There is a long list of things that may get you killed in America if you are black. These are things that white people are able to do easily and without fear, such as: driving, walking down the street, playing in a park with a toy gun, walking home from a store with Skittles and iced tea, riding in a car with a concealed weapon which you are licensed to carry. And this is just an abbreviated list. Pretty much doing anything as a black person will get you killed—including knocking on a stranger’s door to ask for help.
On Thursday morning, 14-year-old Brennan Walker, of Rochester Hills, Michigan, did something that normal teenagers do all the time—he overslept and missed his school bus. He decided to walk to school instead. And when he tried to get directions by knocking on someone’s door for help, he was certainly not treated like a normal kid. Instead, he was shot at.
As Detroit’s Fox 2 News reports, Walker’s attempt to ask a local man and woman for directions nearly cost him his life. In his own words, Walker describes what happened.
"I got to the house, and I knocked on the lady's door. Then she started yelling at me and she was like, 'Why are you trying to break into my house?' I was trying to explain to her that I was trying to get directions to Rochester High. And she kept yelling at me. Then the guy came downstairs, and he grabbed the gun, I saw it and started to run. And that's when I heard the gunshot," he says.
Thankfully, the man missed. Brennan kept running, hid, then cried.
"My mom says that, black boys get shot because sometimes they don't look their age, and I don't look my age. I'm 14; but I don't look 14. I'm kind of happy that, like, I didn't become a statistic," he says in retrospect.
The incident completely unnecessary shooting was caught on video by the family’s security system. Investigators watched the video and say it confirms Walker’s story. Currently, the man is being held in jail and the Oakland County Sheriff says they intend to ask for “every charge permissible.” But what isn’t clear is why the family would automatically jump to conclusions and assume they were being robbed simply because Walker knocked on the door. After all, as his mother, Lisa Wright, points out, “If anything—why would I knock on your door to rob you?" This family had plenty of choices here. They could have ignored him knocking. They could have simply told him to go away. Or, they could have done what most people do when a stranger shows up on their doorstep, which is to ask through the door who is it and what that person wants. This doesn’t make sense except, well, Walker is black. And in America, black folks can’t just knock on someone’s door without the assumption that they are trying to commit a crime.
Sadly, this isn’t the first time something like has happened either. In 2013, 19-year-old Renisha McBride was shot in the face when she knocked on someone’s door after a car accident.
[Theodore] Wafer killed McBride with a shotgun on Nov. 2, 2013, when she knocked on his Dearborn Heights door after getting into a car accident. He said he shot McBride, who had been drinking prior to her accident, because he feared for his life when he heard loud banging on his door very early in the morning.
The McBride murder also happened in Michigan. And Wafer was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years in prison. But, to be clear, it’s not just certain white Michiganders who are afraid of black people knocking on their doors. And its unlikely that the possibility of jail time will stop them from shooting black strangers when they appear. America, in general, thinks everything single that black people do, the very normal stuff that other people do all the time, deserves to be criminalized and that blacks need to pay with their lives for it (see the above list). Okay, America, we get it. The message is loud and clear. If you are black and you ever get lost, don’t bother knocking on someone’s door to ask anyone for help—it may just be the last thing you ever do.