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A “Blue Lives Matter” Moment Gone to Waste
At Dollar General….
So I’m in line in my Red State / Red Small Town Dollar General yesterday (the day after the Rayshard Brooks assassination), and the man ahead of me notices that the kid ahead of him has a toy policeman. We’re all 6 feet apart, but in a red town / state, all us white people are kinfolks, according to the manual.
“I see you’ve got a policeman,” the man ahead of me says. “I used to be a policeman myself.”
Silence from the kid, his father, and myself.
“I sure wouldn’t want to be one now,” he continued.
This is the point at which I should have upbraided him for his closet racism. Or the father should have expressed sympathy. But I just wanted to buy my cat food and go home. And the father wasn’t listening for a dog whistle.
I said nothing. The guy ahead of me and his kid said nothing. The cashier said nothing. We didn’t care about the retired policeman’s sanctimonious nostalgia. We just wanted to go home, or process the next transaction.
The retired cop didn’t respond to our silence. He had made his point, I suppose. Perhaps he took our lack of interest as an affirmation.
But we kept on. The man and his small boy made their purchases and left. I bought my cat food and left. The…
