42

 April 15 is the anniversary of the day Jackie Roosevelt Robinson broke into the big leagues 74 years ago today. All ballplayers, coaches and umpires will honor Jackie Robinson by wearing 42. It is a well deserved honor. 

75 years ago, in 1946 a black man could not play in the major leagues. In 1947 one black man was allowed in. This two years after American black men fought for the United States (in a segregated army) and died for a country that would not let them use the same bathrooms, eat in the same restaurants, sleep in the same hotels, and allow their children into the same schools as white people. 

The question we are pondering is how much things have changed? Bathrooms, restaurants, schools (mostly) all go without saying as being integrated. But our streets are not as this horrible video shows: 

Angry Staff https://twitter.com/i/status/1382119550985048068

And then there is George Floyd and Daunte Wright. First, when did Minnesota become North Mississippi? Who knew the frozen tundra hid such vehement racism? And second- we admit to thinking after George Floyd (and the many police killings before Floyd-remember the epidemic of killings during the last year of the Obama administration?) "well this will change things." 

But things are not changing. An African American man or woman can go into any restaurant, but they cannot walk down or drive down every street. Two things appear to be at play here. First, systemic and perhaps unconscious racism. A strange man walks in a neighborhood where he is unknown and nobody pays much attention, unless he is black.  Then problems start ala Travon Martin, et.al. 

Second and more insidious are the actions of the police, They are reaching for their guns during misdemeanor traffic stops and minor felony arrests more and more when the suspect is black. Let's assume Daunte Wright resisted arrest- that he ignored the order of the police and wanted to get back into his car and drive away. 

Police appear to have this attitude that they are never going to allow that to happen even if that means killing the person, which they are doing with alarming alacrity. What can be done so that police do not treat these encounters as personal? 

And yet the other point of view is that the person has committed a crime, has a warrant, may well be dangerous and the police are not doing their job by letting them go and arresting them at another time. 

There has got to be a way to resolve this because it is ripping our country apart. We have experienced it here in Miami in the Officer Lozano case in which a city of Miami police officer shot and killed Clement Lloyd who was on a motorcycle in 1989. Ovalle wrote about it here in 2014 when Pandemic was just a word under "P" in the dictionary. 

By now we realize this is not going away. Police are killing people during minor stops and encounters and although they are being prosecuted with increasing frequency still the killings continue. Eric Garner was put in a choke hold by police in NYC in 2014 and killed despite the fact he said "I can't breathe eleven times". His crime was selling single cigarettes.  Michael Brown (18) was killed in Ferguson Mississippi in August 2014  for suspicion of stealing a box of cigars. Tamir Rice (12) was shot and killed in November 2014 in Cleveland, Ohio when police saw him with a toy gun. Walter Scott was shot in the back five times by a white police officer for driving a car with a broken taillight in Charleston South Carolina in April 2015. Philando Castile was killed by police while driving his girlfriend in  St. Paul, Minnesota in July 2016. Stephon Clark was shot seven times by police officers in  March 2018 while he was carrying a cell phone in his grandmother's back yard in California. And of course there is Breonna Taylor who was shot eight times and killed by police while she was in her apartment in March 2020 in Louisville, Kentucky. 

It just goes on and on and on. 

If we are keeping count, who will be this tragic number 42?