When the Shoe Fits: Stories of My White Privilege (2)

One of the great advantages of white privilege is moving on. After Dontre Hamilton was killed in 2014, I was beside myself. It was unbelievable to me that a man could be sleeping in a public park one minute and be shot fourteen times the next, all within half a block of Milwaukee’s City Hall. I remember a city employee tell me she’d heard the shots and run to the window.

So after the shooting, I went down to Red Arrow Park and stood in front of the arrow sculpture where Dontre Hamilton, a Black man, had been sleeping before he was killed by a White Milwaukee Police officer. I just stood there. Then I went to several demonstrations led by Dontre’s brother Nate Hamilton at the park, standing in the back because there was always a heavy police presence around the perimeter that felt ominous and I wanted to be able to get to my car quickly. Then the gatherings at the park turned into marches down Wisconsin Avenue to the County Courthouse and then the Federal Building and when the marches started, I disappeared. I still followed everything, every development in the case against the police officer.

Maria Hamilton, Dontre’s mother, came to a mental health collaborative meeting a few months after the shooting and sat at my table, a couple of seats over from me. The topic was whether all officers in the Milwaukee Police Department should be required to complete crisis intervention training so they better understood how to deescalate situations rather than pull their weapons. Part of the diversion created by the Police Department to deflect criticism was that Dontre Hamilton was mentally ill; he was, although it stretches the imagination how the shooting cop would know that. Maria Hamilton stood up and spoke for twenty minutes – extemporaneously, no notes, no rambling – so clear and definite about the injustice that had been brought about with first the murder of her son and then the district attorney’s decision not to charge the police officer. I was awed and humbled and so fundamentally distressed by Dontre’s death and her heartbreak that I resolved to work and write and focus on the issue of racism and police brutality and be part of seeing substantive change in the Milwaukee Police Department. Which I did for a while.

And then I moved on.

I don’t remember what I moved on to, I just moved on. I had that luxury. I could let go of the issue or not. It was a thing I held in my hand. I put it down. And picked up another thing.

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I thought of this tonight watching a film that was made about the Dontre Hamilton case called The Blood is at the Doorstep. The film, which won awards at a couple of film festivals, is available on Amazon Prime and YouTube. You will learn about racism and police brutality but also about strength and resilience. It’s the American story right now.