Answering a Young Reader’s Question

12/22/2020

Dear [M],

You don’t know me but I know your mom.  I also met your big brother [C] a long time ago when he was about 5 and your mom was working in East Africa.  Your mom told me, by way of Facebook, that you asked a very important question after the election.  It was a very smart and very serious question about whether the police would stop killing Black people after Trump was kicked out of the President’s Office.   To me that was such a good question that I wanted to honor it with a gift of these calendars.  Let me explain the calendars and also answer your question as much as I can.

Every year for a long time now, no matter who is in the White House, the police in our whole country shoot about 1,000 people.  Each year, 1,000 people.  About 250 out of that 1,000 are Black people.  But only about 120 to 140 out of each 1,000 people in America are Black, so, if you do the math this means that the police shoot Black people about twice as much as white people. Sometimes the people shot have really committed a crime or might even be shooting at the police, but most of the time they are not.  This calendar tries to tell the stories of how or why the police kill people.  The stories are sad.  Every person on these calendars is a Black person killed by police. (I gave you a calendar for next year 2021, and one from this year 2020.)  Some people have stories and pictures each month, but there are so many that some people just have their names, dates, cities and a code to say in a tiny space something about what happened to them.  Your mom or your dad can help you with understanding the codes.  

Now, we don’t really know if changing presidents will stop this.  Because the problem is in the police departments and in the police officers’ training and in some police officers’ heads.  But there are things that Presidents can do to help change this awful pattern.  For example, when Barack Obama was president he stopped having the Army sell or give away its old war equipment to the police departments.  Because sometimes it was like the police were making war on the citizens with tanks and rockets and stuff!  A President also has some control over something called the Justice Department.  And the Justice Department has the power to tell police forces in a city where too too many people are being killed: “Hey, cut it out.  We are watching you.  You are doing wrong.  You need to train these police to stop hurting the Black and Brown people and to help the people who are mentally ill.”  And that supervision of the police is an important help to stopping police violence.  I’m pretty sure Joe Biden will appoint somebody good to the Justice Department and some police departments will get that supervision.  But the biggest way a President can help is by reminding ALL the people, not just police, that racism is wrong.  Unfortunately, President Trump said many times and in many ways that racism was ok with him.  So at least we won’t have that.  Biden will do a better job, I hope.  So far he has shown us that he will appoint many Black and Brown people to important positions with power. So I predict that things will get better.   

But more than Presidents or police departments, I think the biggest change is beginning in the people themselves.  I feel hope because when police do bad things, more and more people are getting out in the street marching and on their phones with social media and saying “BLACK LIVES MATTER, stop killing people.  Get people the help they need.  Stop giving all the money to the people who are already really rich.” Your mom and dad are some of those good people and I see that you are growing up to be the same kind of person.  I can tell from your important question. So thanks for asking it.  

Kwa heri, [M].  Uwe na kila heri ya mwaka mpya   (See? Like mom, I speak Swahili too!)

Praise

12/27/2017

“When I have writers block (now, but I'm coming out of it), I start cleaning, which is a good thing, since my office is one paper mess. Plowing through a pile, I found a Black Lives Matter 2017 calendar, distributed by some "woke" white folks out of Washington state and graciously shared with me when I was speaking at an event. They did prodigious research to chronicle Black history and some of the lives lost to police violence, or related action. The calendar opens up with Gynna McMillen, a 16 year old child who died on January 11, 2016 while held in a juvenile detention center in Kentucky. While the law requires children to be checked every 15 minutes, "Video evidence shows that a staffer watched her seizing and grasping for air, and saw her die but walked away." It took more than 10 hours to confirm her death -- 64 bed checks were missed. We are saddened, but not surprised. And this calendar is chock full of cases like this. GRATEFUL to Juli McGruder and John Leach who describe themselves as "older white adults who have been allies in the civil rights struggle since our teens”. John is a graduate of Talladega College, the oldest HBCU in Alabama. HBCUs rock! Woke white folks rock. If you want to know more about the calendar, write jmcgruder@pugetsound.edu.”

—  Julianne Malveaux, Economic Policy Institute, Past President Bennett College