My Day: Tears in the City
Have you ever wondered why feelings make liquid come out of your eyes? When your feelings have reached the boiling point, and every-nerve-in-your-body is screaming fire, what do you do? Do you fight back tears in public? I don’t know much about tears, but I am familiar with crying. I know even less about the lacrimal gland, which is where tears come from. I do know that there are days in my life that I simply do not want repeated all because they were so painful. And each and every time the tears came to my rescue voluntarily.
I was in Arlington, Thursday, July 7, picking up grandsons when I received a phone call from a journalist that there was a shooting in Downtown Dallas. At first light the message was about one police officer and ‘a shooting’. For some unknown reason I chose to come back into Dallas on I- 20 versus I-30. Interstate 30 empting into Downtown instantly became a traffic nightmare . News today travels so rapidly that you hardly have time to comprehend or digest thoughts. By the time I reached Dallas onto to I-35, another phone call asking ‘where are you’? And in the same breath, there are “snipers” downtown, police officers shot. Selfishly, I thought, not in my city. Not in Dallas.
As reality hit on this awful night in Dallas, after shots-ringing out, numbers rising every few minutes, phone calls with screaming voices echo-ing erroneous information, mass confusion, there was the wounded, the dead and no answers. . . again. . . on the streets of America . . . in one of the most prosperous cities in the world. I had to stop, ask my seven year old grandson, sitting next to the 15 year old, to be quiet for five minutes, while I stopped my tears. It was overwhelming news.
Police shootings leave families in tears for years. The families of the dead, wearing whatever label you place on them leave loved ones, the living, in unexplainable turmoil. However, I honestly believe that until we have the real conversation about race in this country, you are only saying comforting words, with pomp and circumstance, that are short lived. We have the mentally ill. We all know it. We see them everyday. They are veterans, too. And we know that the military ignores and releases them everyday. There is a serious racial divide in America . . . with deep roots. We know that too. We have great police officers. We also have arrogant ones that do not have a clue. I do not agree that our country thought all of our racial problems were solved when a highly intelligent African American man was voted into the White House and stayed for eight years. I have known “highly intelligent African American men” all of my life.
If you want to stop the tears, start the healing by taking care of all these ills we know about. Your actions speak louder. As a Dallasite that has served in this magnificent city, I am sure Dallas can lead the way.
Ester Davis
214.376.9000
