The George Floyd Experience

I ask that you please bear with me as I take you through this emotional journey of mine. I promise that the final destination will be one that will give you a pretty clear picture of what a lot of Black people are feeling right now. I grew up in a small town in South Texas that was for the most part segregated. And no I’m not 65 years old and am recalling the days of when television and movies were all in black and white, I grew up watching G.I. Joe and reruns of Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back, so it was a time where you would think we would be living in a more civilized society.

The town I lived in wasn’t overtly racist or anything but we did have high schools that were predominantly white or predominantly black and brown; and thankfully for the cokeheads out there, we did have a private Catholic high school where no one would judge you if you happened to have a “random nosebleed”. So, it was basically Robert Downey Jr.’s wet dream before he got sober and became Ironman. On occasion there would be the random kid who yelled the word nigger at me, and of course since I went to the white high school and didn’t look and act like the Black people they saw in movies, they would say ignorant things like “Oh, you’re not really black” or “I’m blacker than you are”. Let me help you out white people, just because you’ve heard an Outkast song or two, that doesn’t give you the normal experience of a Black human in this world. I use this word human because there weren’t very many moments in my life where I actually felt like people viewed me as such; I’ve always either been seen as an encyclopedia for insight into Black history or merely a punching bag for those to unleash their casual racism on. The latter of which are the people who tell you racist jokes to prove they’re not actually racist; they tell you these awful things to show you that they are more woke than other white people. Well let me clue you in on something, that crap isn’t funny and it never will be!

So, it wasn’t long before I realized that small town Texas just wasn’t for me. My grandfather would tell me stories of how every time we drove through Austin, Texas I would tell him how I wanted to live there when I got older. I loved the sight of the Frank Erwin Center and even as a kid, 6^th street (now known as Dirty 6^th) sounded like a place that everyone could enjoy. Well wouldn’t you know it, even though I didn’t consciously make the decision to live up to that childhood dream of mine, here I am! And honestly, at least initially, it was everything I had hoped for.

But before we get to that, I had never really experienced any type of police harassment when I lived in that small town in Texas. I mean, I had heard stories from my friends who went to the black and brown school and how they were treated unfairly. And of course, my parents, aunts, uncles, and grandparents told me all of the horror stories they experienced when they were growing up but that all sounded like a foreign movie to me. Don’t get me wrong, my friend and I had the random “being followed around the store” experience quite a bit but the hip hop I listened to prepared me for that. It was the truly brutal images that Tupac and Ice Cube painted when they eloquently described the things that were happening in their neighborhoods that seemed like something that would occur in a foreign land, not anything that would happen here. It wasn’t until I went to college in Dallas that I got my first taste of what most of my Black brothers and sisters had been telling me for years.

I went to a private school where a lot of CEO’s, government officials, and school presidents sent their kids to get their education so they could follow in their footsteps. My middle-class self was there on scholarship and was simply hoping to graduate. But to their credit none of the students made me feel like I was out of place, not until it was time to rush for a fraternity that is; that’s where I saw their desire to find a token Black kid to prove that they were diverse and progressive. I also saw a fraternity proudly displaying their Confederate flag and their all Black cleaning crew to let me know that I clearly wasn’t welcomed there unless I had a broom in hand. That was a pretty disgusting display but it was nothing that truly shocked me; I did grow up in South Texas after all. But the first day that I noticed cops following me around campus was the day that I started to fear for my life. My cousins, along with my brother who had all lived in Dallas for most of their lives, warned me about the cops and their attitudes towards Black people but for the most part I brushed it off. It wasn’t until I noticed that both the campus cops and the DPD were immediately turning around and following me the second they saw a Black man driving onto this campus that I realized something was off. They were not hiding the fact that they were calling into dispatch to see if the little Chevy S-10 pickup I was driving was reported stolen. It didn’t matter that I looked 16 and was wearing Steve Urkel glasses as I was driving, all they saw was someone who was guilty until proven innocent; the exact opposite of what this country’s justice system is built on. And after following me for quite some time, they finally decided that I wasn’t up to anything nefarious and would eventually drive off but this was something that happened multiple times a week literally every week I was in school.

A lot of people now, and even then, when I told kids about this, would say that I was simply being dramatic or paranoid but none of my white friends ever had this happen to them. My brother and cousins told me story after story of being harassed by cops and now suddenly this felt like something that could happen to me! I made up my mind right then and there that I had to get out of that town. And that’s how I ended up in Austin. Now you must be asking, well what does any of this have to do with George Floyd? Trust me, I’m getting there.

I finally get to my sanctuary, Austin Texas, land of live music, bar-b-que, and lots and lots of white people. The last part is significant because it reminded me of high school, as long as I hang out with a lot of white people, I’ll be just fine. Sure, as I went to my Black church on Sundays I heard stories of how bad the cops were but again, it all felt foreign to me, I didn’t see any of this myself so it couldn’t be true; not here in Austin! It wasn’t until I moved to the black and brown side of town to be closer to the live music that I finally had my moment. I was walking home by myself from a show and all of a sudden, I see a car speeding towards me going at least 50 mph on a residential street. Keep in mind, this is the poorer side of town, so there’s no sidewalk, I have no choice but to walk on the grass or walk on the street like everyone else did. Well seeing as how I see a car coming that fast at this time of the night, I automatically assume it’s a drunk driver and I casually step behind one of the many parked cars on the street to keep from getting hit. The next thing I know these bright lights start flashing and an angry cop jumps out of the passenger seat. He runs towards me and unsnaps the button to the holder that’s holding his gun so that he can draw it on me! I have no idea what’s going on but I immediately throw my hands in the air and ask what the hell is happening. He’s very aggressive, gets right in my face and asks me what the hell I’m doing. I brown out at this point due to my fear and have no clue what transpires for the most part after that but I will tell you that I still look like Urkel at this point. I’m just a little older but there’s nothing remotely frightening about me. I’m simply walking home just like the dozens of white people had done prior to me as they walked back to the newly built condo that fully represented the gentrification that was taking place on that side of town.

The only thing I remember was telling him that I was walking home and asking him to take a long hard look at how I was dressed; how could I be up to anything. He said, while never taking his hand off his gun, that the area had a lot of break-ins recently and he was ensuring that I wasn’t trying to steal a car. Well what’s funny is that none of my white friends who had also gone out that night had a run in with these cops; apparently, I was the only one who was pulled over. I don’t think I can overemphasize what it feels like to have a cop ready to draw his deadly weapon on you while he screams in your face but believe me when I say it’s traumatizing; especially when you consider all of the experiences your family and friends have shared with you before this. I didn’t go into specifics about what was shared with me until now for a reason because I wanted you to think about what was running through my mind as this happened. In this moment, I was thinking of all the beatings, the raping, and the killings that I had been warned about and it was when I had this cop intimidating me that I thought I was going to be another statistic.

Eventually the cop let me go without an apology but as I walked home, I realized that ever since college I had been literally and audibly gasping every time I saw a cop. I had suppressed these reactions and my general fear of the police because I wanted to maintain the illusion of safety in my sanctuary; Austin couldn’t be like this, not the place with the Frank Erwin Center and 6^th street. But it was true! And to this day, I audibly gasp in fear when I see a cop. I always think at that moment, is this the time where CNN will run a story about me? Will I be one of the thousands of stories that don’t make the news? Will my mom have to cry over loss of a son that’s done absolutely nothing wrong? Clearly, they don’t see any difference between someone with a criminal record and someone who has a college education; we all look the same to them. This is a feeling no one should have to live with every day. No one should live in fear of the people who were hired to protect them.

So now finally George Floyd. We of course all remember what happened to the innocent teen who was simply walking home with a soda and a bag of Skittles (Trayvon Martin) and was shot dead by a racist white man. We all remember Eric Garner being understandably upset after being stopped for the 30^th time by cops on the street and subsequently being suffocated to death over some loose cigarettes. We remember the 12-year-old kid (Tamir Rice) who was playing by himself in a park with a cap gun being gunned down by a policeman because he was seen as a threat. We all remember Sandra Bland driving home from work committing “suicide” in prison after being arrested for an illegal lane change. We all remember Ahmaud Arbery being murdered by racists in Georgia for having the audacity to jog in their neighborhood. We of course remember Breonna Taylor being shot and killed in her own bed because her boyfriend fit the description of someone they already had in custody. We all remember George Floyd being gruesomely killed in the middle of the street in broad daylight by a cop for 8 minutes and 46 seconds over the possibility that he may have used a fake $20 bill. Not many of us know of Fred Hampton being set up and killed by the FBI in his own bed for trying to unify black, brown, and white people to help edify the lower income and disenfranchised communities.

And after each one of these incidents, Black people were enraged and sometimes even marched for justice. But it wasn’t until we had been forced to stay at home for months at a time due to Coronavirus that a true movement was seemingly underway. It wasn’t until millions of people were unemployed, depressed, angry, and forced to look at the horror of the George Floyd murder that people of all races, backgrounds, and socio-economic status started to get off the couch and protest in anger! We saw buildings burn, highways get blocked off, and stores being looted. It seemed like real change was happening! I even saw white people form a wall in front of Black people to keep them from being tear gassed! Could this finally be it? Could this finally be the moment where we see the government get called out for using the clause in the 13^th Amendment to keep slavery legal? Could I finally feel safe walking out of my apartment again? People had to keep this going until they saw change! They had to be tired of seeing what I was seeing, Black people repeatedly dying at the hands of the cops! They had to finally be tired of white people coming up with excuses as to why these cops killed so many Blacks, tired of seeing the unbelievable discrepancy in Black people being pulled over and arrested. The country had to finally see that systemic racism didn’t end when Obama was elected.

Well as it turned out, I should have paid attention to my Black friends and family when they all looked at me with the side eye as I said these things to them. I was so excited and so passionate over the fact that change was going to come like Sam Cooke had promised!  I had seen White, Asian, and Hispanic people at these marches. People were posting constantly about racism and how they could get better. People were buying books online and were donating to and joining organizations like Black Lives Matter! NASCAR and even the NFL were changing their tone! But all the while my Black friends were telling me, just wait; we’ve seen this movie before and we know how it ends. Well three weeks into the movement, after George Floyd’s final funeral, after a few lame press conferences where empty promises were being made, it seems like everything has returned to “normal”. There’s less coverage of the actual protests and what the people really want, social media posts are returning to their normal mundane bullshit, and the return of sports is just around the corner.

I’ve gone downtown to the Austin Police Department and the State Capitol and there are fewer and fewer people gathered there each day. People have their Facebook and Instagram posts of them attending marches, they’ve ordered their book from a black owned store, and they’ve told their black friend that they’re an ally so now they feel good about themselves. But at the end of the day, police departments and city councils will delay the official votes on the changes they've proposed, the police unions will reject them and things will stay the same. And even in the cities where the proposed changes pass, the cops and the culture all still remain in place, so they of course won’t take the changes seriously and will continue to do what they’ve been trained to do. They will focus on criminalization and approaching every person who doesn’t look like them as the enemy. White people won’t notice this because their lives won’t change but me and my fellow Black friends will certainly notice. We’ll continue to live in fear each and every time we see a cop.

I will forever remember the day that I walked home from a night of what I thought would be more protests. To this point, I had pleaded with cops to stop killing us and shouted the chants that everyone else had chanted, “No Justice, No Peace”, “Black Lives Matter”, “What’s His Name? George Floyd!” And with each chant, I had several cops look at me as if they wanted to jump and beat me right then and there. Well the night I was walking home by myself with my protest sign, the streets were empty because people had lost interest in the protest and most of the bars and restaurants were closed due to Covid-19. So, it was just me, my protest sign, and the random cops on bikes and motorized vehicles who were passing by me. These cops had been working 12 hour shifts and were clearly on edge after two plus weeks of people yelling at them; there was nothing to keep them from unleashing their frustration on me. It was in this moment that I once again feared walking the streets of my sanctuary city! And sadly, ever since that day, that feeling has never left me. I honestly don’t feel as though there’s any place in America where I can feel safe. No significant changes have been made and my Black friends who were suspect were right all along; this is the worst version of Groundhog Day that has ever existed!