“They’ve even been stopped because they ‘don’t look like they live in our neighborhood,' stopped because their music was too loud. Stopped because someone robbed a store nearby, and they ‘fit the description.’ They know the deal.”
The phrase, “fit the description” rang true with other mothers on the panel, and many in the audience. While black mothers nodded their heads in agreement, white mothers looked shocked.
“We teach them to be afraid of ‘the system,’” Blackmon said. “I would like to say that if you’re stopped by a black cop, you’re safe, but that’s not the truth.
“Every policeman is not bad,” she added. “But if it is your child, you can’t take that risk. You have to have ‘the talk,’ because they have to stay alive.”
The next time you want to be outraged that Darren Wilson is being pilloried in the court of public opinion (at least outside of the tea-bag world) remember that Michael Brown's mom had this talk with him and ask yourself if a young man who was about to start college and who had grown up hearing "the talk" would have instigated a fight with a white armed police officer.
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