Wondering on Wednesday (v208)

Ready... Set... Wonder!

I don't even know where to start tonight's wondering. Or maybe, it's that I don't know where to stop wondering, so that I can put thoughts on paper. I'll give it a try.

Earlier today, I did some quiet, seething, emotionally draining Ranting and Raving about my particular white privilege, and how that compares to the inhumanity and lack of privilege experienced by blacks and other people of color in America. 

I honestly wonder if anyone will read that, and see themselves or their friends or their children and the sketchy or borderline things they got away with, and wonder why others don't get away with the same things? 

And I wonder whether people will think twice about the victim-blaming (because people who die worse than dogs under the knee or in a chokehold or by the bullet in the back or the front from a police officer's gun are victims, not criminals guilty of capital crimes) and maybe try and picture themselves in that person's shoes, and try and tell themselves it's OK? 

And I wonder what it must be like, for example, to be these guys, entrepreneurs working out in the gym in their key-access-only building, only to be challenged whether they belong there by a white guy?  Or to be a black man who likes to jog?  Here's what James Ravenell II, the founder of Black Runners Connection, had to say about his preferred "meditation" in this day and in this time. 

I know, unfortunately, that my blackness represents a threat to many people... we don't have the benefit of people thinking that we're just doing a normal thing... I can't really remember a time where I was not thinking about myself as a potential threat in the minds of other people.... We are all exhausted. We just want to live. We're not thinking about doing anything to anyone. Our blackness, it's not a threat to anyone but here we are, again and again and again. 

Think about that... Wonder about having that be your life, and tell me you'd be OK with that. Wait - no, don't tell me you'd be OK with that, tell me how that makes you feel about yourself, and how you feel about people who make you feel like that - because I have no intuitive understanding of what that feels like. I've never had to have any understanding, intuitive or otherwise, of what that feels like.

And challenge yourself about how you might be contributing to that, by your actions or your inaction, and wonder how you might do things differently...

I can't help wondering about this incident, either.  Steven Aucoin, a (now former) police officer in Kaplan, LA posted comments on a Facebook live feed lamenting the fact that the coronavirus didn't kill enough black people. According to the article linked above,

Aucoin’s comments, which were shown in a screenshot of the live stream, were in response to another user who described the coronavirus as the “virus that was created to kill all the BLACKS is death.” The officer clearly responded with two statements, “Well it didn’t work.” And directly under that comment he then said, “How unfortunate.”

He was fired, Aucoin was, for making comments that were "not suitable for a police officer to put up on Facebook," said Chief Joshua Hardy. And, "the department is moving forward and making sure this will never happen again" and the social media policy has been updated and officers have been notified about that.

But here's something else Chief Hardy said.

We're held to a higher standard than normal civilians, so you got to watch what you do, you got to watch what you say. You can't just go and post anything you want on social media.

What?  Huh?

What about "Officer Aucoin's comments are unacceptable for someone who is paid to protect and serve the residents of Kaplan, and we cannot and will not have someone on our police force who espouses those views." Where's that statement? Nowhere to be found, it seems - just don't post the online. What on earth is the 'higher standard" they're being held to, I wonder?

More than anything, I wonder if this will ever stop, or if we'll just continue to be this America?