Published in Apr 2018

There’s no cost to white people who call 911 about black people. There should be.

Here are the things that black people can’t do in the United States in 2018 without a white bystander calling the police on them: sit in a Starbucks coffee shop; eat at a Waffle House; work out at a gym; move into a new apartment at night; golf with friends; fly on a plane; barbecue at a parkshop for a prom outfit; buy a money order to pay the rent; check out of an Airbnb; or take a nap while studying at their Ivy League college campus.

When white callers dial 911 and report that black people are engaged in what they report as untoward behavior, the worst-case scenario is that the police will show up with guns blazing. Even in the best-case scenario, black folks will probably have to deal with the trauma of having been placed in mortal fear.

But most of the time, there is no consequence for the people who weaponize their fear and use the police as an extension of their whiteness. There should be. If it wasn’t so easy to blithely call the authorities and report the mere presence of a black person, there would be fewer incidents of dangerous police overreaction — and black people wouldn’t have to bear quite so much of the burden of American racism on their own.

Over the past few years, the country has started to realize how police too often respond to black people who haven’t committed a crime: as if they were a deadly threat. But focusing only on police conduct lets everyone else involved in these incidents off the hook.

Read the original article on washingtonpost.


By Stacey Patton and Anthony Paul Farley