More Thoughts On Race

TigerBlog, as you know, is an avid bicycle rider.

One of his routes takes him through a neighborhood in which he does not live, and one in which he doesn't know anyone. It's a typical suburban neighborhood, and the TB does three laps around a one-half mile circle as part of his 12-mile workout.

In case you don't know, TB is a friendly guy. He likes to say hello to strangers he sees along the way. As he rides his bike, he waves to other riders who go by on the other side of the road.

And when he's in that neighborhood, he likes to say hello to the people who are out walking their dogs, or pushing strollers or anything like that. Old people. Young couples.

He often sees a young Indian woman, maybe a year or two out of college, who is running. And a young Asian man who does the same, often wearing Penn clothes.

He says hi to both of them.

If he sees the same people on multiple laps, he usually says "last lap" as he goes by.

There's a house there that has a basketball court in the street in front of it, one with the hoop set at about eight feet or so. Every now and then he'll see two kids, both boys, who are probably brothers and probably somewhere around 6 and 8 or so, as they shoot hoops in the street.

They usually stop when TB rides by, but once they took a shot as he went by and he instinctively reached up and blocked it. He and the boys all laughed - as did their mother, who was sitting on a chair on the nearby porch.

That's a cute story, right?

It's a pretty wholesome thing all the way around, right, riding around a neighborhood like that, especially in the last few months, when the world has been on lockdown and seeing people has been at a premium.

Keep in mind that he knows none of these people, and this is not where he lives, so they don't know him either. In all the time that TB has been riding around that neighborhood, he's never once felt threatening or threatened.

Given the current national events, as he was riding through the neighborhood Monday afternoon, his thoughts turned to the idea of what would happen were he black and doing the same thing?

Would he get the same friendly looks back?

Would the Indian woman and the Asian man cross the street and run on the other side as he approached? Would the old people be concerned, even a little bit, holding onto each other a little tighter as he rode by?

Would someone take cellphone video of him - just in case? Would someone have called the police at some point?

And if so, then what?

What if TB had been black and had blocked that shot on his bike? Would the mother have laughed?

Say she called the police? Then what? Now she's called the police. TB would still be riding his bike. The police would arrive, looking for an African-American male on a bicycle. Actually, they'd be looking for an African-American male who was wearing a hooded sweatshirt.

Then what? They'd be told "he went around the corner; he's always riding here; nobody knows who he is or what he wants; he was bothering my boys." No, make that "he was threatening my boys."

Then what would happen when TB got pulled over?

Or, more interestingly, what would happen when TB said he was an American citizen with every right to ride his bike through that neighborhood?

It's likely nothing would happen. But the whole situation would just have a different feel to it, TB suspects, and it would have the potential to escalate quickly in a way that it probably wouldn't otherwise. And if it did, the results could be catastrophic.

What must it be like to be pulled over by the police if you're black, especially if you're black in a predominantly white neighborhood?

What if you're John Thompson III? TigerBlog can't think of five people he would trust more to be President of the United States than John Thompson III. If TB got pulled over by the police, his first thought would be "this sucks." What would JT3 think? "This sucks and I have to be careful?"

How about Glenn Wakam? TB wrote about him a few weeks ago. Wakam is a fifth-year surgical resident and former Princeton football player who was doing amazing work in the fight against COVID-19. He's also black.

Suppose he was driving home after a long day at the hospital. Suppose he got pulled over. How would he be seen by the officer? As a black man, or as a neurosurgeon?

Let TB tell you another story.

When TigerBlog Jr. got his drivers' license, he was 16 years old. He was a good kid who got good grades in school, was never in trouble, played sports and was headed to college in a few years.

Within an hour of getting his license, he went over to his friend Matthew's house and the two of them went for a ride. Matthew, too, is a white kid who also got good grades in school, was never in trouble, played sports and was headed to college.

About 30 minutes after they left TB's house, TB got a call from a local police officer. TB had tried to pass someone who was going really slowly in front of him and hadn't exactly done a good job of it, the result of which was that an oncoming car had to swerve to avoid a potential collision. The cop had seen it all and pulled TBJ over, only to find out he was one hour into being a licensed driver.

The officer insisted that TBJ had been polite and apologetic, that he'd listened to what he said and that he wasn't getting a ticket. He called though just to make sure that his father knew about the incident.

Today, both of those boys are 23. They both went to college. They both played four years of college lacrosse. They both graduated in four years. They're both employed today and fully starting down the road to promising futures.

Now let's say they were two black 16 year olds. Maybe they were in the same situation. Or maybe they were in a big city. Maybe they were also good kids who had never been in trouble before, who did well in school, who played sports, who had dreams of what their lives might be.

But put them on a street corner when two cops are called to investigate something. And maybe they fit the description from the call. Maybe one of them says the wrong thing, or maybe one of them is argumentative.

Maybe they get arrested. Both of them. And maybe the charges escalate to serious things, like resisting or maybe assault or something, so a lawyer advises them to plead guilty to a lesser charge, because otherwise they're looking at 10 or more years in prison. So they do.

Now they have a record. Now they're also 23. Neither has gone to college. Neither can fill out a job application without saying they've been convicted of a crime.

This is Ground Zero of the issue, people. If you don't realize that, then you just haven't been paying attention. 

This is the cycle that needs to be broken.

This country right now is not in a good place. It's been a frightening week, and TB knows a lot of people who are scared, and sad, and uncertain about where things are headed.

It's been in a bad place before and come out of it, though, and that will be the case again. Things will get back to "normal" at some point, and that's the problem. If the normal that TB described before comes back as is, then this country will end up right back to where it now again at some point in the future, just as it always has before.

How does it get fixed? It's a grass-roots thing. It's a local thing. It's about police officers who understand the difference in the two scenarios TB just mentioned and how the damage from one of them can't be undone (and by the way, TB believes the vast majority of them already know this). It's about political leaders - on both sides of the aisle - who have to realize that they are a huge part of the racial divide.

Mostly, it's about education. It sounds so simple. When TB used to cover high school sports, Trenton High School had an athletic trainer named Poppy Sanderson. TB remembers his initiative that he called "Education Outweighs Them All," which started when some of the school's football players didn't have the grades to be able to play.

It's simple. And it's true. Education Outweighs Them All.

TB was going to write about Princeton sports today. He let his friend Howard Levy talk eloquently about race yesterday.

And yet he still felt he had something he wanted to say on the subject. And honestly, not talking about it seemed disingenuous for someone who has the platform he does.

Everyone wants things to get back to normal. Desperately. The virus was bad enough. Now there's been the racial unrest that has exploded.

Hoping that things calm down and then going back to business as usual and hoping for a better outcome is not a winning formula.

This time, though, it feels a little different. Maybe it will be.

Maybe America will look back on this week as a turning point in race. TB certainly hopes that's the case.

It's way past time.