New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday that the racial dynamics which cause black families to train young men to fear the police extend into his own household.
De Blasio, whose wife is black, said they’ve had to warn their son to be careful around police.
“We said, ‘look, if a police officer stops you, do everything he tells you to do, don’t move suddenly, don’t reach for your cell phone,’ because we knew, sadly, there’s a greater chance it might be misinterpreted if it was a young man of color,” de Blasio told ABC’s “This Week With George Stephanopoulos.”
“I’m just saying what people are actually experiencing and have been for decades. I’ve talked to a lot of families of color, well before this time, because I’ve said things like this before. And they’ve said to me over and over and over again that they appreciate someone finally acknowledging that they have that conversation with their sons.”
Protests over the treatment of black men by police have erupted after a series of incidents this year, including the fatal shootings of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland, along with the videotaped choking death of Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y.
De Blasio repeatedly refused to comment on a grand jury’s decision Wednesday not to charge the police officer involved in Garner’s death, saying he wanted to “respect the judicial process.
“This is something systemic. And we bluntly have to talk about the historic racial dynamics underlying this,” he said.
