We Matter

by Etan Thomas

  Once on the bus, Riley sat down next to me and said that he got nervous when he saw the policeman talking to Chris’s dad. I confessed to him that I was nervous too. Some of the other guys heard us and kind of gathered around. I reassured Riley that not all police are bad, and then I asked Darrien, one of our shooting guards, if he understood why I got so serious back in the store. He said, “Not really, I just figured you didn’t want us playing around in the store.” I told him yes, but that wasn’t the main reason. I explained how from the moment we walked into the store, the clerk and the other workers were watching our every move. They weren’t paying any attention to the other customers. Why were they paying so much attention to us? The boys all started shaking their heads and Malcolm said, “Just because we are Black they started watching us? That’s not right. We weren’t doing anything wrong.” I explained to the players that they will come across plenty of unfair situations and that they need to be aware that there are different rules for us sometimes, and that’s just how it is. They are not going to be able to get away with some of the things they may see their white friends getting away with.

  I asked them if they watched the 2016 Olympics and if they’d seen the story about the disgraced Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte. A few guys knew the story and a few didn’t, so I gave them the quick rundown: he was a twelve-time Olympic medalist who lied about being robbed and held at gunpoint with three other swimmers during the Rio Olympics. According to Brazilian authorities, the group tore up a gas station bathroom, urinated in public, threw punches at the security guards. But Ryan Lochte made up this big story about him being robbed at gunpoint and how he had to heroically escape. And do you know what happened to them? The International Olympic Committee (IOC) spokesman Mario Andrada released a statement on the situation that said: “I do not expect any apologies from [Lochte] or other athletes are needed. They were trying to have fun . . . Let’s give these kids a break. They made a mistake. It’s part of life. Life goes on.”

  Kids!!!! Ryan Lochte is in his thirties, but they said, “Oh, he’s just a kid.”

  Riley shook his head and said, “That’s just not fair. Why are we held to a different standard?” Others joined in shaking their heads.

  I said, “I got another example for you: Brock Turner.”

  Brock Turner was a Stanford University swimmer who happened to be white. Long story short, he was caught raping a woman behind a dumpster who was passed out, intoxicated. Although he was indicted on five charges—two for rape, two for felony sexual assault, and one for attempted rape—he ended up only actually serving three months. Now, compare that to some of the guys I work with in DC prisons with Free Minds Book Club, a nonprofit group that helps youth offenders. Some of them are locked up for possession of a teaspoon of weed. For being at the wrong place at the wrong time. For getting into a fight.

  I told the boys all about Turner and about my own situation with a substitute teacher in my high school Spanish class. I had been sick all day. In the middle of an uncontrollable coughing spell, I asked to go get a drink of water. To my surprise she replied, “No, you can’t, now go sit down and stop disturbing the class.” I asked again and she again she refused my request. Now, what I should have done was collect myself and calmly ask her if I could go to the nurse since I wasn’t feeling well, because she couldn’t legally deny me the right to go to the nurse. But I didn’t do that. I allowed my emotions to take over and I said in an elevated voice, “Look, lady, I don’t know what the devil your problem is, but I need to get a drink of water and I’ma get my drink of water.”

  Ms. Kimrey began to put together a report on me, adding every offense she could possibly think of. She said she felt threatened, that I was disruptive and even made an aggressive advance toward her. She used the word “terrified” somewhere in there. As a result, I was suspended for two days.

  Was this fair? Of course not. Was it blown way out of proportion? Yes, it definitely was. But did I put myself in a position where they could throw the book at me because of my rash decision-making and failure to control my emotions? Yes, I definitely did. I was focused on winning the battle instead of winning the greater war. Was this the last time I was in a situation where I should focus on the war over the battle? No. I told the players that they have to understand that we simply can’t do what other people do. “If you follow some of your stupid classmates into doing some sort of petty crime, you will go to jail, period,” I told them. “You won’t get a slap on the wrist.” The system is not set up to be fair to us, and the quicker they learned that, the clearer they’d be that we are held to different standards. And again, it’s not how it should be, it’s just the way it is.

  We discussed the killing of twelve-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, Ohio, how even though police dispatchers were made aware that the “pistol” the boy was waving was probably fake—which it in fact was—Officer Timothy Loehmann, within moments of arriving on the scene, fired shots at Rice. He didn’t yell at Rice to drop the gun or anything. I kept saying to the boys that it was a TOY GUN. Now look at Dylann Roof, a young white man who murdered nine Black people in a church—but guess what, the police took him alive. Of course this isn’t fair, and yes, there are people like myself who protested vigorously.

  Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins wore a Justice for Tamir Rice shirt on the football field. I told the boys how the Cleveland police got upset at Hawkins because in their eyes, the policemen did nothing wrong. No policemen were charged with any crime for killing Tamir. I explained that the point of me telling them all this is that we can’t do what other people do, and that the first objective is always personal safety. I also wanted to show them how athletes can use their voices to speak out about the injustice that happens.

  They all dropped their heads and were soaking in everything I was telling them.

  My proud AAU team the Dynamic Disciples after we won a tournament.

  Later that summer, I brought the entire team to a panel discussion. They got to hear specific steps they should take when encountering the police. We had Raphael Grant, the deputy chief of police for Prince George’s County there to speak to them. I have been skeptical in the past of having policemen at these panel discussions because, depending on the officer, the entire event can quickly go south. However, Officer Grant was very honest, open, and direct. He said that he would never attempt to justify what another policeman did if he didn’t think that they were in the right. The problem is, you don’t have any control over which policeman you encounter, so you have to always remember that the number-one goal is to get home safely. Unfortunately, even when you do everything right, a situation can still end in tragedy. Like the case of Philando Castile.

  Interview with Valerie Castile

  (Mother of Philando Castile)

  Etan: You are doing a lot more speaking to youth these days. What are some of the messages you are telling them?

  Valerie Castile: Well, Governor [Mark] Dayton spoke the truth after my son was killed . . . If my son was white, he wouldn’t have been killed. He talked about the apparent racial bias that exists in the world today. He also said that it was a violation of state law that anyone is treated differently because of their race or the color of their skin. He said it was a violation of what he stood for and said that he would do everything he possibly can to put an end to that, and I appreciate him for saying that because he was absolutely right. My son would still be here if he was white. Same scenario, same situation, same everything . . . It’s always a difference in how the police treat Black people and how they treat white people, and young people have to know that going in so that they are not under some false, fairy-tale assumption that they will be treated the same. They have to do things differently.

  Etan: That’s such a difficult pill for so much of mainstream America to swallow because they can’t fathom that there is a difference in how we are treated. They actually think that we are playing by the same rules.

  Castile: No, we definitely are not. Le
t me tell you about my son, Philando, and the type of person he was. What happened to him was so devastating to his friends, my family, me, because of the way that he was. You never, ever would have thought that he would be killed by a person that was supposed to protect and serve our citizens.

  Etan: Can you talk a bit more about who he was?

  Castile: Philando was such a wonderful human being. And I’m not just saying that because I am his mother, you can ask the people who knew him. I never had to defend his character or defend his behavior. I never had to go to school because of something he did . . . He didn’t bother anyone, he hasn’t so much as had a fight. You barely have heard him raise his voice. He went about things the right way. He wanted to carry a gun, so he purchased it legally . . . He started working when he was thirteen years old when Michael Jordan became popular. He said he wanted a pair of the Jordans and I said, “There is no way on earth I am gonna spend that much money on some shoes,” and he said, “No, I . . . I would work for them.” That’s the kind of person he always was . . .

  Right after he graduated, he filled out an application for St. Paul public schools, and they hired him, and he worked as a nutrition aid. And he loved what he was doing. He started doing that at nineteen and kept doing that for the next thirteen years. He became a supervisor and was liked by everyone. My son was the man of the house. We were a single-parent home, and he took on responsibilities that he probably shouldn’t have had to take on at a young age. But he understood the principles and the importance of having the character of being a man, and he took that role very seriously. He understood the importance of your good name, and that’s why he didn’t do things that would ruin his good name or the family’s good name. He was very, very principled . . . He maintained a level of respect from the people around him, even the people who weren’t doing all the rights things. Everybody respected him.

  There were a lot of things that I didn’t know about my son. I didn’t know the extent of how great and wonderful he really was. He was always great and wonderful to me, but after he was killed, I found out how much he meant to the community and how much he really did for those kids he worked with. He didn’t brag about all the stuff he did so I didn’t know about it. For instance . . . he had over five hundred different kids that he worked with and he knew each one of their names and their allergies. He knew who couldn’t have milk, who couldn’t eat gluten, who couldn’t have peanuts. Five hundred different kids—he memorized all of their allergies because he cared about them and it was important to him. He wasn’t doing this job just to pick up a check; he cared for these kids. He would wait on the kids who had disabilities and help them off the bus.

  Etan: I remember seeing all of the people at the school rallying for him. In the school district’s statement, an unnamed coworker said your son was smart and “overqualified” for his position, yet still took his job seriously. He said, “Kids loved him . . . He was quiet, respectful, and kind. I knew him as warm and funny.” He wore a shirt and tie to his supervisor interview and said his goal was to one day “sit on the other side of this table.”

  Castile: Yeah, I saw so many accounts and people speaking that way about my son. It really made me proud as a mother. I always was proud of my son, but it made me even prouder . . . It was like, Look what I raised.

  Etan: When you go and speak to young people at different places, what are some of your other messages to them?

  Castile: I tell kids that they need to take their education seriously because that’s your ticket out. In whatever you want to do in life, you have to get your education. People will take advantage of people who don’t know. The police will take advantage of people who don’t know their rights. You’re in sports—agents will take advantage of people who don’t know or understand how to read their contracts . . .

  That’s why young people have to be careful and be educated and take their education seriously. It’s not cool to not know. Knowing could save your life. You gotta know that this system is set up for you to fail . . . And once you are under that rule of thumb, and in the system, everything just becomes ten times as hard . . . You will be treated differently than white people, and my son is a prime example of that different treatment.

  Etan: Do you think we have enough role models out there for young people?

  Castile: Of course we have enough, but too many of our young people want to listen to the negativity. There are plenty of positive athletes like yourself doing the right thing, out there doing great things with their foundations and speaking on different things in the media and being a good example for young people to follow, but they wanna pay attention to the foolishness . . . I have always told my kids that the thought is the cause of it all. The things that are planted in your head—if you feed that into your spirit, you will grow up to be just that . . . Look, my son, who was a good person, was killed by a cop and everyone from the governor on down to all the white people from my son’s school are being vocal about how the cop overreacted when my son didn’t do anything wrong . . .

  Now, I told you the facts of what happened. The governor agrees it was wrong, congressmen and politicians have all come out publicly and said it was wrong, newspapers and columnists have said it was wrong, public figures like the Minnesota Lynx WNBA players all publicly said it was wrong—all of these people agree that what happened to my son was wrong. But is the cop charged with murder? No, he is charged with second-degree manslaughter. So he may go to jail, he may not. I spoke with the Department of Justice, the BCA, and ABC, I talked to everyone, and they all told me that even though you know it was a murder . . . it’s almost nearly impossible to get a murder conviction for a police officer.

  This is not a system for us. And my son didn’t do anything wrong. My son did everything right. He trusted his mother—I told him to tell them people that he had the gun, and that’s exactly what got my son murdered. He didn’t say it in an aggressive manner or making a threat . . . When he got his license, they give you instructions on what to do if you get stopped by the police—to let them know you have a registered weapon. But it didn’t matter . . . My son would never do anything to jeopardize that woman and that baby. He loved them both with all of his heart, they were his everything.

  So, you ask me what I tell young people. If they will kill my son and he did nothing wrong, you can’t afford to even try to do anything even remotely wrong and think you are going to get away with your life. Not get away with it, but get away with your life. We have different rules. We can’t do what they do. So keep doing your panels and keep using athletes to try to influence these kids, because they need to be told the truth and be educated on how this system works.

  Interview with Chris Webber

  One weekend, we had a team car-wash fund-raiser at an ExxonMobil gas station. It was a great event, especially for some of our new players. I am old school, I don’t believe in giving young people anything. I believe they will appreciate it more when they work for it.

  Everything was going well until a man who happened to be white came up to Nichole and said that these kids were not supposed to be there and he was going to call the police. A little while later, the owner of the Exxon called me and told me the guy actually did call the police to report us.

  This man saw a bunch of Black kids doing something positive and assumed they were, what, up to no good? Illegally there? Harassing people? It’s sad that an AAU team can’t even do a fund-raising event without being confronted with the harsh reality that they live in a society that will always suspect them of some type of wrongdoing, but it was an important lesson for them about how they will be treated and looked upon for the rest of their lives.

  Another lesson for the guys came one day after practice. I was driving Malcolm and his teammate Camar home when we saw flashing lights behind us, followed by a siren. I saw their eyes grow wide with fear and told them to relax, take a deep breath, and sit back.

  I pulled over and turned off the music. I put my phone on record and set it
in my cup holder facing the window. I took my wallet out of my pocket and put it on the console. I rolled down all the windows and put my hands on the steering wheel. As one policeman walked up to my window, his partner shined his flashlight from the opposite side of the car into Camar’s face and then around the inside of the car. The first police officer said to me, “License and registration.”

  I replied in a very clear voice, “My registration is in my glove compartment, is it okay if I get it?”

  He said yes and I slowly reached toward my glove compartment as his partner shined his light on my hand the entire time.

  I then said, “My license is on my console, is it okay if I reach for it and take it out of my wallet?”

  He said yes, and I slowly moved my hands toward the console and retrieved my license.

  The officer took the information and went back to his car. I could see so many different emotions in Malcolm’s face. Confusion, fear, concern. I looked back at Camar and saw the same. I asked them if they were all right and they both nodded their heads. I again told them to take a deep breath, to relax, and that everything was going to be okay.

  After about ten minutes, the policemen returned. He gave me my license and registration and informed me that I had a taillight that was out and handed me a piece of paper and said I had ten days to get it fixed. Then he said, “Have a good night,” and left.