Why I’m Standing Today with My Black American Friends, Family & Colleagues

“It stops today.”

I spent the entire day yesterday in a deposition so I was offline from the world around me — a rare day of no email, no social media and even no news. I had been awake since 5am, returned home from work at 9:15pm and was exhausted with my only goal of decompressing and tuning out from the world.

I could not.

I barely slept last night. I read that a grand jury chose not to indict the police officer responsible for brutally killing of an unarmed black man: Eric Garner. I simply couldn’t believe it was true. I don’t remember feeling so angry at injustice in a very long time. I first saw the video of the police aggression towards Eric Garner when it was released and you probably did, too. If you haven’t re-watched it — as hard as that may be — please do. If it doesn’t make your stomach churn, if it doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, if it doesn’t bring frustration to your soul and make your blood boil and make you want to shout, “STOP” from the top of your lungs — I don’t know what will.

In case you weren’t aware — the chokehold used by officer is banned by the NYPD as pointed out by this NY Times Op Ed. In case you don’t know, Eric Garner’s death was officially ruled a homicide. He was 43 and had 6 children. His record indicates he wasn’t what we might call a “model citizen” but nothing in my reading indicates he was violent. Please re-watch the video. Remind yourself of the circumstances and the injustice. Tell me if you can fully breathe after watching the overwhelming force used against a man who clearly wasn’t physically resisting.

And of course we know this isn’t an isolated incident. We know about the “stand your ground” laws that led to the killing of unarmed, 17-year-old African America, Treyvon Martin. We know about the recent killing of unarmed African American, Michael Brown, in Ferguson. For those of us a bit older we distinctly remember the overwhelming force and brutality used against Rodney King in Los Angeles in 1992. I lived in LA at the time and distinctly remember the frustration of the African American community — no — of the entire community — at the injustice of the policemen being acquitted.

And yet these are bookmarks of what African American people live every day in our country and it’s not ok. “It stops today.” Let Eric Garner’s final plea ring loudly in our ears that we won’t accept intolerance. It. Stops. Today. We — the community — need to continue to speak out and not let this be just another isolated incident in our history.

Please take a moment to read this post written by my friend Chamillionaire, “Please Don’t Shoot.” Cham is one of the softest spoken, hard-working and passionate entrepreneurs I know. From his post …

“Next thing I know I was laying flat on the ground and all of the police officers were hovering over me with their guns pointed down at me. One of the police officers had his knee on my back and was putting handcuffs on me and I felt the weight of another police officer’s shoe pushing the side of my face down to the concrete. I mean a shoe on top of my face physically pushing my face into the concrete.

You never really notice how much gravel is on the concrete until you’re outside the security of your car laying down in the middle of the road, and you never realize how tight handcuffs actually are until you feel them cutting off the circulation in your wrists.”

Chamillionaire’s crime? A “DWB” — Driving while black. It has to stop.

A young African American entrepreneur friend of mine (I haven’t gotten permission for this story so won’t say his name yet) told me that he is even reluctant to wear a hoodie over his head in Palo Alto because even as a tech entrepreneur living in an upscale, suburban part of California he gets security guards following him in stores and singling him out as though he were out of place. He went to Stanford. I didn’t get into Stanford.

I remember how proud I felt for our country in 2008 when Barack Obama was elected president. I had two young boys then — 5 & 3 — and I distinctly remember thinking how great it would be that they would grow up on a world where they didn’t know of the biases and injustices against black people in our country until they were old enough to study our shameful history on this topic.

I have always had extra empathy for those not included in the majority, not treated the same as “everybody else.” I think it comes somewhat from my roots. My father is from South America and my family is Jewish. Two doors down from my childhood home was an African American family and on the other side was a Japanese American family. From a young age I didn’t understand the prejudice existed. But as somebody who didn’t celebrate Easter or Christmas or go to church — as somebody who didn’t quite grow up with the typical American narrative I always felt like I was different than most others.

It was actually a book about African Americans — Invisible Man — that helped me to come to grips with my own personal journey of being a child “wanting to be like everybody else” to later in life living around other Jewish people and accepting that it was OK to be Jewish and something I could be proud of.

I felt so proud of our country’s achievement in 2008 that I remember hiring a babysitter and calling our dear friends — Steve Raymond & Jen Raymond — and asking if they would go out with us to a bar to watch the election results. It wasn’t about democrat vs. republican. It was about Barack Obama. And whatever you think of his presidency or policies you can’t deny that this was a big moment in our country. I remember thinking how great this must be for African American families who could sit down with their children and now literally tell them they could become anything in life they wanted become.

And with Obama as president I sat down with my son in second grade and talked to him about what an achievement that was for our country. But I told him we had more to do. I told him we now had to help gay couples get the same rights as us, too. I had a single discussion with him on the topic yet his school report that year was on the need to help gay people have the right to be married. That was a very proud day for me. Education without over-parenting.

I thought we were on the right path on gender equality, race relations and immigration / acceptance of Latinos in our country.

How have we fallen so far from then in race relations? This can’t be a “black issue.” It is an American issue and it requires everybody to feel confident enough to speak up, call for action, and continue to pressure our politicians and our police forces to treat us all equally on race, gender or sexual preferences.

As usual this issue is best framed by Jon Stewart in his famous “Race/Off” video. It’s a fantastic 10-minute tour-de-force but if you can only spare one minute please watch from 8:50. It is important.

** Photo Credit Robert Stolarik for The New York Times