It's amazing that in 2018, during the most progressive era of America, being a person of color (POC) continues to regress in basic human rights.
From attending college tours to studying to visiting local shopping stores and even Airbnbing, there are no safe spaces for POC anymore and people are failing to see this.
It's as if we cannot lead out our daily lives without being a target for racial profiling or discrimination.
On April 30th, three young African American women checked out of their Airbnb rental in Rialto, California, loading their suitcases into the car when suddenly, they were surrounded by police. Moments before, a neighbor had watched the three women carry their luggage out of the house they were staying in.
She didn't recognize the guests as homeowners, so she called the police about a possible residential burglary in progress. The police responded by sending six police officers and a helicopter to the scene with a goal of surrounding the house's perimeter, making it difficult for the women to escape.
Donisha Prendergast, a filmmaker and a granddaughter of Bob Marley, Kelly Fyffe-Marshall, also a filmmaker, and Komi-Oluwa Olafimihan, an artist, were the three women who experienced this traumatic experience of racial profiling.
The police later admitted that the woman's reason for calling the police was because the women didn't wave to her as she looked at them putting their luggage into their car from her lawn.
The three women documented their experience, aside from the unedited body cam footage from the police.
STORY TIME
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Last week, two Native American brothers were pulled from a Colorado State University tour after a parent, who was Caucasian, told a 911 dispatcher that their behavior was "odd" and that their dark clothing had "weird symbolism or wording on it."
Aside from these incidents, three African American boys were shopping for prom at a Nordstrom Rack in Brentwood, MO., near St. Louis, when they were faced by the police after store employees suspected they were shoplifting, calling further attention to incidents of racial profiling in commercial spaces. Nordstrom has since apologized, BUT THAT IS NOT ENOUGH!
Lastly, an African American Yale graduate student, Lolade Siyonbola, was met by the police after a white graduate student called the police because she was sleeping in the common area of their campus residence. Little did she know, the African American student was studying for finals when she suddenly fell asleep.
Siyonbola posted two video's of Monday's encounter on her Facebook page, including part of a conversation with the white student who told her she was calling police after finding her on a couch in the room at Yale's Hall of Graduate Studies on the New Haven campus.
After questioning Siyonbola for more than 15 minutes, police confirmed that she was a Yale student who lived in the building and then left.
Police claim that the questioning was prolonged because her name was not spelled correctly in a database of student information, but we know what the REAL reason was.
These examples of racial profiling are evident that we, as people of color, have no safe havens or safe spaces in this country.
Being a POC in America has become a dangerous situation that people fail to address, don't want to address, or feel as if an apology will put a band-aid on a monumental societal issue. It's amazing that some white people can walk around with confidence and liveliness, but also live in fear of an ethnicity that has been oppressed for centuries.
It's backward. Yes, some of us live in fear because we never know when we're going to be profiled, arrested, discriminated against, or have a bullet put in our back, but what do white people have to fear? Nothing but their own racial bias.
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