On July 7th, at approximately 7:30 pm, Eastern time, I was having an ardent conversation with my son. He had called me in response to the urgent tone of the text that I had sent him (and the rest of my immediate family) at 7:08 pm regarding the recent (within the last 2 days) deaths of 2 black men at the hands of overzealous police officers. One man was stopped by police for a busted tail light in Minnesota, and the other was selling ‘bootleg’ CD’s in front of a party store in Louisiana.

Both deaths were unnecessary and tragic, taking black men away from children who looked up to them as fathers, at a time where black fathers are at a desperate premium. But what really hit me hard, and proved to be a ‘tipping point’ for me was the death of the black man in Minnesota, who (1) didn’t have a record, (2) had worked in the same school since he was 19, working his way into a supervisory position, (3) was an inspiration to many of the 500 kids of various ethnicities at the school where he worked, (4) was a father figure to his girlfriend’s daughter, treating her as his own, and (5) had a permit to carry his firearm. If you senselessly kill a black man like this, what type of message are you sending to everyone in this nation – particularly the black community?

I said these words in the text-

“TEACH YOUR KIDS HOW TO DEAL WITH THESE SITUATIONS”

Part of the text also contained a link to video footage from FaceBook picked up by Time.com pertaining to the Minnesota victim, one Philando Castile, the 32 year-old black man that was shot 4 or 5 times by one police officer, stemming from a traffic stop for a busted tail light. This video footage was recorded by his girlfriend, who somehow, remained cool, calm, and collected throughout much of this surreal ordeal.

I told my son that he needed to, as soon as possible, get to know his local law enforcement officers on a first-name basis, establishing a human relationship with them. In this fashion, both parties (my son and the police officer) would be more than monolithic stereotypes that needed to be dealt with. To put it more succinctly, I told him that if he established a relationship with his local law enforcement, perhaps they would think twice before they arbitrarily pumped bullets into him. I also admonished him to introduce his son, my grandson, to the same law enforcement personnel, to establish relationships.

What I said to my son in the next few sentences, I had no idea would come to pass so soon. I told him that “… this time around, blacks were not going to torch their own neighborhoods- they we’re going to take the fight elsewhere…”

I also ominously said to him, that “… someone was going to take it upon themselves to start shooting police officers, and it would not be the rogue cops getting shot, but it would be GOOD cops getting shot…” as a result of the continued injustice of black men losing their lives entirely too easily – at the hands of those who are supposed to be the instruments of justice (TO BE CONTINUED)…

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