A Jog and a Drive

I don’t think anything of it when I leave my house. I put in my earbuds, turn up the music, try to convince myself that I am in my 30s and I start jogging. My four-mile loop takes me out of my immediate neighborhood, past the Catholic Church and cemetery, and through the neighborhood lining the golf course. A little over a mile into my run I turn a corner and start running on sidewalks in front of houses, the majority of which are more expensive than mine.

People are friendly. Some are working in their yard, some are on a walk of their own, and some are talking to other neighbors across the driveway or across the street. Even though it is a small town, it is rare that I see someone I know by name, but most give me a wave and a smile as jog past, anyway. Sometimes the drivers and passengers of passing cars even wave. Sometimes I initiate the wave and sometimes it is the friendly neighbors.

 

This week as ran on the sidewalk in front of a street of houses bordering the 17^th hole, it dawned on me how comfortable I was. I never thought about looking over my shoulder to see what people did after I passed. Cars driving on the street, whether they were in front of me or coming up behind me, were never a cause for anxiety. I am never concerned that I am not known and not recognized as I run past the homes of strangers. But the other day, as I ran past the construction site of another new house, I thought about Ahmaud Arbery. I thought about the whiteness of my skin as I ran. I thought about the fact that I ran without fear, without any unease for my safety, without any hint of nervousness or second-guessing my route. I thought about what a privilege it is to run like that, through the finest neighborhood in town, in my nice white skin.

 

My mind wandered to the story my son had told me just a week before. He had been driving along a rural highway in northern Idaho after doing some hiking. He had his cruise control dialed in at 65, but in his rear-view mirror he saw a car gaining ground on him. Soon the car was right behind him, following closer than he was comfortable with, and he noticed that it was a patrol car. Just like most of us would do, my son was a little nervous and tried to make sure he was abiding by all the traffic laws. After the officer declined to pass him after a couple of opportunities, my son thought perhaps he had been mistaken about the speed limit, so he slowed his cruise control closer to 60. The officer stayed close behind and adjusted accordingly, again ignoring opportunities to pass.

 

Getting a little unnerved, my son decided to pull over into a turn-out when he had the opportunity. When he did, the officer pulled in behind him. As the officer got out of his car and walked toward my son’s window, my son was trying to figure out what was going on and wondered what he could have possibly done wrong, and if he had done something wrong, why the officer never turned on his lights or siren. When the officer came to the window, he asked my son why he slowed down on the highway and then why he pulled over to the side of the road.

 

“I thought maybe I did something wrong,” my son explained.

 

“Did you?” the officer asked.

 

“I don’t think so, but I thought maybe something was wrong because you were following close behind me for a while.”

 

“You seem nervous,” the officer said, without expression. “Do you have a reason for being nervous? Is there something I should know about?”

 

The questioning continued in that vein for a short time with my son answering nervously but attempting to stay polite. The officer eventually asked for identification and my son handed him his driver’s license. My son sat waiting uncomfortably while the officer took the license back to his car and continued to wonder why a simple drive home had turned into this confusing scene. After a few minutes passed the officer returned and handed my son his license. He said everything was fine and my son could leave. Of course, my son thought everything was fine before all this started and still didn’t understand why the officer felt compelled to follow him so closely and come to his car when he pulled over. My son collected his thoughts and when the officer pulled out onto the highway ahead of him, it felt more comfortable to do the same.

 

I suppose there are a number of legitimate reasons why the officer did what he did, and he was not obligated to tell my son any of them. Maybe the car fit the description of one they were looking for. Maybe the driver of a similar car had an outstanding warrant or was suspected of a crime. For all we know the officer performed his duties exactly how he needed to, considering the information he had at the time. Nonetheless, it still made my son nervous.

 

I couldn’t help but think how much more nervous, even frightened, my son would have been if his skin had been another color. Maybe the entire scenario would have gone exactly the same… but maybe not. It was only a couple days removed from George Floyd’s death, so the vision of a police officer’s knee to a man’s neck was still fresh and raw. For a black man, I can only imagine the heightened sense of fear that is created by that incident, and a long list of past incidents at the hands of a few dishonorable police officers that seem to have gone unpunished. For a young black man, sitting in the place of my son, I can only imagine the tension, even fear, of wondering if this officer is one of the few who abuses power or one of the many who are fair.

 

For my son, the death of George Floyd had no bearing on his reaction to the stop. He was and would have been nervous either way. But his nervousness never turned to fear for his safety. There was no sense of panic. He never felt threatened by the presence of law enforcement and never felt at risk. He never had to reach into his memory and reflect on “the talk” to keep himself safe. He was fully confident that, no matter how bizarre this seemed at the time, his innocence would prevail, and all would be well.

 

“Ignorance is bliss,” they say, but ignorance is seldom good. I have been ignorant for a long time about my own privilege simply because of the color of my skin. Privilege doesn’t mean that I have had it easy, and it doesn’t mean I have had everything handed to me. Privilege is a relative term. It does mean that things could have been worse. It does mean that all other things being equal, there are many situations where the color of my skin gives me certain advantages, comforts, and securities that others do not enjoy. It does mean that, simply because of the color of my skin, there are inequities that I never think about because they work in my favor and do not work against me. It does mean that I am shielded from certain injustices and oppression is not a part of my life experience.

 

There is a light that turned on over the past couple of weeks – a sudden awareness that I enjoy a greater sense of freedom than many others. I am still woefully ignorant in many ways, but I hope and pray that I am not as ignorant today as I was yesterday, and that I will be even less ignorant tomorrow. I am probably in denial in ways that I don’t even know and may never understand, but I hope and pray for wisdom to think clearly and feel genuinely. I will never know what it is like to be anything other than white, but if I can grasp the implications of my whiteness and the impact it has on others who are not white, perhaps I can begin to see justice and mercy more clearly, and God will grant me the wisdom to act accordingly. I feel like I am only in first steps, but I feel like they are steps in the right direction.