This is an editorial I wrote recently (never published, it was too long) about an incident that happened here in Brattleboro VT, a small liberal, mostly white town...
I got a call from my house mate yesterday telling me that she and a friend of hers got stopped by the Brattleboro Police while walking home at 5:30 in the evening. They were asked for their names, and then to show the officer identification. Apparently, two black women had run away from the Retreat, and the police officer was just checking to make sure that my house mate, and her friend, also two black women, were not the culprits. Now in a town as white as Brattleboro, some may easily understand how two black women walking down the street was a rare enough occasion that it warranted the policeman's stopping them in light of the two women who had fled the Retreat, a facility for those struggling with mental and emotional illness. However, this wasn't about two women escaping from the Retreat...
First, let me point out that not all black women look alike. I would be curious to see just what sort of description the police had been given. Were they tall? Short? Did they wear their hair long? Was it braided, or in dreads, or combed out? Were the women fair skinned or dark skinned? Were they thin or thick? Were their any pictures of these women? Or were the Brattleboro police so confident of the limited number of African American women walking down the streets of town that they thought a simple description of gender and race would suffice?
If two white women were to escape the Retreat, would the police be demanding picture IDs from every pair of white women shopping in Sam's, or enjoying a meal at Amy's Bakery? Would the police fail to trust the verbal self-identification that two white women might give? The truth is they never would have stopped white women hanging out together in Brattleboro. They would have had more thorough descriptions, they would have been more careful in who they approached. This was a case of racial profiling. My guess is that even without the women having fled the Retreat, my friends may have been stopped just for the color of their skin.
The fact that the police department feels that the escape of two women from the Retreat gives them the right to terrorize all the black women they find walking around Brattleboro is an outrage. “Terrorize” you ask? How could this be called terror? If you take even a passing glance at the history between the police and the black community in this country it is easy to understand how just the sight of a policeman will send many black youths in the opposite direction. The shootings of Sean Bell, and many others are proof that the lives of African Americans in this country are frequently not saved, but endangered in the hands of police. As the officer was getting back into his car he told my friends that he didn't want to cause any trouble, he just wanted to ensure the safety of the community. Clearly, he is only concerned about the safety of those with white skin, like my own, and is willing to terrorize other races in an effort to protect his.
We may be appalled by the actions of the police, however our own silence is equally damaging to the community. Brattleboro prides itself on liberal values, fairness, and being open to all of humanity. We may even feel so good about ourselves that we assume we are no longer racist. However, the danger with communities that feel they are good enough in this way is that they cease to work on these crucial issues. There is no such thing as being free of racism or classism. The world we live in today is saturated with hidden messages, images, and omissions that bombard our psyches constantly. It is our never ending responsibility to work on ridding ourselves and our communities of these forms of prejudice and hate.
