There are two ways home- the 'short' way, and the 'long' way. They're the same distance, but the long way includes a very long hill. I was feeling sporty that day, the sun was shining, and the air was...fresh-ish, for Tana standards, so I decided to take the long way home. I was in a good mood- people greeted me in Malagasy, which always puts a smile on my face. My favorite mofo'akondro seller was out, so I treated myself to two fried bananas and "chatted" a little. I decided to take a shortcut; through an alley and down a large array of stairs instead of going down the big hill by my house. As I made the turn down the alley, a young boy, maybe 12 or so, jumped out from behind the corner. He had a toy gun in his hand and pretended to shoot another boy across the alley, who pretended to die very, very dramatically. They dissolved into giggles. I was taken by surprise, naturally.
Several thoughts ran through my head when the first boy jumped out from behind the corner, in this order:
1. Woah!
2. Fake gun.
3. He would have been killed in the U.S. for that.
4. What a world we live in.
All that in a matter of seconds. I went from surprise to recognition that they were playing, and then immediately my mind made a link between "two young black men with a toy gun" and all of the American teenagers who have been killed for having fake guns.
It amazed me, and sickened me, just how quickly my brain made this connection for me. What a strange, sad example of social conditioning.
The instances of police violence in the US against people who aren't "white" (let's have a talk some other day about how ridiculous that concept is) seem to have only gotten worse and worse over the years. If nothing else, the attention that such cases receive is finally increasing.
There are so many names, too many names, that I can say to almost any American: Eric Garner. Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Trayvon Martin. Tanisha Anderson. Freddie Gray.
Unfortunately, police shooting and/or killing young men for having toy guns is not recent---
12 year old, Arkansas, 6/07
13 year old, Los Angeles, 10/13
22 year old, Dayton, 8/14
12 year old, Cleveland, 11/14
15 year old, Los Angeles, 2/15
14 year old, Jacksonville, 12/16
14 year old, Baltimore, 4/16
These examples were all found after five minutes of a Google search. All young men. All shot and wounded- more often than not, fatally. All were not "white". All were shot by "white" police officers for having fake guns on them- BB guns, air soft pistols, pellet guns, toys that had bright orange safety tips on them.
And this has become so much a part of American society that it is where my mind is taken immediately when I saw those two young Malagsy boys playing with a fake pistol. This is my normal. I can only imagine what the normal is like for people who don't have the same privileges I'm afforded. Did you know that black Americans killed by police are twice as likely as whites killed by police to be unarmed? Twice as likely to be unarmed.
I'm afraid I cannot empathize. I cannot understand what living in our messed up society does to those who live in a different colored skin than I do. I can say that I am horrified. That I am so, so sorry. And that I know we all, those of us with the privilege, we have failed so many people of color who have been hurt by the systems we continue to support and condone. We have failed you, and I'm so sorry.
"What is abundantly clear is that young black men and boys are, all too often, viewed as an inherent risk. They wake up as suspects, in the minds of some police officers, by virtue of the very skin that they were born in.
Maybe that’s why [they] ran."
-Goldie Taylor, 'Why Can't My Black Son Have a Toy Gun?'
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