Upshaw: Black Lives Matter’s ‘reservoir of rage’ is misdirected on SPD ‘bunker’

It was difficult to watch Monday’s contentious proceedings for funding of the new police station that opponents have called a “bunker.” I don’t think there is a city in America that is more amenable philosophically to the Black Lives Matter movement.

The problem I keep running up against is that those who are most vocally opposed are arguing their points against the wrong thing.

For instance, these arguments would be more applicable if this were a funding bill for police training and that got slashed. So, imagine there was to be $100 million going toward racial sensitivity training program and, all of a sudden, that was chopped to $10 million. The Black Lives Matter movement would be rightfully outraged. BLM is against police being biased against people of color and that would be a specific situation where a helpful program was being cut for budget reasons. This sort of protest would make perfect sense there.

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In this police precinct scenario, though, you’re talking about a building that has nothing, necessarily, to do with whether there is racial injustice or whether black lives matter or don’t matter. It’s simply the building itself.

Scrutiny of the people who use that building, of course, is a different conversation for a different day. The city council is not voting on what training the cops get or how the city plans to mirror the community with racial diversity.

Here’s what all of this says to me: There is so much pent up rage and injustice in the Black Lives Matter movement and there aren’t enough outlets to express it. As white people, I think we need to recognize that. Sometimes when someone has so much energy beneath the surface and there are no outlets, it can come out at inopportune times. That’s what I think is going on here.

As we’ve discussed during multiple roundtable discussions, the reality of being a person of color means feeling like you’re treated unfairly, or “hunted” by police, or that you know people who are hassled by police, or hearing constant stories of people being killed by police simply for being black or being pulled over for “driving while black.” There is this reservoir of rage and it’s coming out in a venue that is not exactly aligned. And that’s unfortunate.