By Walter L. Hilliard III
After hearing about comedian Chris Rock being stopped (and he took selfies showing the approaching police car in the background) for the third time in seven weeks by the police, actor Isaiah Washington tweeted on April 1st, 2015: “I sold my $90,000.00 Mercedes G500 and bought 3 Prius’s, because I got tired of being pulled over by Police. #Adapt@Chris Rock.”
And of course this caused a firestorm of backlash on Twitter and all over the Internet. Washington even had to go on CNN and tell Don Lemon that he didn’t necessarily mean that he was suggesting people tolerate racism, but I’ll get to what he was really saying later. Washington also suggested that Chris Rock might want to visit the police station and ask the police why he’s being stopped.
Reading between the lines of the situation, it’s obvious that Black actors or Black men in nice cars are still being harassed by the police in different affluent areas in and around Hollywood. During a video clip played on CNN, Rock is riding in a car with comedian Jerry Seinfeld as the police bear down on them. At one point, Rock, laughing, mentions how many times he has been stopped by the police and that he’d be scared if he weren’t with Seinfeld. But Washington didn’t think it was funny, although he said he appreciated the comedy.
So why haven’t these Black entertainers and other Black men come together, secured a lawyer, and confronted the police or filed a class action lawsuit against the police, who are obviously racially profiling them? It appears they’re afraid of the police and are simply used to being stopped. And this is what I have a problem with– the reason Black people still have so far to go to overcome the unrelenting amount of racism we face is because most of us lack what I call a “Black Social Consciousness,” a lack of awareness of Black problems and/or the courage to do something about these issues.
Fortunately, after much prodding by Lemon, Washington revealed the raw truth about what’s going on with racism and Black men being stopped by the police, including the fact that he hasn’t been stopped by the police in four years, since he started driving a Prius. His concern was that when he was driving his Mercedes, a cop pulled a gun on him when he had his three-year-old son and six-year-old daughter in the back of the car, and both were terrified.
After Lemon kept prodding him for more answers about his tweet, Washington really got “real” saying: “We [Blacks] are in a situation where we have to survive under extreme circumstances . . . where people [cops] are angry . . . for those who are practicing White supremacy, uhhh . . . they’re at war, they’re on the hunt, and they’re angry– they want some kind of restitution and retribution . . . so we have to really go about the business of having some serious, serious conversation of how to survive . . . . but if we don’t survive, then we don’t live to fight another day, and that is what I was saying by ‘adapt.'”
Yup! That’s what I always tell my son and his friends– don’t reach for your phone, become belligerent, get out of the car; be professional and we can go to the police station and deal with the cops and what happened later. And it’s a shame we have to even have this conversation.
