Alternate Title: Assign Accountability to the Wrong Doers not the Wronged

(An essay in development)

When my daughter was in the fifth grade her entire class was assigned to read “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry”. The novel, written by African-American author Mildred D. Taylor, describes a resilient, resourceful, and proud, hard-working and land-owning African-American family thriving through the 1930’s despite being economically demeaned, socially harassed, and physically terrorized by whites living in the same rural town. The novel is written from the point of view of the 9-year old African-American protagonist, Cassie Logan, a strong-willed girl raised with confidence and nurtured in a home with loving parents, her 2 brothers, a grandmother, and other grounded Black adults. Although it was my child’s reading assignment, I was excited to read the book myself. I wanted to see how the issues of historical racism and Black ingenuity would be addressed and discussed by a white male teacher in my daughter’s predominantly white NYC private school.

I read the book at my own pace while my daughter read according to the chapters assigned in class. Sometimes I’d check in with her and ask with enthusiasm, “What did you think of how Cassie’s mom refurbished the outdated books for her students?” Or “What did you think of Cassie standing up to the white girl who insulted her?”. My daughter would merely roll her eyes, not really wanting to engage in any deep conversation with me because, I’m her mom, and she had to finish her chapter report for homework. But one day, during the weeks we took to finish the book, I asked her a question and her answer changed my perception on who and what we hold accountable for racist behavior.

I asked my daughter, “Why do you think the whites treat the Logan family the way they do?”

My daughter responded much in the same way you, as a reader of this article, will respond. My daughter responded with such an automatic answer that I was jarred. Not jarred because of her answer – that wasn’t a surprise – but jarred by the fact that she was only 11 years old and she had already absorbed the belief she answered me with. I was stunned that this progressive school wasn’t teaching something different. The teacher was also feeding the lie to his students.

In response to my question, my daughter answered, “Because they are Black.”

I took a deep breath inward to calm myself down – woooo ssssah – and paused before I asked, “Is that what your teacher said?”

She proceeded to tell me that is what most of the discussions were about in class. That the whites treated the Logans with hostility, anger, and menace because the Logans were Black.

When I asked my daughter why a white child in the story, who has African-American friends, was beaten up by his white peers, she answered, “Because his friends are black.”

I proceeded to share with my daughter that both the answers were not true. The whites didn’t treat the Logans or other whites the way they did because the Logans were Black or because of their association with Black people. My strong-minded daughter – with whom I share the same birth month – argued that is what she and her classmates talked about in class. I reinforced that the whites’ behavior toward the Blacks wasn’t because of their skin color. She listened and argued a little less. Then I explained the reasons why the whites were mean to the Logans. She listened and stopped arguing.

My daughter is biracial and self-identifies as Brown along with several of her biracial peers in her generation who have one parent of African descent. I am the first generation adult of parents who immigrated from West Africa. I proudly self-identify as a Black African. Having no ties to African-American heritage, but having lived half my life in the United States, I have been embraced by the the African-American community and align and empathize with the African-American experience.

I adamantly refuse to have my child – one of eight Black or Brown youth in her entire grade of 68 students who are white – believe that callous and belligerent behavior by others is caused by her God-blessed Brownness or by my beautiful Blackness. I had a grave concern that my daughter had internalized a belief – a lie – that is perpetuated among Blacks and whites from generation to generation.

It was time to schedule a meeting with her teacher.

It was time to have a conversation with him – as I just had with my daughter – about white perpetrators of race-based hostility being 100% responsible for their threats, aggression, and violence and being 100% accountable for their choices to enact or not enact their threats, aggression, and violence. Race-based hostility is based on a perception created in the mind of whites and it’s also a choice. It is a self-willed choice that is not caused by, not enforced by, nor is it motivated by another person’s skin color. Race-based hostility is acted outwardly because the perpetrator chooses to. PERIOD.

The inspiration for this essay is based on the spate of recorded incidences of whites calling the police on Black people or on people of color during the weeks between April and May 2018 as well as those incidents that have been recorded within the past 3-5 years, listed as follows :

Bird-watching in a park Waiting for a business colleague at Starbucks Graduate student sleeping in a dorm common area Graduate student asking for directions on campus Checking out of an AirBnB Parking a car in parking space Playing too slow on a golf course Moving into an apartment building A gym membership holder using the gym Teens shopping for graduation Taking a college tour Barbecuing with charcoal in a public park Real estate investor taking pictures of property he in inspecting



I hope that at first glance this list appears as ridiculous to read as it was to write. But whites called the police for each of these daily occurrences.

But something else troubled me. The conversations that arose among my peers always included the phrase, “…because they were Black…”. I had to challenge this rhetoric that did not feel like a logical reason for why whites were behaving this way. Similar to how I felt about the whites’ behavior in my daughter’s school book. A lie is being perpetrated about why whites call the police on Blacks and I’m determined to expose the lie and reveal the truth.

Let’s first address perception. Perception is subjective. It is an idea or thought created in one’s own mind. It could be an idea or thought based on a direct personal experience, based on an indirect experience others have had, or based on an experience that you may have heard about. Regardless of how the perception was introduced in your mind, you have now internalized it; made it a part of your cadre of experiences. The key point is that perceptions are fabricated not real. Like a fear of dogs. Why are some of us afraid of dogs and some of us aren’t? Whether you grew up with a pet dog, was bitten by a dog, or historically, dogs were used as a means of search and rescue or, during the times of slavery, as a means for search and capture, each of us has a relationship – or not – with dogs that guides our actions around them and towards them. We choose to reach out and pet a dog or we choose to cross the street when we see one walking towards us.

In 2017, I walked into my company cafeteria to help myself to tea. That day – like on any work day – I was wearing dark dress pants and a tailored button down shirt, much like many of the men in the banking and finance company where I work. I’m known on the floor by many staff members whether we work in the same line of business or not, but as I entered the cafeteria, there was a woman there who I had never seen before.

When we made eye contact for the very first time, she asked, “Can you get me coffee cups? I’m having a meeting and we don’t even have cups for coffee and water.” When I let her complete her implication that I somehow was there, in the cafeteria at that very moment, for the sole purpose of providing a service to her, I asked her, “What do you think that I do here that’s making you ask me this question?”

Her reaction? Her eyes and mouth opened wide with embarrassment and what followed was a string of “sorries” in too many colorful inflections to count.

The point of my response was for her to think about what thoughts she had in her own mind (perception) that resulted in her request (her choice to act upon the perception) that had no relevance to my coming into the cafeteria. The goal was to put responsibility for her perception and her request back onto her. I hope she learned something about herself in that moment. Her perception and how she chose to act on it was solely her responsibility.

Which now brings us to the subject of choice. The dictionary reads that choice is, “an act of selecting or making a decision when faced with two or more possibilities”. In other words there are several ways in which you can act or respond when you’ve created a perception of another person or of a situation. There is a willful option to something or to do nothing, to understand or to misconstrue, to make peace with or to battle. You get the point.

If we apply the conscious will of choice in all the cases of whites who have called the police on Blacks in the past recent months, the whites chose the most threatening and divisive option.

Twelve years ago, when I was pulled over by a white NJ police officer while driving within speed limit on a traffic-jammed highway. bumper-to-bumper along with hundreds of other Saturday morning drivers trying to get the malls early, I was concerned for my safety. Before I reached for the glove compartment I asked the officer, “Is it okay if I go into my glove compartment to get my license and my registration?” The reality is no one asks to reach for their documents but years of recorded video had already taught me that this innocuous movement could result in my death. I waited for the officer to say a clear and affirmative yes before I made any movement. And just before I turned to reach for the glove compartment, the officer put his hand on his gun. I turned to the back seat of the car where I looked at my 2 year-old daughter who was buckled in her car seat and prayed, “Please God don’t let me be killed in front of her.”

By this point in the story, have you as a reader, even wondered why I was pulled over in the first place? Or have you – we as a society – been so conditioned as a matter of course to accept that I was pulled over because 1) I’m Black, 2) I must have committed some type of traffic violation or 3) that unwarranted traffic stops of Blacks is so routine that it should be accepted as part of my life.

The officer’s reason for pulling me over? After the officer ran a check on my drivers license, he handed it back to me and said, “You were driving too close to the person in front of you.” He “issued” an observation not a ticket.

Of all the drivers driving within speed limit on a traffic-jammed highway bumper-to-bumper along with hundreds of other Saturday morning drivers trying to get the malls early, the police officer chose to pull me over, he chose to put his hand on his gun, he chose to ask me “Do you know why you’re being pulled over?” when he first approached my window, he chose not to tell me why I was being pulled over when he first approached me, and finally he chose to fabricate a reason for pulling me over that had no merit. Which brings me to the topic of intention. What was the intention behind the officer’s choices?

In video recorded cases of whites who have called the police on Blacks, there is a willful intention to punish. The video recordings of white police officers’ excessive force and impulsive shootings of Blacks over the past 20 years – and we’re not counting the undocumented cases of current and historical brutality and unwarranted harassment of Blacks by white citizens (massacres of Black towns, lynchings, truck draggings, vigilantism) and by white law enforcement – has resulted in Blacks and whites people anticipating harassment and death in the presence of law enforcement. There is never a sense that there is an impartial assessment of the situation nor a sense that the situation will be judged fairly or on par with a white person in a similar situation. From the point of view of being Black , there is never a sense of safety or justice.

With the intention to punishment, the escalation of white hostility towards Blacks proceeds as follows:

threat to call the police

call the police

emphasize their self perceived victimization

project their perceived victimization onto police

police internalize the “danger” projected on to them by the caller

police act on the projected danger and act defensively toward the Black who were just living their lives

Therefore whites who call the police on Blacks for ordinary, everyday behavior, are very aware of the punitive power of law enforcement on Blacks. There is a clear expectation that the white caller’s intention is to be punitive, threatening and hostile rather than an intention of mediation, resolution and restoration.

Acknowledging that these three factors – perception, choice, and intention – influence whites’ behavior in calling the police, puts the responsibility on the white person who is enacting the behavior and takes the responsibility off the color of a person’s skin as the root cause for the bad behavior.

If we want to take the rhetoric of “this is happening to me because I’m Black” literally, the fact is, the color of my skin does not cause another person to threaten me, abuse me, or harass me. My skin is not printed with verbiage that reads, “Call the police!”, similar to how a traffic STOP sign signals drivers to press on the brake when they come to an intersection. In driving school, we learn to read traffic signs so that we can follow rules that make us and our fellow commuters safe. White supremacist, privileged, and shameful history has taught whites to “read” Black and Brown skin to signal “Call the police” then they make the choice to act on the signal. Whites need to understand this intrinsic response better with the goal of healing from this irrational reactive state of existence.

So what does our discourse sound like if we change it to truly address why a white person exhibited poor behavior and judgement toward a person of color? It no longer sounds like, “She called the police on her fellow graduate student because she was Black.” The discourse is now, “The white student fabricated her own authority to tell her peer what she could and couldn’t do, and fabricated her own authority of who belonged where and when. The white student then chose to call the police with the intention of punishing her peer who didn’t corroborate with the white student’s self-made authority.” The responsibility for the fall out of wasting the police and her fellow student’s time is 100% on the white student. The white student created her own authority and chose to act on that authority with the intention to punish. The subsequent consequences is emotional distress experienced by the Black student and unnecessary paperwork, lost resources, and time by the police.

Now that responsibility has been established, let’s discuss accountability to ensure this irresponsible behavior is stopped with legal measures. In publicly profiled incidents of whites who call the police on Blacks, it is only the Black victims who receive imprudent publicity which is disguised as being sympathetic to their plight. The fact is, while all the attention is being paid to the Black victims, the white caller has the benefit of remaining anonymous.

A system of accountability should include the following:

Release wrongful callers’ names to the public.

The wrongful caller should also accept or be required to accept calls for interviews by news agencies that clamor to get their side of the story. To date, I believe only one of the wrongful callers (Golf course manager) agreed to a media interview.

Create a record of their wrongful calls in order to document if this is habitual practice, such as the case with the white Yale student.

For repeat wrongful callers, mandate the individual into counseling, have them pay fines to the city policy department, and have them issue apologies to the affected parties in court or in another public venue that the affected party was shamed in.

Create a 3-strikes rule where the wrongful caller’s actions are escalated to another level of legal accountability and responsibility.

‎Divest from companies that hire employees who use irrational thought to make irrational decisions that harm others.