The Scholarship of Police Brutality

“Write your member of Congress”, “Write your mayor”, “Write your state representative”

Police in five countries have racially profiled me, even during my Honeymoon

I am just glad when I was, it ended with words and not with wounds

And not with writhing, And not with wrenching, And not with withering,

And not withdrawal from all I hold Dear

So has it my wife, sister, dad, and mother

My race, my religion knows no sanctuary from the Long History and Geography of the Ignorant, Ignoble, and Infamous

I have been told if I go outside a city’s outskirts, I will be killed as a terrorist

My dad was told if he goes out days after 9/11, that he will be attacked because of how he looks

as if a benevolent warning

Now you ask me to write Them (They Don’t Acknowledge Me so I Don’t Them)

begging to give me what I am entitled

Why do I need to ask for what ought be free and unconditional?

Do You? Do You Need Their Consent to even Commiserate?

“What evidence-based approaches are out there to reduce police brutality?”

That is what you ask

I ask how I will raise my daughter

so loving, so good, so happy, so innocent

the daughter of a Copt and Chinese

In this, THIS

A system designed to ostracize her simply because we are her parents

You have the luxury to treat this as an academic exercise

I have the reality of enduring its structures, strictures, and its senselessness

We, Academics, wonder why no one listens

On climate change, On technology policy, And Now police brutality

That’s because WE DON’T

not even to those amongst us who know this as people, and not as data points

When you begin a dialog with a directive

or even a recommendation of how to despair,

however innocent,

you assume you know my story

you assume this for me is desensitized of tears, tribulation, and turmoil

or even worse, you assume you know them, even when you say you don’t

Forgive me, but Dr. So-and-So (You don’t Acknowledge Me so I Don’t You)

you do NOT speak for me

your very words only remind and restrict and therefore I revile

because ultimately, your research in the guise of rigor asks me to trust that which dehumanizes me

Go back to your Ivory Tower and philosophize and pontificate on your own

At least then your words don’t have impact

Thankfully they don’t

Because if implemented, my story likely ends in death rather than mere derision

I AM DONE, DONE with your theories, constructs, and models

You are not speaking truth to power, empirical, scientific or otherwise; You are only speaking the truth OF power

Until you and they recognize me as a person,

I see your words as flimsy and worthless as the abstractions and measures that derive them

But maybe listen to my canvas first

Before you Go back to Your Drawing Board

And likely even then, your work is shoddy Art

But at least you will Know that Rather than Pretending that you Proffer Any Sort of Objectivity, or even Science