The more I read my debut article on Odyssey, the more I become disappointed with what I wrote. I started thinking about all the other things I wish I had said. Especially in light of the killing of Terence Crutcher, I realized I did not write enough because this is so much bigger than Philando Castile. I knew that. Why did I write about just him?
It's because Castile's death was personal: he was a local. To me he was not something that you simply see in the headlines and then pass by. My friends talked about him, the radio talked about him, my parents, my family, the protests on the street, and even the governor had something to say about it. It's interesting that I feel that his death was personal, because I never knew him, I had never heard of him until he was dead. Now everyone knows who he was, across the nation everyone knows that Philando Castile is dead, yet few knew he was alive.
In our society, Castile was someone that others might categorize as a nobody. He lived a quiet and simple life raising his child with his girlfriend. I assume every day he went to work and every night he came home and played with his daughter, ate dinner and went to bed. A pretty normal, content life. Maybe that's just my fancy take over though; I'm not sure what his life was like and I probably will never know beyond what I learned in the news. That was that he had run-ins with the law. They always say they had run-ins with the law when someone is shot by police. They want to destroy the empathy we have for this person, make them something less than a person. So that's what they did. I do not know the actual story of his life.
I'm a bit of a wishful thinker, but if this officer had known Castile as a person and not as an ex-offender or potential criminal-in-the-act, maybe he would be alive today. If blacks are seen as people, then maybe they would still be alive. This idea is not so far-fetched according to many experts, activists, and members of the community.
But how do we start seeing Blacks as people?
Well first, we need to rid ourselves of this nasty double standard in the media; of how when a Black man is arrested they talk about his record, but when a white man gets in trouble, they talk about his potential. Think about Brock Turner, the Stanford Rapist, for example; they reported his swim scores and how great of an athlete he was in the same article that they described his arrest after raping an unconscious woman behind a dumpster. It is disgusting to think that Turner would receive such positive coverage after what he had done, but equally disgusting is that a Black man would receive only negative coverage after being unjustly killed. To rectify this is a step we must take.
Secondly, we need police officers to be members of the community that they serve. They need to be invested in the people that they serve and the communities that they patrol. Get rid of police cars, have them walk on the sidewalk and ask people how their day is going. Not only will this improve public opinion of the police department, but it will foster cooperation between police and community as well as decrease the disparity between the treatment of Whites and the that of minorities.
And lastly, we must increase the amount of deescalation training that officers receive and abolish the practice of responding to use of force with a higher level of force. This is an absolute must. And until we do these things, we can expect that there will be more grief, unrest, and strife within the Black community.
Have any suggestions, comments or concerns directly for Noah? Reach him on twitter @noahrooze.
