They called it “uncooperative.” And it was. But what does “uncooperative” really mean?
Uncompliant? Uncomplicit? Unwhite? Unlaw-abiding? Unreasonable? Understood?
The wrong and wronger of life in America when it comes to class, race and the law repositioned itself once again last week. This time while driving a $300,000-$350,000 McLaren 720S. While being one block away from the place of work that happened to be an NFL stadium the police were patrolling. While being the best player on the team, the best player at his position in the NFL, the one who before injury last season was up for MVP. While being a guaranteed future Hall of Famer. While driving 60 mph in a 30 mph zone. While not following a direct command. While telling the police what they can’t do. Or demanding what they not do. While putting self-importance in front of personal safety. While not bowing down to authority. While not succumbing. While, of course, being Black.
A soft comply, a disagreement over a rolled-up window, a $106.5 million guaranteed, monied-up ($30 million-per-year) superstar lay face down on the concrete, knee in his back, surrounded by four Miami-Dade officers, with one telling him, of course, to “stop crying.” John William Smith. Rodney King. Philando Castile. Tyre Nichols. George Floyd. Let’s all take a deep breath. Now . . .
What happened to Tyreek Hill during his recent encounter with Florida’s finest was viewed differently by different groups of people who see the same thing differently based on societal position, experience, history, bias, privilege and nuance. See, what Hill shouldn’ta said was, “Do what you gotta do.” Because they did. What the officers shouldn’ta done was say (in one of their out-loud voices), “That’s Tyreek Hill.” Because that eliminated a lot of the threat of danger, considering where they were at the time and the time itself: Less than three hours before kickoff on a road that Dolphins players come down to get to the stadium on game days.
One had a job to do, the other a job to get to. Guess in this scenario who was whom? Now . . .
Here’s where the unease lives. It’s in the aftermath not of the treatment of Hill by the police, but in the expected behavior of the one viewed as and labeled “the perpetrator.” As if in the history of black men and police brutality, the “correct” actions by the “perp” were the difference in the outcome. The five aforementioned men, while maybe not 110% obedient in the eyes of society and the law, 100% did not deserve what those in law enforcement gave them in return.
In other words: Obey, boy, or else. Or: Don’t obey, boy, or else. Now . . .
The alignment of optics and reality. They provide drastic differences if we look at, say, the Scottie Scheffler situation and the one Hill just experienced. Occurring only 114 days apart and concerning two different sports in two different places, the two eerily similar circumstances can easily be used to illuminate the violent nature in contrast of one police “misunderstanding” with a professional athlete to the other.
Because with Scheffler — who also “refused to comply” with a police order (and “demanded to be let in” the golf course) as stated in the police report and was arrested and charged and sent to jail (as Hill was not) — of course, there was no excessive, overtly physical and aggressive act of force or dehumanization during his encounter. As he was begging for someone to “please help me,” of course, not one of the officers on-site said to him, “Stop crying.” Add to that as a reporter on the scene tried to find out what was going on and tell the officers who Scheffler was — very much like Hill’s teammate Calais Campbell did — ESPN’s Jeff Darlington (who also just happened to be in Miami covering the Dolphins game last week), of course, was not placed in handcuffs after — as Campbell was — being asked by the police to leave.
Is that because golf is considered more civilized than football? Does it have anything to do with the PGA and its players carrying a different stigma than the NFL and its players? Or is it, dare I ask, something else? Something way deeper?
Sometimes in life over generations, you get tired of forever being the singled out. Not for who you are or what you do, but for how you are supposed to always behave and react. Historical fatigue sets in. It, of course, skews views and conventional rationality. In the Hill matter: Why does perfection in the area of behavior and circumstance have to specifically all fall on him? On us? The ones whom society unconditionally considers threats but are often less wrong than the wrong that’s being inflicted by law on them. When the “detainment” doesn’t fit the crime.
The belittling of ourselves, even when not fully in the right, in the face and under the force of those who find power and purpose in uplifting themselves by attempting to return us to less than humans is the definition of uncivilized. Being once hung on trees as a national pastime should put that last comment in perspective. But it won’t. Still, I know what I cannot live with just as much as I know what I’m willing to die for. Now . . .
There’s wrong and then there’s wronger. Most people, when it comes to incidents such as Hill’s, don’t acknowledge the wronger, they only believe that the wronger would not have even had the chance to exist or come to life if an initial wrong hadn’t preceded it. Most of those people think wronger isn’t even a thing because they’ve never had to feel it. Of course.
