“A walk in the park” can no longer be used to describe simplicity if you’re black. This dose of reality comes after a Black father shares his unfortunate and inferiorating experience, where security was notified of a “‘suspicious man’ walking on the bike path with a baby” while he pushed his son in a stroller in a Washington, D.C., area park.
Donald Sherman, a black lawyer based in D.C., described the entire ordeal in a Facebook post. On Thursday he stayed home with his son, Caleb, who had a fever. He wanted Caleb to get some fresh air, so they went for a walk in Kingman and Heritage Island Park, close to their home.
“Thirty minutes into our stroll I got flagged by a security officer in one of those cars marked ‘Special Police’ on the side,” Sherman wrote. “I was a bit confused as to whether she was looking for me to stop but she honked twice and pulled over so I got the picture.
“She told me that she received a complaint from someone who said there was a ‘suspicious man’ walking on the bike path with a baby. She said that when the complainant was asked to describe my race, she declined.
“Nevertheless, this person, a white lady on a bike who veered off as Caleb and I were walking in her direction, saw fit to report me to security.”
“If this complaint had been made to a different security officer or an actual cop, things could have gone very differently,” he wrote.
“This is exactly why we have to talk about white privilege and why Black lives matter.
“Because at any point doing any thing anywhere my safety and my child’s safety could been in jeopardy because some well intentioned complaint.”
In my opinion….there was no Well Intention possible when reporting someone for absolutely no reason at all, especially while seeing the state that our country is in when it comes to racial injustice and divide.
