OPEN LETTER TO SHERRIFF MIKE LEWIS

The following letter was written privately by Joshua Miller to the Sheriff Mike Lewis but is being published publicly because its content contributes to our nation’s discussion of these issues.

Dear Sheriff Mike Lewis,

I feel compelled for some reason to address your facebook comments regarding the Baltimore players kneeling during the national anthem in protest of police brutality. You should know before I proceed, that I respect law enforcement, I have been a part of federal law enforcement for my entire career, my family and friends are in law enforcement, and they are always in my prayers. I write this email to you because I am not sure that you understood what you implied throughout your FB post or truly appreciate the history that has brought these players to their knees.
You start your post by calling the players “self-proclaimed underprivileged” black power activist—which is another way of calling them “uppity.” This loaded term carries with it the false assumption that just because these NFL players make more money than most of the people watching them, that they have no reason to speak out about the injustices within their community. Officer, this shows a scary level of ignorance on your part. For the African American community, we always rely on people with a platform to speak for those in our community that do not have a voice. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was a middle-class preacher, and the people he marched with did not come from the poor black areas of the South. They were teachers, doctors, lawyers, not exclusively of course, but they were our leaders with a platform. They too were derisively described as uppity. These individuals, just like NFL players today, had it better than most black people, and honestly had it better than some poor whites economically. However, they spoke for the entire community because African Americans share a “linked fate” mindset. This mindset means we always connect the injustice that occurs to one of us– to all of us—because next time it could be us victimized by state-sponsored violence. This linked fate concept crosses class and geographical lines within our community which means a rich black man like Kaepernick on the west coast will be outraged about the killing of Eric Gardner, a poorer black man on the east coast. Its this linked fate mindset that sent Harriet Tubman, one of America’s greatest heroes, back to the south to rescue slaves. It’s a basic recognition that an injustice against someone’s else son today could be an injustice against my daughters tomorrow. Sir, whether you are aware of it or not, this “uppity” reference is racist and beneath the dignity of the office you hold.

You also mentioned the fact that the Baltimore homicide rate is very high and described it in graphic terms. But this reference to the Baltimore homicide rate has several false assumptions, ignores historical context and is part of a long line of racial justification for the mistreatment of African Americans. It ignores the fact that black people in this country endured 244 years of slavery, followed by 78 years of segregation and being lynched, followed by a brief period of civil rights laws that were followed by 32 years of mass incarceration and being redlined into ghettos. This makes up almost the entirety of African American history in this nation. In between that time, the government waged war on drugs in the black community which is noticeably different than how the government is now handling our nation’s drug problems today in our rural areas. This means that the government responded to the issues affecting black people, a group that has suffered historic oppression, with swat teams, while responding to issues affecting rural communities with social and healthcare workers. I say all that to remind you that black people did not pick themselves up from Africa, drop themselves off in ghettos and start killing each other. The problems that you highlighted in our community, such as homicides and violence, is tied directly to the how the state and federal government responded to the crisis of unemployment and drug addictions in our community. This means any protest against the police is not directed at the brave individual police officers that risk their lives for us every day. These protests are against an unjust system in which the police is continuously used as a pawn to carry out historically unfair practices.

But your comment about the Baltimore homicide rate has a more serious problem and that is—it is an implicit justification for police brutality against black people. Since the 1660s when slavery was racialized, there has always been attempt to justify the mistreatment of black people by explicitly and implicitly endorsing the idea of their inherent or cultural propensity for violence. When over 3,000 African Americans were lynched and shot and burned to death in post-reconstruction, it was all justified by the idea that blacks are dangerous even to their own. This ideology is the very definition of racism because we do not ask white males to carry the burden of crimes committed by other white males. So when you bring up the homicide rate as a response to the protest against police brutality, you are saying that all black people, like Philando Castille, deserve whatever happens because some black people commit crimes.

Lastly, on this point, African American civil rights groups, leaders, and athletes do speak up and out about violence in our community. But the issue of police brutality is about accountability. When someone in our community is accused of a violent crime, they are arrested, they lose their job, and most of the time they are convicted. The protest you see in the NFL is about the police officers that face no accountability even when they commit egregious acts like shooting into the car with a five-year-old child sitting in the back seat.

Lastly, you finish your ‘well thought’ out crafted statement by mentioning African American’s “perceived inequities” and that anyone can succeed in this country if they get off their butts and work for it. Throughout this email, I have tried to give you the benefit of the doubt and simply believe your comments reflect a lack of knowledge of our history and struggle for equality. However, this last statement is dripping with racial stereotypes. Your implication is very clear—black people are where they are because they are lazy and any inequalities they suffer is only perceived or made up. Once I read this statement, I wondered out loud if I should even respond to you because its possible that you are willfully ignorant or just a plain racist. However, it dawned on me that a lot of people think like you do, not out of racism, but because they can’t make the connection between our history and our present.

So I will make that connection for you. Our country is about 230 years old. Let’s break that up. African Americans spent about 75 years (1788-1863) out of those 230 years as slaves. This means that African Americans spent about 32 percent of our history as slaves. For almost another 78 years (1877-1850s), African Americans suffered under segregation, being lynched, being killed for no other reason than being in the wrong neighborhood and suffered from racially motivated violent mobs. This period makes up almost 33 percent of our history and when combined with slavery—it means almost 66 percent of American history is comprised of either black people being held legally as slaves or legally hung from trees for crimes as little as looking too uppity. From 1970s to around the early 2000s, black people suffered under a white backlash which manifested itself in the form of mass incarceration and the war on drugs. This period makes up about 13 percent of our history. When combined with the previous periods, Black people has spent almost 80 percent of American history either as slaves, legally lynched and segregated against or being round up by the police in mass incarceration raid. This is not a perceived inequity. These are real experiences by African Americans that are so painful that black millionaires are willing to risk their jobs to take a knee during a national ceremony.

I will finish this email by saying this. My name is Joshua Miller, and I went to High school in Salisbury Maryland, I played football for James M. Bennett High school. While I spent most of life outside of Salisbury except for the brief stint in high school, I still carry a lot of concern and hope for that city. It concerns me that as the Sheriff of this city, you lack the discipline or desire to educate yourself on these issues. I am sure we have different thoughts on the issues affecting this country. But I think our country is in trouble because our political and civil servants act impulsively, speak and tweet without giving proper weight to the consequences of their words and lack the basic empathy necessary to draw upon everything that truly makes us great as a nation. Ultimately people of all races and political stripes are looking for civil servants that are honest, fair and competent. Your Facebook post demonstrated none of that.

With that said, I have been trying my hardest to bridge the gap between our community and the police over the last several years. I would love an opportunity to speak with you and your fellow officers about these issues. I can understand at the base level how police officers must feel under attack–especially given that most police officers do their job, never get thanked for it, have a boss that likely annoys them and catch heat for every mistake. At a human level, it has to be frustrating for all police officers to be typecast based on the actions of just a few. Coincidentally, these are the burdens that every African American carry every single day. But I think we have to resist the temptation to continue to run to our respective corners, lash out at each other on social media and allow these problems to persist. Instead, we need a concrete action plan this is predicated first on understanding and appreciating the historical context to this struggle–and then coming up with practical solutions for improving the safety for the community, for officers and society as a whole.