America – and in turn Canada – was rocked by a series of shootings last week that poured fuel onto the fire of deteriorating race relations and friction between Black Lives Matter campaigners and law enforcement agents.
Alton Sterling and Philando Castile were shot in separate cases by police officers, within days of each other, two more black men killed by police officers in what is a growing list of high-profile and controversial deaths of black men in America’s cities. During protests in Dallas over their deaths, five police officers were fatally shot by a sniper, later identified as an army reserve veteran. The week of senseless deaths brought a nation to tears.
Castile and Sterling’s deaths were captured, in part by video. These video clips, along with others, have raised eyebrows and questions about police brutality in America.
Police officers have an extremely difficult job, working with the most hostile, violent and disrespectful members of society. In America, they also face an increasingly armed civilian population, with officer Jeronimo Yanez saying he shot only after Castile told him he had a gun and a permit to carry. It is hard to know what must have gone in the officers’ heads in the minutes before the death of Sterling and Castile or what might have led them to shoot, with the videos only offering brief glimpses into the cases.
On the other hand, many of us do not know what it is like to be a persecuted minority, to be subject to racial profiling, to be disproportionately watched, suspected, or detained, or live in constant mistrust and fear of the police.
It may seem like it’s easy for Canadians to shake their heads and say, “Just more crazy American news,” but complacency is a dangerous path to take and ignores the reality that Canada faces its own racial tensions and challenges – one just has to hear the term “starlight tours” to remember the 2001 conviction of two Saskatoon officers of unlawful confinement for dropping an aboriginal man out on the outskirts of the city to walk home on a frigid January night, which was by the police force’s own admission, not a one-time occurrence.
Last week’s tragic incidences highlight that we, as a global society, need to work on seeing each other’s humanity before differences of race, sex and ethnicity. It should not be the case that a black teen is 21 times more likely to be shot than a white teen. It should not be that good police officers are mistrusted, reviled, or at worst, killed trying to do their duty. The people who say “All lives matter” may be correct, but that is beside the point and diminishing the problem. Until we admit our own human failures, that they exist, and that we are ready to listen to how we can do better, we never will.
