Have you called 911 lately?

            In recent years, we've seen an alarming number of fatal shootings of young, unarmed men—almost always black men and too often by law enforcement officers. I’ve thought for a long time that if I were the mother of a young black man, I’d live in terror every time he left the house.

But now, just in the last few months, we’re seeing the acceleration of a different kind of racial discrimination. Police are being called to check out African Americans going about daily life. Police have been called by a Yale student because another student, who happened to be black, was sleeping in the common room of their dorm; they’ve been called to check on men in Starbucks, women playing golf, and families having a picnic in the park. And, now famously, they were called when some Airbnb guests were checking out. The latter instance provides a strange twist: the woman who called the police did so because the Airbnb ladies did not wave. The moral of that is that if you are indeed robbing a house, all you have to do is wave and you’ll be fine.

I am a child of the South Side of Chicago. Back in the day, Chicago did not have the epidemic of gun violence it’s experiencing today, but I grew up with fear, no doubt about it. We lived in a pleasant and integrated neighborhood of older homes, but it was ringed by poorer, crime-ridden neighborhoods, and that crime leaked into our neighborhood in the guise of muggings, purse snatchings, and the like. A would-be mugger snatched my aunt’s Bible from her two doors from our house; she always said she hoped he read it carefully. Of course, he thought he was getting her purse. I was not allowed to go to her house after dark without someone watching me, and my uncle always carefully walked me home. I’m not proud at all to say that there was a racial element to my fear; today my intellectual side fights that intently, but my instinctive side still feels the fear.

It reminds me of my father who served with the Canadian army in Europe in WWI. When jet planes first began to fly over our home (in the flight pattern for Chicago’s Midway Airport), Dad would instinctively duck and head for the garage. The whine of the engines sounded too much like incoming enemy fire to him. Sometimes, it’s hard for our knowledge to silence our instinct for survival.

Today I again live in a comfortable neighborhood of older homes, a neighborhood prey to petty crimes, mostly auto break-ins and auto thefts. We have an active, even pro-active neighborhood association, and we are constantly urged to call 911 if we spot any suspicious activity or anyone who rouses the hackles on the back of our neck. That advice is counter to what I feel when I hear of police being called to a family picnic in the park.

Common sense might be the answer, because I certainly don’t think the college student at Yale or the authorities at the golf course (which is now struggling) showed common sense. But my common sense may trigger your instinct for survival. Who’s to know?

It’s a conundrum.