Just dropped my son to practice. As we were driving, he spotted a police car and ducked down. For obvious reasons, he has had anxiety about the police lately. Unbeknownst to me, he saw some of what happened on television. He wanted to know why the police did not shoot those

people. I tried to talk around it because we were running late. And quite frankly, I need to think about this and also talk to his mother about how to approach it. He’s 13. We get to practice. Before he gets out of the car, he just puts it out there, “Dad. Would those men have

been shot if they were Black?” I told him to grab his bag out of the trunk and get into the building. Told him we’ll talk about it later. Have tears welling up in my eyes as I sit in my car and type this. I don’t think for a second that a group of predominantly Black domestic

terrorists would have been allowed to breech the floor of the U.S. Capitol and other secure areas without a much different outcome. But I need to handle this carefully. This has been coming for so long. Yes, incendiary rhetoric, buttressed by flat-out lies, brought us here.

But never forget what is at its core. And stop telling Black people that a double standard does not exist. Just stop.