Daunte Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, was shot by a White police officer during a traffic stop in Minnesota this past Sunday. Regardless of whether this was an intentional or accidental shooting, Wright’s is another Black life lost in a country where Black people are three times more likely than White people to be killed by police. My fellow White people—this is yet another tragic reminder that racism remains for us to fix.
I am not an expert in anti-racism, though I worked for many years at an organization dedicated to teaching people how to facilitate conversations around race, gender, sexual orientation, and other topics related to identity and equity. Last June, I wrote about some of the things I was trying to do to help dismantle racism; I hope you’ll go read or re-read that. I’ll just highlight a few resources that I mentioned there as places to begin educating ourselves and our children—though there are many longer lists that you can find online:
- The National Museum of African American History and Culture’s Talking About Race portal;
- EmbraceRace, which offers not only resources but also a community of support for parents, teachers, and others of all racial identities;
- The list of recommended books on racism and race for children of all ages, compiled by award-winning author and Black queer mom Jacqueline Woodson at the Oprah Magazine website.
I’ll also add Mapping Police Violence, which presents various views of the data nationally and by state. Even if you’re not a data geek, at least go have a look at the charts and graphs on their homepage. Keep in mind, though, that we should do more than read. Being woke isn’t enough if we don’t do anything once we’ve awakened. Speak out. Contact your elected officials about police and criminal justice reforms needed in your area and about reinvesting in Black and Brown neighborhoods and businesses. Demand accountability. Educate your kids. Make sure that anti-racist books, like LGBTQ-inclusive books, are not removed from or restricted in your local schools or libraries—the most recent data shows that challenges to anti-racist books are on the rise.
If you want to more immediately help Daunte Wright’s family and his Brooklyn Center community, Minnesota Monthly has what seems to be a legitimate list of funding pages and food/supply drop-off sites (though I have not checked them all myself; do whatever verification you may wish).
I am thinking today, too, of what political scientist Melanye Price wrote last fall in the New York Times after what was seen by many to be a lenient sentence for the officer who killed Breonna Taylor:
These efforts take a cumulative toll. Young African-Americans consuming a regular diet of Black death are learning to not trust their government. It’s painful to realize that kneeling for the national anthem can cost a football player like Colin Kaepernick his career, but a police officer firing a deadly shot into an innocent young woman’s home late at night will face no consequences. Black people will try to make sense of this, try to rebuild whatever expectation of safety we can muster, and tap into coping mechanisms that are now so familiar. Preparing for moments like this feels like a futile job that can never really soften the actual experience.
My son is only a couple of years younger than Wright, but has the privilege of being White. I cannot fathom what it would be like to lose him. Yet my friends who are parents of Black children are scared every day as they look at their children and wonder, “Are they next?” My heart goes out to Wright’s family and friends. I hope they get justice, even though no justice will ever bring him back. I hope we as individuals and as a country take the necessary actions to show that that Black lives do matter. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” None of us can solve the problem alone, but if we each do what we can, perhaps we can solve it together.
