Shootings raise unanswered life-or-death question for black men in America: Neil Macdonald

Good column by Macdonald:

In the racially electrified fog of fear and rage following the events in Dallas Thursday, one question remains conspicuously unanswered: If you are a black man in America, how are you supposed to cope?

President Barack Obama has no real answer, nor do the members of Congress who bowed their heads in memory of the slain Dallas police officers, nor does Dallas’s anguished police chief, a black man himself.

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The only advice black Americans seem to get is to respectfully submit when some cop calls them out on the street, or looms at the door of their car, or shows up at their home, no matter how terrified they may be.

‘Comply, comply, comply’

For heaven’s sake, don’t give the officer any lip, or try to run away, even if you aren’t guilty of anything, and no matter how abusive the cop may become.

Because if you are black, that policeman is far more likely to gun you down, or choke you to death, or Taser you, or beat you into a coma.

“Comply, comply, comply,” Philando Castile’s mother says she used to tell him. “Comply — that’s the key thing in order to try to survive being stopped by the police.”

‘When is it going to stop?’: Philando Castile’s family speaks out1:10

Perhaps Alton Sterling’s parents gave him the same counsel. It’s as common for black parents to have that talk with their kids as it is for white parents to warn about talking to strangers.

But of course supine compliance does not guarantee survival at the hands of police if you are black in America (or, to be honest, if you are Indigenous in some parts of Canada, but that’s a separate discussion).

Philando Castile was evidently complying with the Minnesota policeman who’d pulled him over for a broken tail light this week when that policeman opened fire through the driver’s window. The police force has not said otherwise.

And a day earlier, Alton Sterling was pinned down, hands free of weapons, when two Louisiana cops shot him in the back and chest.
After the Castile killing, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton stated the obvious: “Would this have happened if those passengers, the driver and the passengers, were white? I don’t think it would have …”

There is simply no question that your race can determine whether you live or die at the hands of police in America. If you are black, you are several times more likely to be killed.

Benefit of the tiniest doubt

And, chances are, your killer will walk away, unpunished, and likely consoled by his fellow officers for having had to go through such trauma.

Source: Shootings raise unanswered life-or-death question for black men in America: Neil Macdonald – Politics – CBC News