This Spring has been surreal when it comes to Black people trying to live a normal life and racists trying to stop it by calling police. It cannot be denied that some White people in this country are using the police as a weapon to inflict racist emotional harm on innocent Blacks. The stories keep coming from all over the country about White people calling the police on Black people for no reason. Black people can’t BBQ in peace, wait at a Starbucks, drive the streets of America, shop and now apparently can’t walk their baby in a park in our nation’s capitol without the police being called.
The latest incident occurred with Donald Sherman and his baby Caleb, who he was pushing in a stroller. He posted the following on Facebook:
“Today in Living While Black: Caleb had a bit of a fever today so I stayed home with him. Not wanting to spend the whole day inside, I took him on a walk to the Kingman Island park near our house. 30 minutes into our stroll I got flagged by a security officer in one of those cars marked ‘Special Police’ on the side. I was a bit confused as to whether she was looking for me to stop but she honked twice and pulled over so I got the picture.
She told me that she received a complaint from someone who said there was a “suspicious man” walking on the bike path with a baby. She said that when the complainant was asked to describe my race, she declined. Nevertheless, this person, a white lady on a bike who veered off as Caleb and I were walking in her direction, saw fit to report me to security.
After a pleasant conversation with the officer, she said she just wanted me to know what happened and sent me on my way. If this complaint had been made to a different security officer or an actual cop, things could have gone very differently. This is exactly why we have to talk about white privilege and why black lives matter. Because at any point doing anything anywhere my safety and my child’s safety could been in jeopardy because some well intentioned complaint. But today is a good day, so we are gonna finish our stroll.”
