Source: Facebook / facebook
We can now add taking a stroll an in the park with your child in the park to the long list of innocently trivial things that warrants suspicion from a white person when a Black person is doing it.
The Root reported that a black father, Donald Sherman while on a peaceful stroll through a local Washington D.C. park with his son Caleb was stopped by a “special officer.”
Sherman took to his Facebook to share his experience aptly titling it “Today in Living While Black”:
“30 minutes into our stroll I got flagged by a security officer in one of those cars marked “Special Police” on the side. I was a bit confused as to whether she was looking for me to stop but she honked twice and pulled over so I got the picture. She told me that she received a complaint from someone who said there was a “suspicious man” walking on the bike path with a baby. She said that when the complainant was asked to describe my race, she declined.”
Sherman shared the officer asked the complainant to describe the suspicious person and “she declined.” Regardless, he says the person who filed the complaint against him was a white woman on a bike who veered off when she saw him and his some heading towards her.
He goes on to add that he a “pleasant” interaction with the officer and let him know she only stopped him because she wanted to find out what happened before sending him on his way. He ended his story by accurately stating:
“If this complaint had been made to a different security officer or an actual cop, things could have gone very differently. This is exactly why we have to talk about white privilege and why black lives matter. Because at any point doing anything anywhere my safety and my child’s safety could [have] been in jeopardy because [of] some well-intentioned complaint.”
This growing list of things black people can’t seem to do in peace without being harassed by white people is getting ridiculously long.
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Black Father Stopped In Park By Officer After Complaint of “Suspicious Man With Baby” was originally published on hiphopwired.com
