An Actor On The Way To A Family Funeral Was Surprised By The Words The Policeman Screamed At Him
http://www.upworthy.com/an-actor-on-the-way-to-a-family-funeral-was-surprised-by-the-words-the-policeman-screamed-at-him?c=upw1Wendell Pierce: And the fact is... The fact is while we have this very comfortable, colloquial debate about it, when the lights go out and I go out in the street and I get behind the wheel of my car, the most dangerous moment I ever have in my life is when a police officer pulls me over. Every black man in America knows that when that happens, there's actually a possibility his life may come to an end and that shouldn't happen. It actually happened to me in Louisiana, dressed as I am, going to my uncle's funeral, two toddlers in the back. I had just picked up my cousin from Chicago. A 100 degrees on the road in Louisiana, I'm pulled over and I sat there waiting for the cop to come. I have a habit of always taking my wallet out and putting it on the dash to make sure he doesn't think this is going for a gun. I sat there and sat there and sat there and I realized he hadn't come. Air conditioner on, 100 degrees and I look in the mirror and I see... That's all I heard.
As I turned down the window you hear, "Mother fucker get out that car, I'm gonna blow your fucking head off." Now he didn't have the training to say, "I'm going to come up to the car." I have to tell these toddlers, "Be cool. Everything's fine. Uncle Wendell's going to get out of the car. Everyone don't move." I put my hands up, get out the car, opened the door from outside. But I told the officer, "Why didn't you use your P. A.? Simple, get in your car..." "Well why didn't you get out of your car?" I said "I had the window's up, it's 100 degrees, and I had the air conditioner on. I can't hear you." That's poor training, that he didn't know that I wasn't going to be able to hear him in the car. He's going to fire. So it's that sort of incident that happens too often all the time, that white America has to understand that Wendell Allen in New Orleans, Mr. Garner in Staten Island, Michael Brown in Ohio, is a constant all over this country. And if we're going to sit here and pretend that we are post-racial, you have to realize that I can't afford for your belief or denial that my life isn't in danger
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So frustrating. "Post-racial." I will admit, though, that when Barack Obama was elected the first time, I allowed myself to entertain the thought that maybe, Just MAYBE, America had grown up a little, and gotten over it, and moved forward. I allowed myself to celebrate what appeared to be a first-class outward sign that we'd all finally, at long last, gotten beyond the race issue. MAN was that wrong! MAN was I wrong!!! No impersonal "mistakes were made" crap outta me. I made that mistake. Got it shocked out of me within the first weeks when I saw the kind of shit that this President was forced to deal with and deep-down, the opposition (at least it seemed to me) was deeply and systemically rooted in old, shitty, evil, awful racism. Racism that's not just some leftover. Racism that is alive and well and inflamed and cancerous and seems to be spreading like the fucking Ebola virus.
It's disgusting and depressing as hell. I wanted to believe that we had FINALLY gotten beyond our systemic racism. We'd just proved it, hadn't we? A SOLID and unrefutable majority voted this man into the Presidency. Knew he was black and still voted for him. Saw and knew he was black and it didn't matter.
And we haven't.
and not wanting to understand.
and I always smile and tell the cop (I call him "Officer, Sir"
that my Daddy was also a cop, which is true. The highway patrol is generally better trained and more polite than cops is small rural towns. The ones in small towns wear flak jackets and sometimes seem very annoyed and arrogant.
When they point their gun at you too?
But for a lot of people, smiling and talking up the cop don't work. Some (I won't generalize -- yet -- and say "all" cops nowadays work from the presumption that everyone (especially minorities) are out to get them. Therefore, no presumption of innocence.
If you haven't already, watch the Maher clip, and then ask yourself honestly if a smile and a hail-fellow-well-met attitude would have worked with this actor and his nephews.
Well, that's... unexpected.
...that racism is a relentless, every day scourge for blacks in America.
There is nothing that triggers debilitating fear in me more quickly than the sight of cop lights in my rear view mirror; so disturbing in fact, that I have no doubt that one day it might cause a heart attack in me.
Here's the thing... I'm white. I have blonde hair, blue eyes AND I'm female. So, if cops scare me this bad, I can only try to imagine the fear my black brothers and sisters must feel.
This video is a good reminder that something so frightening to me, would be more than 1000 times worse if I were black.
TYY 
Response to TeeYiYi (Reply #31)
They say it with the idea that it's silly to keep things like Affirmative Action and Voting Rights on the books.
Now with Obama in the White House we see racism is alive and well.
It's just a smaller portion of the population.
A minority.
And because they see their ideas are unpopular they are in a panic. The Right has come to associate racism as a part of Southern culture and heritage and they feel it's something they need to preserve along with tea parties in dresses composed of concentric rings to make women look like their mode of transport is the same as a Dalek.
I loved him in "The Wire" and again in "Treme." I haven't seen his more recent work, but if it is to the same high standard, we are all blessed to have him.
That such a treasure would ever have to be so afraid in the land of his birth says volumes about how far America still has to go. Yes, STILL. In the 21st century, no less ...!
