead while in custody, out come the rap sheets, the arrests from 20 years ago, the marijuana they may have smoked a few days prior, that they were a single parent, every infraction or flaw that may have occurred over the life of the individual, no matter how tiny. The point is to vilify and demonize the individual, thus making their death justified.
What they don't talk about are that police forces across the country have engaged in racial discrimination for decades or police officers that are known racists and white supremacists (Police Chief Demands Resignation of KKK Cop ; St. Louis County cop suspended when racist, sexist rant goes viral after patrolling unrest in Ferguson, Mo. ; 'Wild animals': Racist texts sent by San Francisco police officer, documents show; Ferguson Officer Darren Wilson once a member of police force disbanded over racial tension: report ; Cop accused of brutally torturing black suspects costs Chicago $5.5 million )
When they killed Ryan, it didn't matter that his dream as a kid was to be a marine biologist. It didn't matter that he was an all-state wrestling champion in middle school, that his favorite book was The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, that he loved Jimi Hendrix. It didn't matter that he had family and friends that loved him, that he would stick up for people when they were bullied.
I'm not making excuses for Ryan, he had his problems. Nor am I or is anyone else looking for excuses for criminal behavior. We know there are problems in the black community, we know that there are some of us that commit crimes. What we want is fair treatment under the law, a chance to at least make it to trial, and a fair one at that. When Dylan Roof can burn the American flag, wear a jacket sporting the apartheid era South African flag, then walk into a black church and murder nine people, and he gets taken alive, a bullet proof vest, and a trip to Burger King, but Eric Garner gets choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, something is wrong. When James Holmes can walk into a crowded movie theater armed to the teeth, murder twenty-four people, injure 140 more, and still be taken alive, but Tamir Rice gets gunned down by police within two seconds for playing in a park with a toy gun, something is wrong. When Stacy Ann Bunsey can steal an SUV, ram into a police car (with an officer standing right next to it, no less), proceed to get belligerent with the officers, all while high as a kite on drugs, and STILL get taken alive for a trial, but Terence Crutcher is murdered with his hands up on the side of his vehicle, Keith Scott is murdered while exiting his vehicle like he was told, John Crawford is murdered for holding an air soft rifle in a store that sells air soft rifles, Philando Castile is murdered for a gun he legally owned, Amadou Diallo is murdered for reaching for his wallet like he was told to do, Oscar Grant is murdered while handcuffed face down on the pavement, Sandra Bland is arrested for basically being "uppity" and winds up mysteriously dead in her cell, Trayvon Martin is stalked and attacked while walking in his own neighborhood, Jordan Davis is killed for playing loud music, 7 year-old Aiyana Jones is killed by police while sleeping on her couch, Marlene Pinnock is beaten to a pulp on the side of the road, and on and on, all of these things happen and continue to happen and still there people who think that race has nothing to do with it, that these murders, these beatings are somehow our fault, THEN SOMETHING IS WRONG.
But the fact remains that the police shoot first and don't even bother to ask questions later when it comes to African-Americans. And here's the thing: We have been saying this for decades now. Police brutality is not some conspiracy hatched by Al Sharpton in order to race bait, no matter what Fox News would have you believe. Racial discrimination is not a whole cloth fabrication made up by BLM in order to foment "white guilt". These things have been happening for , at a bare minimum, 150 years. The Ku Klux Klan (which essentially WAS the police AND the courts, AND the sheriffs) was at the height of their power in the 1920s(SPLC - Ku Klux Klan: A History of Racism). To put that in perspective, I'm pretty sure some of you out there have grandparents or great-grandparents living today who were alive then. I know I do. Why don't you ask Nana about how lynching of black men and women used to be a spectacle that would bring in visitors from far and wide, complete with postcards and souvenirs (Lynching in the United States).
Whenever another story about killing of an unarmed black person comes to light, I hear some people saying things like "Well, if black people don't want to killed by the police, they should comply" or "Black people should act better if they don't want the police coming down on them so hard" or "Blacks are the real racists, I don't know what they're so upset about." Well let's look at some facts:
The FBI reported in 2006 that Law Enforcements Agencies all across the country were being infiltrated by white supremacists (2006 FBI Report on White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement: You Will Be Assimilated ; The actual FBI report)
Housing Segregation often leaves blacks and Latinos/Hispanics in substandard dwellings and underfunded schools ( How We Got Here: The Historical Roots of Housing Segregation )
Redlining (the act of officially segregating neighborhoods by refusing to rent, lease, or sell to minorities in certain areas), which is technically illegal, yet still occurs, which leads to the aforementioned substandard living conditions (Redlining: Still a thing)
Lead poisoning , again from the aforementioned substandard living conditions (The surprising link between postwar suburban development and today’s inner-city lead poisoning ; Lead: America's Real Criminal Element ;Studies link childhood lead exposure, violent crime )
Disproportionate sentencing and policing in what might as well be two different legal systems (What It’s Like to Be Black in the Criminal Justice System ; How the War on Drugs Damages Black Social Mobility ; New York Civil Liberties Union Stop and Frisk Data ; Racial Gap in Men's Sentencing ; ACLU - Racial Disparities in Sentencing )
When we do try to build up our own neighborhoods and economies or resist oppression, we get destroyed (These Unforgettable Images Expose The Horror Of The Tulsa Race Riots ; A Long-Lost Manuscript Contains a Searing Eyewitness Account of the Tulsa Race Massacre of 1921 ; Remembering the Rosewood Massacre ; How The FBI Destroyed The Black Panthers ; The MOVE bombing)
I could go on, but you get the picture. If you've read this far, I hope you do...
Today will be 20 years since Ryan was taken from us. I write this because I'm tired. Tired of watching the news and social media day after day, seeing another black man or woman killed or beaten at the hands of police, or some Trump supporter who feels emboldened by the fact that the Republican candidate for the presidency is not only supported by white nationalist groups and the former head of the KKK (David Duke), but activley encourages the assaulting of his mostly black protesters. Tired of fearing for the kind of place this country will be going forward. Tired of looking at our two boys and hoping that by the time they are old enough to understand what is going on in the world, that this will have blown over, or at least subsided. I look at our youngest son and see that he looks so much like how Ryan did at that age. I think about how my parents might have felt when they were raising us, hoping that the worst of the racism they experienced would never fall on their sons. I remember when the red-headed kid that lived across the street from us would come in our drive-way and call us niggers, how the bus wouldn't drop me off at my house because "blacks don't live in this nice neighborhood", how my mother and aunts sued the local shopping mall because they were accused of stealing, how the police would stop and question Ryan and I for the crime of walking in our own neighborhood...
Again, I could go on, but I'm tired.
2087
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