Texas Police Officer Shoots and Kills Black Woman in Her Own Home
The tragedy of this story speaks for itself. My posting of it on this blog is really just in effort to ensure it gets the attention it deserves (which, in time of impeachment fever, it won’t).
One line in particular, a quote from Atatiana Jefferson’s aunt, illustrates the poignancy of her niece's death for me:
“[Atatiana] was a college graduate with a good job who would never have been a threat to anyone . . . that is why this is so hard to conceive.”
The notion that Atatiana was a “college graduate” and that this professional and scholastic achievement would some how protect her reminds me of comments friends of color have made to me over the years. In so many words they say, “No matter my job, my six-figure income, how I dress, how I talk . . . when a cop looks down the barrel of his gun at me, he see’s a criminal and a threat.”
It’s also a powerful indictment of respectability politics—the notion that as long as black people dress like whites, talk like whites, and work to attain academic and professional success “like whites,” racism will magically disappear.
It won’t and it doesn’t. That is why a world-renowned scholar like Henry Louis Gates Jr. PhD can be arrested, in broad daylight, on the front porch of his own home, because he forgot his house key, got locked out, and a woman called the police because he “looked suspicious.” Henry Louis Gates arrest controversy. That event was ten years ago and culminated in the “Beer Summit.” Remember?
Anyone reading can be forgiven for their cynicism right now as they wonder "Has anything changed?" Especially since, ten years ago many (white) Americans would never have conceived that within the next decade white supremacists would be marching on Charlottesville VA with torches, crying out, “You will not replace us. Jews will not replace us,” and “White power.” Ten years ago we had just elected our first black president. Racism was over!
This is when my black friends would point out my naiveté.
The notion of income, degrees, the trappings of “respectability,” protecting people of color was also driven home to me in the following Washington Post series: Perspective | A renowned scientist searched for his mystery angel for 30 years. Case closed. This ongoing series has covered how Mahmoud Ghannoun, a Kuwaiti scientist facing an expiring visa in 1990 during the first Gulf War and trying to help his family immigrate to the US as refugees while Kuwait burned, was allowed to stay in the US just a week longer by a Vietnam vet, turned volunteer firefighter, turned travel agent - a black man named Jimmy Dorsey.
Dorsey was moved by Ghannoun’s plight when he walked into a travel agency off Farragut Square in Washington DC. After hearing his story, Dorsey opened his wallet, gave Ghannoun eighty dollars so he could eat that week, then risked his job fudging some paper work so Ghannoun could remain in the US seven days longer. In that time, Ghannoun was able to do two job interviews. Ghannoun was offered both jobs and as a result was able to get his family safely to the US.
Your life has been impacted by Jimmy Dorsey. As a result of his kindness for a stranger (a Muslim seeking asylum who had a strong accent and thick mustache) the knowledge regarding the microbiome in our digestive system has grown. Our health is better for it. As the article points out, “Whenever you read about gut bacteria or probiotics? That’s Ghannoum’s work.”
A further tragedy is evident the divergent paths the men’s lives have taken since. Coincidentally, Ghannoun and Dorsey were the same age. Ghannoun’s career continues to flourish and with the help of his son he was able to track down Doresy’s family after thirty years and thank them.
Unfortunately, the two men will never reunite. Jimmy Doresy died this February, succumbing to lung and liver cancer. Two men. The same age. But Doresy’s health and lifespan, tragically, tracks along with the health statistics of so many other black men and women who face elevated rates of illness, reduced access to quality health care, and shorter life expectancy.
It burns me that these inequities and injustices affect people I love. If they don’t die from health inequalities, my friends of color could just as easily die at the end of the barrel of a weapon brandished by police officers sworn to “protect and serve.” My own best friend, a successful writer/producer in LA, with a college degree, nearly came to the same end as Atatiana Jefferson—in his own neighborhood. A few years ago, while he was walking to the post office, two police officers approached him at gun point, forced him to the ground, and handcuffed him. This was because of reports of a black suspect that “resembled him” in the area.
Right there in that moment, the limitations of respectability politics were laid bare. My friend, his profession, his income, his college degree, the title to his home, his Ted Baker[1] designer clothes, none of those things protected him. He could have ended up like Atatiana Jefferson, Botham Jean, Eric Garner, Alton Sterling, Freddie Gray, Tanisha Anderson, Eric Harris, Amadou Diallo, Tamir Rice, Stephon Clark . . . and so so many others.
The world would have lost a man who is a husband, a father, a friend, and a brilliant writer. A man with a big heart, whom I got to know in college because he volunteered at a shelter for homeless children with HIV/AIDS. A man who has adopted two children offering them a home, life, and love, that would have been unavailable to them otherwise. A man, not unlike Jimmy Dorsey, whose generosity and kindness regularly extends to strangers.
It makes you wonder at what we lost, when we lost Atatiana Jefferson.
Will we ever learn?
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[1] A bitter irony is that, as a white man, I can shop for most of my clothes at secondhand shops and still get more respect from police than my black friend who wears designer brands that I can’t even afford. I’m not exaggerating. I’ve been told as much by a Seattle police officer.