1/3) Dear White People,

Do police demand you pay a “DIGNITY TAX?” This is a tax paid with your dignity when

you’re groped (stopped & frisked) w/o a crime;

asked questions where wrong answers get you shot;

OR asked to produce ID like you must carry an Apartheid pass-card https://twitter.com/attorneycrump/status/1306065772343631872

2/3) There’re moments in a police stop when it seems as if your self-respect is stolen as your dignity is being accosted—even before your Black body is threatened.

There’ve been times when the police demanded to know what I do for a living—as if your job justifies your humanity.

3/3) So often people assume that a police stop without a hashtag or a bruised body or still corpse is constitutional and moral.

After cursing me like trash, a police officer once reached for his gun—because I put on my glasses. I wasn’t shot, but my dignity was assaulted .

/PS)
I was nurtured by an old school grandmother. She wrote me letters as a tiny boy, addressed
Mr. (every letter of my full name), as if she were writing dignity on a Black boy’s soul. When I see Black youth disrespected by police, it’s a slap in the face to my grandmother.