Gregory Freeman: It's Not Fair, It's Not Right. P-D 11/24/1991

Headline: IT'S NOT FAIR, IT'S NOT RIGHT
Reporter: By Gregory Freeman

Publication: ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
Last Printed: Sun., Nov. 24, 1991
Section: NEWS, Page: 4B, Edition: LATE FIVE STAR

WHAT DOES it take for a black person to gain full respect in American society?
The question's not rhetorical. A lot of black people want to know.

Gerald Early is among them. Early, a black professor of literature at Washington University and winner of the prestigious national Whiting Writers' Prize, found himself hassled by Frontenac police earlier this month while waiting for his family outside a shopping center in Frontenac.
His wife, Ida Early, is director of special projects in the business school at Washington University and vice president of fund-raising for the Junior League.
While his wife and kids were at a Junior League fund-raising bazaar at the Le Chateau Village shopping center, Early decided to go out for air. That was his mistake.

An employee of a jewelry store at the center saw Early in the center and called police, reporting that a ''suspicious'' man was hanging around. Police arrived, started questioning Early, asked for identification and questioned him about what he had in his pockets.
    Early's wife and children witnessed him with his jacket off and hands held up in front of the police officer.
    Early said the officer told him that they had received a report that ''a black man wearing khakis was walking around the mall and . . . casing the joint.''
    The police eventually let Early go.

''It was extremely humiliating, '' Early told me last week. ''In effect, I was told that my qualifications of citizenship were not considered as good as those of anyone else. And now I'm supposed to pretend it never happened.''
Perhaps because of his prominence, Early received regrets on Friday from Frontenac Mayor Newell Baker.

Unfortunately, Early's experience at the shopping center is not unique for black Americans. Hassles by police are so common, in fact, that some blacks wondered what the big deal was about this one.

And that should make this incident all the more troubling.
     Society tells us all that to command respect, we must work for it. To achieve, we should work hard and make somethin g of ourselves. Pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. Parents encourage their children to do that, to follow the work ethic.
    For whites , this usually works. Whites are not routinely harassed by police or others unless there is just cause.
    Unfortunately for blacks, this isn't the case. Any black American - particularly a black male - can be a chief executive officer of a major corporation, hold a Ph.D., speak several languages, or even be a member of the Supreme Court, and still worry about being harassed.

Why? The answer should be obvious.
Many whites - including police officers - continue to hold stereotypes of black people. And sadly, to those people, it makes no difference whether the black man is Clarence Thomas or Willie Horton - if they don't personally know the man, they immediately mistrust him.
In Frontenac, the mistrust began with a jewelry store employee who called police because he saw Early outside Plaza Frontenac and thought that he was ''suspicious.'' Why?

Ida Early, who questioned the employee, said he told her that he had been robbed by blacks before.
    ''That really galled me, '' Gerald Early said. ''He assumed that I was some sort of criminal when I wasn't even window shopping. I never stopped. I never even slowed down, and this guy thinks I'm casing the joint because I'm black.''
    All of the presidents of the United States who have been assassinated have been killed by white males. Does it logically follow, then, that if you're president, you should fear white males? The very idea, of course, is preposterous.
    But it makes as much sense as the presumption by a store employee, police officer or anyone else that because a person is black, that person is likely to commit some crime or other antisocial offense.

And it makes some blacks wonder what's the point.
    Why do all the things society asks you to do - work hard, live right, obey the law, the whole nine yards - when, based solely on your skin color, a law-abiding citizen will be harassed as much as a career criminal?
    It's not fair, it's not right, and it sends messages that I doubt anyone really wants to send.
    Among those messages - especially to young blacks - is that it's a waste of time to be law-abiding, because you'll catch hell anyway.

It's time for the police, for store employees, for all others who spend time harassing people based on stereotypes to think twice, think three times about what they're doing. Because, whether they know it or not, those people are promoting lawlessness as much as any drug pusher on the streets today.

Gerald Early didn't deserve the harassment that he received at the hands of the Frontenac cops.
But neither do many of the other blacks who are harassed by cops every day in this country.

The police are supposed to protect us - all of us.
When they protect - and harass - selectively, they're doing nothing more than promoting racial insensitivity.

The controversy in Frontenac appears to be resolved. But how many similar situations each day go unresolved?
So many injustices are heaped upon people because of stereotypes.
Let's hope that this incident goes a long way in unshackling those who are slaves of the stereotypes that they hold of others.

Daniel Schesch - Webweaver

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