This cannot keep happening

A traffic stop in Virgina illustrates everything wrong with American policing.

A few years ago, I saw a photo on Reddit showing an African-American mother and child buying waiting at the “colored” window at an ice cream stand. The person who posted the video said that in addition to having to wait in a separate line, black customers also had to wait until all of the white customers had been served before they could buy their ice cream.

I had already heard the horror stories about lynchings and cross-burnings in the Jim Crow South, and knew about segregated accommodations and businesses (very much a thing here in Nova Scotia, too) but for some reason this is what really drove home just how humiliating and demeaning it was for African-Americans trying to navigate this bullshit every day.

I thought about that when I saw the video of Lt. Caron Nazario’s encounter with hopped-up police officers in Virgina. Nazario thankfully wasn’t killed or seriously injured, as we saw with George Floyd’s and other African-Americans’ encounters with police, but it is a sad reminde…