THIS IS AMERICA
The Russian Roulette of Blackness
Click or bang. Black people never know how their encounter with the police will end.
I saw a movie once called The Deer Hunter. Robert De Niro and Christopher Walken starred as childhood friends who end up as prisoners of war during the Vietnam War. Russian roulette was one of the forms of torture used by their captors.
In the film, the Viet Cong forced their prisoners to play the game against one another, making them spin the barrel of a pistol, hold it to their temples, and pull the trigger. Their captors gambled as the prisoners played until, finally, a “bang” replaced the “click” of the empty chamber. Walken’s character is so traumatized by playing Russian roulette over and over that he continues playing once he’s out of the military and back home in the states.
With the juxtaposition of the Derek Chauvin trial and Daunte Wright’s death at the hands of police 10 miles away, something occurred to me. When Black folks have an encounter with the police, we may as well be playing Russian roulette. Each interaction with law enforcement is like a proverbial gun to our heads, an event that could end as uneventfully as the “click” of an empty pistol or the destructive “bang” that signals a bullet in the chamber.
When dealing with the police, Black people never know what to expect. And that uncertainty, the not knowing whether you’ll live or die, presents a kind of trauma only a non-White person can understand.
The only difference between Daunte Wright, Philando Castile, and me is that I’ve managed to survive each of my encounters with the police — so far.
For example, one evening a few summers ago, my family drove home on Father’s Day after a long day on the beach. We had yet to move to the island we currently call home, so the 20-mile drive to the beach was part of our weekend routine. About halfway home, we had a flat tire. As I rummaged through the trunk of our 2013 Passat searching for the jack, a North Carolina state trooper eased along the shoulder of the highway, stopping a few feet behind our vehicle.
