Another #hashtag. That’s what Humans have been reduced to?  The stories go something like this: A black man in New York City is standing on a street corner selling loose cigarettes (illegal, yes, but hardly criminal). He is approached by 3 white police officers and, after some arguing back and forth, is placed in a choke-hold (which, for the record, is strictly against N.Y.P.D. policy) and is choked to death on a public street all the while telling the officers that “I can’t breathe.” #EricGarner.

Philando Castile was pulled over by a Minnesota police officer for having a broken tail light and who, after advising the officer that he had a legal, licensed, concealed weapon, was shot to death in front of his girlfriend and 4 year old daughter for reaching for his wallet after he was instructed to do so. #PhilandoCastile.

We could go on and on listing the names and hashtags of people who have been killed for no other reason than “living while black”, but who has that kind of time? The point is that the last few years have seen a dramatic influx of police involved shootings, the overwhelming majority of which have been instances of white cops killing black people. With this, has come the #BlackLivesMatter movement which, in true bigoted fashion, was immediately followed by the #AllLivesMatter movement and, my personal favorite, the newly concocted, #BlueLivesMatter movement. Here’s the thing…all lives DO matter and no one is saying otherwise. But, the problem is that white lives and blue lives aren’t being disproportionately exterminated by the very people who are supposed to protect those lives; black lives are.

In his now famous and controversial acceptance speech at the 2016 BET awards, actor Jesse Williams articulately and unapologetically told the world that “The police somehow manage to deescalate, disarm and not kill white people every day.” And while the advent of social media and camera phones has made us more aware of the problem, we must ask ourselves if this problem is really new at all. In a recent interview, Will Smith was quoted as saying, “Racism isn’t getting worse, it’s being filmed.” How many Eric Garners and Philando Castiles have there been that we just don’t know about because it wasn’t recorded and posted for the world to see?

The problem here isn’t the mere presence of the police; we all know that the police are a necessary part of a civilized society. And, we also know, that all police aren’t bad. The problem is the silence and unwavering loyalty that so-called “good cops” have towards their “bad cop” peers. It’s the impenetrable “blue wall” that the police refuse to tear down, even at the risk of defending those who have abused their authority in the worst possible ways. As the saying goes, “One bad apple spoils the bunch.”

So what do you do with that one bad apple? You eliminate it…you remove it so that it doesn’t ruin the rest. The “blue wall,” however, dictates that police officers ignore those apples and either pretend that they aren’t there at all or find a way to justify their rottenness. Even black cops, who one would think would be the most outraged, stand next to their white “brothers in blue” in defense of their profession. Do they not realize that they are black men before they are cops? Apparently not. For some reason, they believe that speaking out against one of their own will somehow be an admission of what we, as people of color, already know to be true. The truth is that if upstanding officers spoke out and condemned those few not only bad, but downright rotten apples, they would probably gain a new level of respect from the civilians. It’s their silence about and repeated dismissal of these acts that makes people not only fear, but hate, the police.

So, now what? What do we do when marching, rioting, picketing and boycotting hasn’t worked? What do we do when an outspoken, openly bigoted man running for president has a real chance at winning? How do black mothers and fathers teach their black sons about interacting with the police when they may be shot for simply…existing? I don’t know. America has a long-standing, deep-rooted history built on a foundation of systemic racism. But I do know that as a black woman who may one day have a black son, the thought that my son will be born with a target on his back, regardless of how well I raise him, is terrifying.

By:   Krystal Davis – kdavis@puresoulmag.com