What Is My Breaking Point?

I don’t know, but it can’t be now

It’s been a surreal year, hasn’t it? In many ways, I feel as though I am living in a bad dream.

I already started the year behind. I lost my job in early 2019 and still haven’t found another one. That was something I never thought would happen. Yet, it’s been OK overall. On the day I found out they were closing my office, I looked at the worst-case scenarios. I knew I could handle them.

Some may think a year and five months without a job is the worst-case scenario, but it’s not even close. There is no aspect of this situation that I believe I cannot handle. Even if I can never find another job, I will survive. But I still believe a job will come.

Then came the pandemic. Who would have ever expected that to happen? The idea that almost the whole world would shut down and a virus would keep us in isolation in our homes? It had never entered the realm of possibility to me. That’s unusual in itself. I have always had an over-active imagination, so you would have thought my mind would have taken me there at some point. But no, it hadn’t.

Still, it was not difficult for me. I isolated on my own, and I had electricity, food, internet, and books. I could have lasted even longer without stress to myself. My 82-year-old mom wouldn’t stay home, though. She went to Walmart every day. Not because she needed to shop. It was “boring” at home. I felt as though I had a rebellious teenager. Our governor finally helped me with our stay in place order. I told her she would be arrested if she went out needlessly.

A relative in Wales was one of the first to get COVID there, and I certainly was concerned about him, even though I hadn’t seen him for many years. Still, he was important to me, and the idea of him in a coma for so long, his heart stopping twice during the ordeal, scared me. He has since left the hospital after five crazy weeks and is recovering at home. His doctors said he was as sick as one could get.

I read everything I could get my hands on about this virus. I love stories of people’s lives, so I read them, and my heart broke continuously for the stories of the lives our world has lost. So many amazing people taken from us, and the knowledge that it will continue for a while is horrifying. I continue to mourn for them.

But even this situation, I knew I could bear. How much blame can you put on a disease? It exists because it does, and hits those it hits. I have gotten angry at people who put personal freedom above the health of others, but even that I understand. We don’t like people telling us what to do, there were a lot of mixed messages, and so many don’t live with much thought beyond the present. This was all new to us, and people don’t have a game plan for it. Plus, many were saying this was much like the flu. Who spends a lot of time worrying about that?

But then George Floyd’s death happened. He was accused of passing a counterfeit $20 bill. Certainly not the most severe of offenses, yet an officer went to the car, pulled his gun, and asked him to put his hands where they could see them.

Granted, Mr. Floyd had been convicted and served time, but that was years in the past, and from what I can tell, this arrest was all about the counterfeit bill. All accounts said he had moved to Minneapolis to work to support his children.

As a white woman, I have been pulled over in my car by officers several times. Speeding, tail light out, that sort of thing. Never has a gun been pulled on me. Never have I ever been asked to get out of the car.

In fact, as a female, I have been told if I feel threatened (such as one male officer and me on a dark road late at night), I can drive to a safer area where I would not be as scared. I’ve heard some disagreement on whether this is true, but if I were frightened and something tweaked my senses, I just may do it. I wouldn’t expect to die as a result of that decision.

Several police officers were on the scene with Mr. Floyd, who was restrained by handcuffs. They said he wouldn’t get in the police car. The solution? The officer puts his knee in the man’s neck. Isn’t the point there to cut off respiration? That was that officer’s choice for a possible $20 counterfeit bill that was still in his possession.

Mr. Floyd told four officers he is having problems breathing, and the officer doing it continues? The other officers don’t intervene?

Mr. Floyd dies.

Let’s remember the charge — a potential $20 counterfeit bill at a store that Floyd frequented. He was not a stranger to them. An employee was horrified when he saw the treatment of him and called the owner, who told him to call the police on the police.

I don’t know about you, but if someone gives me a counterfeit $20 bill, I am quite sure I will not know it. If a clerk at a store gave it back to me, I might take it to the bank to get it verified as counterfeit, but chances are I would try to use it again. (Or that would have been how I would have handled it before all of this.)

I am certainly naive, but I would not expect to be arrested. If I was, I suspect I would have a lot of questions and would probably appear belligerent. Or slow-moving and terrified. I wouldn’t understand going to the station.

I know police officers make mistakes every day. They are human. But how can people deny they seem to make more human mistakes with blacks than whites? How can we look at the conviction records and the sentences passed out and believe our justice system is indeed providing justice?

I attended the citizen’s academy at our local police station. I went through a simulation where you were put into different situations and had to decide what you would do in that situation. I had a laser gun that I could shoot if necessary.

I was killed in the very first scenario — a routine traffic stop. I did not use my gun, and as the woman was getting her license out of her purse, her boyfriend (a passenger in the car) jumped out of the car and shot me before I could react. I hadn’t paid any attention to him.

As we discussed that scenario later, I knew I would not have done anything differently, given the same circumstances again. What are the chances that would happen? But this exercise did serve to help me understand the fear that a police officer could feel.

Even so, this was not that scenario here. Mr. Floyd was not resisting arrest in the video I saw. Possibly he did resist getting in the police car and going to the station. But was a gun being pulled on him and a trip to the station even necessary for a $20 counterfeit bill? If he was angry, can we blame him?

All of the anger that has sprung up over the country isn’t just about George Floyd. The videos of him, though, were a catalyst for remembering a lot of past injustices.

For years I have been concerned about the treatment my black friends encounter not just from the police but people in general. I was oblivious for years, but as they shared their truths as they happened, I started paying attention. They started showing it to me in action. While shopping, they were watched as though they were criminals while I was treated as a wanted customer. Or I was also watched because I was with them.

Racism is not alright. I was always told that if I was in trouble, to find a police officer. That was where I would find safety. My black friends live in fear that their children and grandchildren will encounter the police. They aren’t comfortable giving that same advice to their children. I understand. I am not sure I would give it these days either.

My buddy Sherry McGuinn challenged me to discuss my breaking point.

Having no job will never break me. Neither will a disease that is attacking our population that I only have a limited ability to avoid. I will stay informed on what I can do to prevent it and especially how to prevent passing it on to someone who may be immunocompromised. It may kill me, but I would fight it to the end.

But something as illogical as systemically treating people differently because of the color of their skin — something none of us control in our lives? Something as crazy as people who hate and are threatened by people because of how they were designed at birth? I don’t understand it even a little bit.

What devastates me is that I can’t figure out how we change something so insidious, and that gets hidden and dismissed with a pat of the hand.

Martin Luther King, Jr. said, “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”

It horrifies me that this judgment was ever in our country, but that it is an issue that we still face? Dr. King was concerned about his kids. How horrified would he have been that his grandchild is still judged by her skin color? I am horrified, too.

I want everyone to meet my friends and understand the brilliance they bring to the world. But we’re still miles away from that making a big enough difference.

What is my breaking point? I am not sure, but I know this. I will not break now. As long as I have breath, I will fight for justice. I will fight for equality. How do we get rid of the hate and replace it with love? I’m not entirely sure. But I will try to increase the love and fight and expose the hate. We have to keep trying. Together.

I hope I see a time when we celebrate the differences in our skin tones and the beauty of our creation is not a reason for hate and fear. But right now, that is just a dream. Inside it breaks me. But not completely. I will stand in front of my friends. We have reserves that have not yet been tapped. Look out. We’re not stopping or hiding.