Could Diamond Reynolds be the Rosa Parks of Our Times?
Despite the amount of melanin in your skin, the video footage Diamond Reynolds was able to courageously record is insanely shocking and a bold move, when you have a gun aimed in your direction by a scared and frantic police officer, who knows he just !@#$ed up, and I use that term, not for a lack of better terminology, but because it is the most befitting term. Of course the police station and legal system and every institution that entity is tied to, will never see it that way, as there’s always some loophole and we are after all talking about a black person’s life. Furthermore, as insane as it was, that camera –live action footage –probably saved her and her daughter’s life. I say that because when black people are signaled by the police to pull over, there is an unspoken rule –instinctive even, to pull over where there can be witnesses, anywhere that you are not isolated will do. In a situation where there are no witnesses, a camera on a cell phone would do nicely, provided the police officer allows it. How she came about recording in that heinous situation is anyone’s guess.
Diamond Reynolds may not be as poised or as serious or refined as Rosa Parks was, but she definitely has her candor and will. What she has done is profound, to garner strength when she should have been afraid, in fear of her life and that of her daughters. What would the average person have done in her situation, when you have your child in the back seat and your fiancé or significant other has just been shot. Would you be reactionary or take flight, would you plea for your child’s life and your own, there are so many variables, so many ways this situation could have gone. She did it best, and in exposing this injustice, she not only saved her life and her daughter’s life –but how many others as well, with the simple knowledge of this, -that this goes on, this happens, this is real. It’s not just an isolated case, it’s one of so many. How many lives did she touch, and in a more profound way than Rosa Parks did so long ago, and in a more profound way than your average news anchor. She showed America a real and personal account of the police brutality blacks, African-Americans and people of African origin experience so often. Unlike Rosa, her actions weren’t an act of rebellion, but survival. She like Rosa, stood up, took action…
The major difference is, Rosa had Martin Luther King, Jr. to support her, to rally behind her and start a movement, a movement that we seemingly need to revamp. When you look at our African American men in leadership positions, I don’t know, our commander in chief for example, it hurts to question why Diamond Reynolds doesn’t attract or garner that same support. Maybe history doesn’t repeat itself, maybe it just echoes. Please don’t miss my point.
