Stories and News No. 1281
What would have happened if I weren't a footballer? This is what Tiémoué Bakayoko asks. He is a footballer born in France of Ivorian parents, who currently plays with Milan team on loan from Chelsea. So, a famous person and therefore for many recognizable, admirable, appreciable and enviable.
The reference is to the stop and relative control by the italian police happened a few days ago.
The first news published in the italian newspapers, with videos, highlighted in particular the astonished reaction of one of the agents in discovering the identity of the alleged suspect. I emphasize this expression, alleged suspicion, because the choice of words has always a decisive value in analyzing the storytelling of the facts. Any of us can be suspected of anything. We are innocent until proven otherwise, but only the verification of the latter can accuse or exonerate us. At the same time, defining an individual as suspect has a completely different meaning, especially when you don't have any information about the others, basing your thoughts solely on superficial details. From the point of view of a police officer, the model and bodywork of the car, the license plate of the latter, or even better the number of wanted people and their physiognomy.
In this regard, despite what movie scenes or news stories from the USA tell – think about that damn racial profiling to classify human beings, the colour of the skin cannot and must not in any way identify someone as suspicious, since that is the essential cornerstones of racism. But we will come back to this later, we must do it, because in the following days, after some other article in which the praises of the policemen were mentioned for the behavior of the famous player as a model citizen, yesterday it was Bakayoko who spoke, describing a somewhat different situation, moreover from the main point of view of this exemplary story: "Why didn't they make an adequate check simply by asking me for the vehicle documents?" He wonders. “In the video posted on social networks we don't see everything,” he explains. “This is the quieter part of what happened. I had a gun three feet away from me on the side of the passenger window. They clearly put our lives in danger. The consequences could have been much more serious if I hadn't kept my cool, if I hadn't done the job I do and hadn't been recognized in time."
So, it all boils down to the title question: what would have happened if he weren't a footballer?
Well, dear Bakayoko, I try to answer and tell you what would have happened if you weren't a rich and famous guy. And to do this, I take a cue from the textual note from the italian police station: there was a fight with a shooting and an SUV is being sought with a person of color on board in a green T-shirt.
So imagine that you correspond to the identikit described and that you are not who you are, but a man like many others, but equally innocent and wearing, under the aforementioned shirt, the most dangerous dress in the world to be born with.
The aforementioned disclosure uses the italian currently politically accepted expression of color, but you and I, brother, know perfectly well in what other ways many, too many, of our fellow citizens born with the favored skin translate the aforementioned wording. It’s what they think but don't say, that's all they see and sometimes grumble behind their backs, that's what only many people find the courage to scream or behind a monitor.
Aware of this, I do not think it is necessary to explain that in the guise of an ordinary person everything would have been much more dangerous and disturbing, and that behavior as a model citizen is by no means certain that it would have been enough to get you out of trouble.
Now, as I have read in most of the comments on internet, a predictable obtuse and hypocritical wall has risen compactly justifying the diligent cops, who - bringing up the usual spiel - do a difficult, stressful and underpaid job, and they are forced to deal with dangerous, violent and armed criminals. Hence, the choral counter-answer, a childish justification of the weapons drawn: how should they have stopped the presumed - I stress again - suspects? With a bouquet of flowers?
Virtual applause, cool sharing and a shower of likes and thumbs up, in strictly white gloves.
All of that once again leaving out the now colossal elephant in the room: the institutional and legalized racism that transpires from every pore of this story, which can be highlighted in the most banal way in the world, that is, by eliminating the note of color from it: there was a fight with shooting and an SUV with a person wearing a green shirt on board.
Hence my questions: would the presumed suspect with candid skin have been treated in the same way, with weapons drawn, thrown into the car and violently searched without bothering to check his documents first? And if it had happened to you, dear light-skinned citizen - which I highly doubt - would you still have complimented the rude agents for the aggression?
In any case, think that in our civil society Bakayoko and I do not need the wrong SUV or t-shirt to risk this.
We just need to leave home..