Awakened in America
Awakened in America
S1 Ep #9: Learning to Disarm
Host Z and Host Jess compare events involving law enforcement in Kenosha, WI and Rochester, NY.
Hey listeners, we hope everybody's doing well and staying safe. In today's episode, we will be comparing incidents in Kenosha, Wisconsin, and Rochester, New York, both involving law enforcement and discussing the importance of learning to disarm in a non-violent way. We hope you find it enlightening. And as always, we appreciate you tuning in.
Speaker 2:You're listening to awaken in America, two minds on a journey to create dialogue about diversity inclusion and optimism.
Speaker 1:So Kenosha, so let's talk about Jacob Blake and the way that was, um, in front of his. So yeah, that's the part that hit the hardest for me was thinking he's got three small children in the back. He was on armed getting in, you know, getting into his car or something like that. And he's shot seven times in the back. And, um, I just can't believe any child and that's not the only case, you know, of course now these other ones have come to light where African-American people have been shot in front of their children by law enforcement. Um, but I just don't know at what point in, uh, in a law enforcement person's training, is that the appropriate response to whatever the call was about a domestic disturbance or something like that, you know, on an unarmed person. Um, so yeah. Can you just get your thoughts on that seat?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I, and again, I say that, uh, in that particular instance, it probably would have been helpful if there had been a social worker or someone who deals with mental health on the scene that could assess the situation because, you know, deer trigger. Yeah. And I did do social work. One of the many hats I've won. So, um, yes, and honestly, I, so when I speak, I speak from a place of understanding how it can be to enter an unknown situation, because I had to answer people's homes in New York city. And, you know, it was a child protective services doesn't discriminate. So someone makes a call. It can be, you know, a person of any ethnicity. It doesn't matter. Um, and many times I would go to the homes by myself and it was scary for me, I'm a new Yorker and it was scary for me because you never know what situation you're walking into. And I don't carry a weapon right. As a social worker. Um, but in my training, I learned how to disarm people. And I think that that's what needs to happen is police either they need to learn how to disarm African American people. If they're enabled to do that, if you're unable to do that, then perhaps I don't know. Maybe they need to do something different. I mean, honestly, yeah. Maybe because working, and I don't know that I don't know how you can untrain someone when we talk about implicit bias. And then I talked about the brainwashing, if you're shown over the course of your life, that, you know, the blacks are criminalized over and over and over and over again. And you've also had some experiences that are negative. I mean, you know, that's the truth. Then you may just come to me like, you know what, I'm just grouping them all the same. You're on that block. So you're, you are a part of that type of neighborhood. And therefore you act the same way and it, and it may have nothing at all to do with the specific person, obviously, but it's just that mind frame. So I don't know how you can disconnect a person from their implicit bias or their racism. Um, you know, if they don't, if the only blacks the associated with, or the blacks on the police force with them. Yeah. You know, that's probably not great. That's probably nervous. Yeah. So if you're not spending any time in the community, other than when you go there with your weapon and you're trying to arrest someone or, you know, you're trying to, um, you know, do a bus or whatever the case may be. If that's the only time you're having a connection with that community, then it's probably going to be negative. Okay. And so we know that community policing works, but in many segments of our population, people don't want to do that. And you're not gonna find a lot of community policing in the South. You know, we still have a history here that we're dealing with. There's a history here. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're not gonna you're, you're just in certain areas, you're not going to find it. So what is the solution? I don't know, but I do know as an African-American that I'm not going to give up, um, I'm not going to quit. And I know that there are so many others, like you just, who are also not going to stop investigating and teaching and, and, and trying to change the situation because who can live like that, who can live under this constant pressure and, um, and who should lose their life, who should lose their life for needless things like a counterfeit$20 bill, right. That may or may not have been
Speaker 1:Five minutes or eight minutes or, yeah. I mean, that's yeah. Unimaginable.
Speaker 3:I mean, I, I don't, so yes, I understand that their policemen are facing a serious threat when they enter certain areas. I get that. But if you feel like every time you answering that certain area, that your gun needs to be unholstered, you're not benefiting them, and you're not doing your job to serve people who are you serving to just incarcerate black people, maybe that is serving someone, but, you know, in the United States of America, that's not, that's not the way we're supposed to work here.
Speaker 1:Right. And I think if there are any people questioning, whether systemic racism is real in this country, we can point to implicit bias, you know, on this topic specifically and say, if you, if you're a white person and you're on the sidewalk and you're showing an African-American person and a white person side by side, and you had to decide which one was the criminal, and you say, it's the African-American person you have been affected by implicit bias, you know? And that, and what that means is you're basically saying they're born more inclined to commit crime because of the color of their skin, which makes no sense, you know? And then you can say, but by the numbers, percentage wise more criminals are African-American, but that's because of this bigger problem that we have with systemic racism.
Speaker 3:And it's also because people are looking for it. Right. You can find, and you're looking for it, whatever you want. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, there have been statistics that have shown that police more frequently stopped, right. People of color. I mean, that's a statistic. It's not, I don't have this as a sick, but I know it's higher than it is for whites. So, you know, if you keep doing that in a way, you're also like you're looking, you're looking for something it's like, you're trying to dig and make up something, even if it doesn't exist.
Speaker 1:So I think like to your point, we all owe it to ourselves as white people to be aware that this implicit bias exists and it's so dangerous for our African-American counterparts, it is so dangerous. People are losing their lives. And we know that now George Floyd elevated that more than ever in this country. So, um, doing your part to diffuse that amongst your family and your friends, and, you know, the whole getting to know your, your police force and the way that they're protecting your community, those are all things that we can be doing more of myself included for sure. On that
Speaker 3:Attending city council meetings. Yup.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Learning more about what's going on in your community, because a lot of these things too, are kind of buried in the headlines and to that end segue to what happened in Rochester, New York, which was back in March, but it's just now getting some press. And, uh, I think that's because the case just went to a grand jury finally, but there was a, a man there who was killed at the hands of police and a few hours before he was killed. He, his brother had asked for him to be admitted to a hospital to be evaluated. So to your point about doing proper psychiatric evaluation, that's important released after just a few hours and then, um, began interacting, acting irrationally, something like that. Next thing, you know, uh, police tried to arrest him, but because he was spitting, they put a hood over his head. And then he, over the course of however many minutes, you know, was saying he couldn't breathe and you know, that sort of thing. And then his, his words turned to Google. So they, it was a series of events they knew. And then his heart actually stopped. So,
Speaker 3:And they had put the hip and they put him down face down. So he had a mask on the spit mask and then they had him on the pavement. It's snowing. The man has like just some shorts on, and then they're holding him down just like they did George Floyd. And he's saying he can breathe.
Speaker 1:And then he, uh, had no heartbeat by the time the paramedics arrived. They tried to revive him. I think they were able to when he died in the hospital later, but it was reported by the coroner as a homicide and then somehow or another, you know, as these things kind of go, sometimes it was later found that he had PCP in his system. So then it was kind of manipulated in the news to say that he died of a drug overdose. So, um, yeah, just kind of a stark contrast. If, if a white person were acting irrationally, would we get a mask or whatever, thrown on our head because we were spitting and acting rationally, someone's acting irrationally. Don't you want to just diffuse the situation, get them, help get them the medicine that they need or whatever, typically isn't that where we should be striving, you know, as a police force. But, um, that's not the case. I just don't understand how law enforcement is hearing this man's words turned to gurgles and they're still not letting up. And so that he can breathe, making sure he can breathe, you know? Um, so that's been a,
Speaker 3:And it's happened according to, again, the New York times article at least 70 people that they could find at least 70. Yeah. So how many more do we not know about? And so, you know, again, you know, we can't, we can't just look at one incident. Yes. There are people that use drugs. We know that, um, there are people with mental illness, but it's the way that the police interact when it's a person of color versus a white, progressive typically. Okay. Of course. Um, there are always exceptions to the rule, but we can see with the numbers that more often than not, not it's happening, it's happening too many times
Speaker 1:And it's not being publicized that, uh, people, like I said, when Leland, um, the astronaut Leland, Melvin is coming out, speaking publicly publicly about his own fear of the police, you know, working for NASA and flying for over 500 hours into space and all this sort of thing. It doesn't matter if you're successful, accomplished, wealthy that follows you, that stigma
Speaker 3:Just, they don't discriminate. You look black then that's, and then
Speaker 1:One other thing, too, this is related to these two more current things in the headlines right now, but I didn't discuss we, uh, you and I know we watched the John Oliver episode that pointed out a real life example of the sequence of events in Kenosha after Jacob Blake was shot, uh, the protests that ensued and the 17 year old, who also was at a Trump rally, not too long ago, showed up at the protests with an automatic weapon, you know, right around his chest or his neck or whatever, and proceeded to shoot and kill two protesters. And the way that it was covered. Um, John Oliver actually had footage of him walking away after he had shot these two people with his arms up in the air, but as automatic weapon, you know, in plain view and these armored tanks, you know, I guess his national guard or whatever, driving up the street and they almost pull over, it's almost like they pulled over and rolled down the window. They, they got on the loudspeaker of the tank or whatever, and they say, Oh, somebody injured up there or something like that and just got it done. And he's got his hands up. So to contrast that with Jacob Blake, which is the reason the protests are happening, man was unarmed. Probably wasn't asked a lot of questions before he was shot seven times in the back, you know, and, um,
Speaker 3:Fruit and water too. Don't forget that they offer
Speaker 1:Water. And they said something like, thanks for helping protect or something insane like that. So here's this guy who's, you know, this is a guy who's not even old enough to vote showing up, but he's
Speaker 3:A Patriot, don't forget he's a Patriot.
Speaker 1:So, and this reminds me of something that we've been listening to on audio, the Tim wise, why like me and the parallel that he makes in the very beginning of the preface of the book, which resonated with me saying there's such a stark contrast in the way a white man can show up to a protest with a gun. And somehow in our psyche here, that's associated with patriotism. But if an African-American does the same thing and shows up with a weapon, you should probably be prepared to be arrested at the, at that minimum, you know, you know, terrorists,
Speaker 3:Terrorists, hello weekend, that was a mouthful. It was difficult for us to have that conversation. And to be honest, many of these conversations are difficult for us. And, um, we want you to know that everything we say we take to heart, um, the discussions are not always easy. Um, sometimes they sound light when we, you know, are discussing them with you. But to be honest, they're difficult when we have them initially many times and, um, individually, um, when we talk, we realize that these topics are hard. These are real lives. These are real people that are being impacted by what's going on, including myself, I'm being impacted. I'm a person of color. It affects me. It affects my family. Um, and whether or not you're a person of color, these are issues that affect Americans. And as an American, we should all care about things that impact each other. So I like to leave you today with a thought, if you could do one thing today, one thing that could change something for a person of color, whether it be a health issue, um, whether it be a financial issue, um, whether it be, you know, supporting a petition, what is one thing you could do today to help change the inequalities, the injustice in America, if you could do one thing, what would that be? I challenge you to that today. And as always, we appreciate your comments. We appreciate you listening. Um, please, you know, check out our Instagram page. We're always trying to promote, um, optimism and positivity and we appreciate you just being available. Thanks again, info@awakenedinamerica.com take care.
Speaker 2:Thank you for listening to awakened in America. If you enjoy today's podcast, be sure to subscribe and leave a review. You can also find us on Instagram at awakened in America. That's awakened underscore in underscore America and remember be mindful, be grateful. And most of all be you.