When I saw this sobering warning from Twitter about an image related to the trial of Michael Dunn, the man who fired 10 shots into a vehicle occupied by four black male teenagers, killing one, 17-year-old Jordan Davis, I steeled myself for the worst. I do the same when I suspect I am about to see something that’s going to stay with me, like a tale of horror visited upon an animal.
I braced myself as much as I could, deciding it might be worth the psychic damage, and clicked, “View photo.” Here’s what appeared.
Not being the parent of a black child, I exhaled. But just as many lamented after the exoneration of George Zimmerman, the killer of the unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, it’s hard to know what to advice to give an African-American sons.
Stay home? Don’t play music? Do not use sidewalks as a weapon if you’re attacked? Watch out for white men, and never ever answer their questions? It’s hard to come up with one rule to cover every situation in which white guys might feel at a disadvantage, and to seek to assert their dominance.
Let’s stop focusing on what black kids should do to avoid white irritation and center instead on what white people can do to clean up their acts and move on from the sense of entitlement that allows them to kill.
