Tyreek Hill forgot one thing during his detainment with the violently overzealous police who stopped him for a traffic citation. He forgot about the talk.
Many Black Americans have gotten the talk. It comes from parents, siblings or friends. When I was stopped by police a few years ago, the talk rang in my head like a bell. A police officer started following me and did so for about five minutes. Knowing I was going to get stopped, I got my documents out of my compartment, already neatly stacked together, and put them in the passenger seat.
Flashing lights. Cop said my inspection sticker had expired. It had. It was the pandemic. I was barely leaving my house, let alone getting my car inspected. The officer understood and told me to get it done soon. But before she spoke, I had rolled my window down. Put my hands on the wheel to show I wasn’t a threat. I told the officer: I’m unarmed. There are no weapons in the car.
My mom had taught me all these things years before. The talk. It was in my head during every moment of that encounter.
Again, there was another traffic stop. This time, the officer, a different one in a different state, admitted he clocked me doing just 5 mph over the speed limit. In the car with me was a white woman in the passenger seat. She began talking back to the officer, complaining about why we were being stopped for such a minor infraction.
I lightly tapped her on the knee. She stopped. She’d never gotten the talk before. She didn’t need it.
Again, as the officer spoke, hands on the wheel…check. ID and insurance out and available…check. No reaching. No sudden movement. Check. Telling the officer I’m unarmed. Check.
Those are the rules for Black Americans. That’s the talk. That’s the training.
In that moment, Hill forgot that.
The talk doesn’t guarantee safety. There have been instances of Black drivers cooperating and police are still aggressive. There’s research that shows Black drivers are more likely to be stopped by police than their white peers. That could mean more chances for things to go wrong.
No, the talk guarantees nothing, but it increases the odds of keeping things calm.
To be clear – to be extremely clear – none of this is Hill’s fault. Plenty of non-Black drivers mouth off to cops and don’t get tossed to the ground and cuffed. Or don’t roll down their windows. Or refuse to comply. There are videos of these types of encounters everywhere. Literally everywhere.
The ‘don’t tread on me people’ get extremely tread-y when the treaded don’t look like them. The ‘just comply people’ probably don’t comply themselves.
Hill did not deserve to be treated like that, but he forgot. He absolutely forgot. That talk.
I’d be genuinely stunned if Hill never got that talk. I’ve never met a Black person who didn’t.
In that moment, Hill thought he was a wide receiver for the Miami Dolphins. He wasn’t. Hill was a Black man and the rules are different. That’s one of the main points of the talk. Police, I was always told, will either try to put you in your place, or put you in the ground.
The talk tells you to never forget that.
Hill seems to now understand this. At a press conference on Wednesday, he explained if he had to do it all over again, he would have behaved differently.
‘Now, does that give them the right to beat the dog out of me?’ he said. ‘No.’
No, it doesn’t, but the talk is designed to avoid that. Its purpose is to keep you safe. It’s to get you away from the encounter intact. To deescalate in advance. To keep you alive. Because the talk, which is based on decades, if not centuries of police encounters with Black Americans, knows. It knows how the police act towards us. No, not all police, but a lot. A whole lot.
The talk is a tool based on love and protection. It’s a safety measure. It’s something Hill should never, ever forget again.