On March 23rd, 2017 I attended a conference at the School of Public Health regarding violent interactions between law enforcement and black Americans. This conference was both eye opening and perspective changing. The goal of the conference was to have a discussion that was solution-oriented about violent interactions between law enforcement personnel and black Americans. The keynote presentation was done by Dr. Brian Williams from University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center. The keynote presentation was followed by a moderated panel that included local professionals and experts.
The conference began with the keynote speaker Dr. Brian Williams who was the lead trauma surgeon on call when 12 Dallas police officers were shot following a peaceful anti-brutality protest. Williams directed the team of surgeons and specialists that cared for the seven officers transported to Parkland Hospital. He began his speech by reciting the names of the many people who had died due to police brutality. Some of the names included Michael Brown and Sandra Bland. He explained that those names that he read had stopped the silence about the police brutality that was occurring within our country. The room was moved from the long list of names because he read them slowly and carefully making sure to give respect to each one. Williams told a story about how when he was young he first experienced racism when he was playing with a friend, but this boy was white and his mother didn’t want her son to play with Williams because he was black. This example that Williams provided explained how racism can be a part of someone’s everyday life no matter how old you are. He felt that the experience he had with the white boy’s mother was traumatizing for him because it cemented a concept that black boys were inferior.
Williams continued his stories with this common theme by describing a time when he was eight years old and wanted to play baseball. The boys that he was going to play baseball with wouldn’t allow him to play with them because he was black. Another key experience that stuck out for Williams when he was wrongfully accused of stealing at a convenience store when he was thirteen years old. He was grabbed by a white man that owned the store, which was where all the people in his neighborhood shopped, and dragged to the back room. The white man accused Williams of stealing, and due to his urges to go home and flee the humiliating experience, Williams decided to lie and pretend that he did in fact steal. Instead of being let go, Williams was then searched which caused him to feel very violated and the white man proceeded to call his father. This occurrence of racial profiling affected Williams in a deep way that stuck with him for a very long time. This related to many readings we have discussed in class where people are targeted for crimes that they did not commit just because of their race.
To further prove his point of how consistent of a role racism had played in his life, he told a story about how he was waiting outside his apartment for a ride to the airport five years ago. He had done everything society had asked him to do. He was working at the medical center, and a committed member of the community. A person saw Williams and called a complaint to the police that a “bald black man was acting suspiciously,” when he was simply waiting outside for a ride to the airport. The police came and ended up questioning Williams, making him show identification. This example relates to similar situations that characters in readings we have discussed in class were targeted for simple things like standing on the street and thus faced criminal charges for doing nothing at all.
Crucial facts were presented during the conference that included how African Americans are 3.6 times more likely to suffer violence from police encounters. They are also more likely to get shot. There was an interesting point that got brought up during this discussion regarding how people that run from the police are not necessarily guilty just because they are running away. This concept does not match up with the reality that you can still be shot in the back for simply running from the police. This point was really interesting to me because I personally never thought of how just because someone runs from the police, it doesn’t automatically give anyone the right to assume they are guilty of a crime. Let alone are they not necessarily guilty, and they in no way deserve to be shot for simply running for what may or may not be a guilty crime.
Williams discussed his personal journey of activism and what pushed him to stay, and also stop, being silent on these issues. He believed that at times in his life he stayed silent because he was scared of being marginalized, labeled, suffering repercussions, and also because it seemed like the “normal” thing to do. It’s extremely interesting that it seemed like the so-called “normal” thing to do for Williams to stay silent against injustices that affected him because it raises are larger issue that we live in a society that normalizes culture to stay silent about things that are unfair even though they affect our lives greatly. Williams then went on to describe an experience that he looked back on as a turning point for his silence. He found himself directing a team of surgeons treating seven police officers that were shot in Dallas during a peaceful anti-brutality protest. The white police officers were shot by protesters. Three out of the seven officers died and the situation was considered a “code yellow” at the hospital which was considered a disaster page when the doctors received the call.
Williams was then at a press conference on July 11th, 2016 to discuss with the other doctors that he worked with in the protest disaster about what happened medically that day with the officers that they were treating. The doctors went through the medical explanations of that day, and Williams felt that nobody was talking about the real issues at hand. He decided to risk his job and social reputation and got up in front of the whole press conference and verbalized his concerns. He voiced his frustrations about the lack of communication about racism in our country. He discussed how that issue was directly correlated to the occurrences at the Dallas protest and the larger issue of how violence due to racism has escalated in the country. After the press conference, Williams considered his silence broken, and began confronting what he considers a crisis – violence and racism in America.
Another point that I found interesting was the discussion about how the impact of race is constant. As a privileged white American, this concept is alien to me because I have never been discriminated against in aspects of my life because of my race. To hear from people about how every aspect of their life was constantly impacted by race, it was really difficult to personally wrap my head around, but also extremely eye opening at the same time. A lot of topics that we discuss in class whether it’s housing, taxes, policies, criminology, employment, or welfare, are all things that are impacted by a person’s race. Their opportunities and experiences affect the way that people in our country interact with these topics. In class we tend to look at poverty as an overarching issue that all different types of people are effected by. After attending this conference, it made me realize that although all types of people are affected by poverty, they also experience poverty in different ways because of their race which I think is a really important aspect to learn and talk about. One speaker brought up the question of how a parent is supposed to tell their child about the danger they may face because of their race. This topic impacted me greatly because I realized I would never face the same difficulty of that situation due to my privilege as a white American. I cannot even begin to wrap my head around what it would be like as a parent to have to have that kind of conversation with my child. Let alone just having a conversation, those parents also have to experience every day of their life with the constant worry that their child can experience danger in our country due to their race. Concepts like that make me stop and check the privilege that I really have.
