I hadn’t planned to write about Daunte Wright even after his tragic death on Sunday. What could I, a white man, say that would mean anything?
After several attempts I realized I couldn’t write about anything else until I wrote about him. For what it’s worth.
I think the most important thing to say about Daunte Wright’s death is that he was only 20 years old. His life had hardly begun and now it is over. I keep asking myself how I would feel if he had been one of my six grandchildren? How would I handle it? Is there anything that could bring me comfort, our family comfort?
I don’t know what it would be. How can you be comforted when a death is senseless because it was completely unnecessary? This one should have never happened.
Kim Potter killed him, but she was hardly the only reason Daunte is dead. The moment he was stopped the other officers made sure the outcome was virtually inevitable. They surrounded his car as if he had killed someone himself.
Kim Potter pulled the wrong trigger. The other officers created the situation that led to it happening. All of them should resign.
Some people say Officer Potter is devastated by what happened. By all accounts she is a nice person and a good police officer. It doesn’t really matter now. She’s alive and Daunte Wright is dead. She gets to feel devastated. He doesn’t get to feel anything.
That’s the story here. A young man with his whole life ahead of him is dead.
He is not dead, though, only because Kim Potter pulled her gun instead of her taser. He’s dead because he was black.
It’s called systemic racism. It’s a phrase that needs definition. It is more than discrimination that is inherent in systems, organizations, institutions. It is far more personal than that.
Systemic racism is an attitude white people have toward people of color born of our personal upbringing and the racism embedded in our history and in our culture. It is an attitude that resides in our unconscious mind and affects our behavior without our being aware of it.
That unconscious attitude gives rise to unfounded beliefs among white people that black men and women are intellectually inferior, less responsible morally, lacking in individual initiative, often are lazy, seldom trustworthy.
This is systemic racism. Anyone who is white but denies systemic racism is real is proving the point. The most obvious expression of systemic racism is a denial that it exists.
It is why Daunte Wright is dead. It’s why George Floyd is dead. Philando Castile. Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor. And all the other black men and women who are dead because the police shot them. None of the police who killed them has ever admitted they suffer from systemic racism.
They’re wrong, and nothing will ever change until they and every white police office like them admit the truth about themselves.
It is not the fault of white people that we suffer from systemic racism because we didn’t choose to be white. What is our fault is denying it is real.
Police who deny it are more dangerous than the rest of us because they possess both lethal force and legal authority to kill. That is why black men and women are dead who should still be alive.
Our country is past the time to stop this carnage. Some police departments are already taking steps on their own to make policing better. Too many are not.
The federal government needs to step in and deny federal funding to any department that refuses to develop a process of educating its force on systemic racism.
Had the Brooklyn Center police department spent the last year understanding how systemic racism affects its officers, Daunte Wright might still be alive. Had they developed new policies to prevent traffic stops from escalating into someone dying, Daunte Wright might still be alive.
Prejudice may not have a color, but the crisis we are facing is not about white people being shot by the police. It is about black people being shot by the police.
This is not a time for defending the police. They don’t need defending. They need to be respected and trusted, but that will only happen as a by-product of just the opposite, of the police respecting and trusting the communities where they serve.
When police departments understand that, change may actually happen. The worry is how many more deaths that diminish all of us will happen before it does.
This needed to be said. Thank you for saying it and allowing me to share it.
Dirk, thank you for sharing it.
Jan, you make well written statement. I will not attempt to claim it is because of Systemic Racism. There is no doubt the Racism exist in all races. It appears to me, the death of Daunte Wright has several causal factors, but not racism. The mistake made by Daunte to abruptly try and run… coupled with his knowledge and the police having knowledge of his past criminal behavior. Officer Kim Potter, intending to use the Taser, made a horrendous wrong choice, which I believe was reflexive and not a well considered choice. The death of the young man is an undefinable tragic loss for him and his family and friends and the tragic results for the experienced Policewoman are equally a tragic loss to her and her family and friends. Travesty may define in a word the injustice of it all, but not in live feelings or reality.
Mel, first of all, thank you for commenting. It means a lot to me that you read my blog. My primary response to what you wrote is that I think it is a “both/and” situation instead of an “either/or.” I agree that the factors you identify did play a role in Daunte’s death and I also think systemic racism as I defined it did as well. I would also say that it seems really important for those of us who are white to see the role of the latter. Great to hear from you.
Jan, this is so good! You nailed it!
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That’s encouraging, Becky. Thank you.
Please, Jan, submit this post the NYT, WaPo, or the Star Tribune. Your thoughts need to be heard by all.
Rollie, I would do so if I thought it had a chance of getting published, but I don’t think so.
Thank you Jan – for saying what I feel but could not articulate as well as you have done.
Thank you, Robin. Nice to hear from you.
Jan,
You DID need to write about Daunte Wright, and you did so perfectly in the broader context of systemic racism. He is dead because he was black!
You were kind to your high school friend “Cut Worm” Parker, a talented singer/musician then who is attempting a revival now with country music.
We can wish Mel luck in that regard, but in my view he is full-of-shit on the matter of what caused Wright’s death. It was, plain and simple, the result of yet another “driving while being black” incident, during which the officer panicked and mistook her gun (right side) for her taser (left side).
Potter is certainly not guilty of murder, but she has demonstrated that she can no longer perform her duties — including training others as she was doing at the time — effectively. There must be some form of retribution beyond a resignation.
Thank you for standing tall amid the ignorance that surrounds us…..
Bill Blackwell
Bill, your comments often serve a greater purpose than a comment. This is one of them and speaks for itself. Thank you!
I am glad you wrote this Jan, my comments are closer to Bill’s than Mel’s.
Bill has a way with words, for sure.
JN
This needed to be said, and you said it well. Another perspecective: Should police do traffic stops for expired tabs? It has nothing to do with safety on the streets. As the Mayor said, police should not be stopping people for not paying their taxes. (Paraphrased)
Cheerz!
Gene
That’s a question, Gene, every police department, city, and county should answer. Thanks.
Excellent post Jan. The reason that I’m not very hopeful about change is because of what author Kasi Lemmons refers to as a lack of curiosity by white people about what it’s like to be black in the US. I recently offered to buy the book White Fragility for a “friend” who said there is no systemic racism. He said he wouldn’t read it. Without a willingness to learn there is little hope for change. (That of course applies to all of us.)
Wilbur, you’re right, the desire to learn has to be there or no change is possible for that person. I remain hopeful, though, that enough of us will learn enough to change society.
Thank you, Jan. For your clarity and caring. Also, please send it to NYT as requested. It surely won’t get printed if you don’t send it.
JudithR
Glad you’re reading my blog, Judith. I will think more about submitting this somewhere. Thanks.
Selah. Amen.
Thankful for this post.
Thank you, Luke. Very grateful for your comment.
If Dante were white, the scenario would have been the same–a person RUNNING from arrest brings on a “fight” between police and person, white or black or green. Officer under pressure pulled wrong weopon, regardless of color.
I don’t know who you are but I think a safe bet is that you are white. Even if you don’t understand systemic racism, yet still deny it exists, you might try harder to get the situation correct. Daunte didn’t “run” from anybody. He got out of his car, got back in and was shot. He drove off AFTER he had been shot. Look at the tape. The officer was not under pressure. Daunte had no gun and the two male officers were in front of her when she pulled the trigger. Your “whiteness” is showing in nearly every word you wrote.
George,
The first clue was that you misspelled Daunte’s name. Jan has covered the rest of your errors, most notably the “running” and the “pressure” claims. The upshot of all this is that you are almost certainly white and a closet racist!!
Bill Blackwell
Bill, sometimes the truth needs to be spoken straight up. Thanks for doing that here.