BY TITO S. TALAO
Cars were set on fire in Minneapolis during demonstrations against the death in police custody of unarmed African American George Floyd. (AFP)
Meralco Bolts coach Norman Black was at home watching CNN that day and saw and heard it all.
He saw a black man pinned to the ground by a uniformed white Minnesota police officer who had his knee on the man’s neck. And Black heard the man, who was handcuffed, beg for his life, saying that he couldn’t breathe.
The man then closed his eyes and was still.
Norman Augustus Black, born November 12, 1957 in Baltimore, Maryland, probably hasn’t been able to close his own eyes and not see or hear in his mind what the man, George Floyd, must have gone through in those fateful minutes
The rest of the video, taken by an unidentified bystander in Minneapolis, is now everywhere, as with news of the resulting protest, rioting, burning and looting in the aftermath of the arrest and death of Floyd, a former football star nicknamed ‘Gentle Giant’ and father of a six-year-old girl.
“I was sickened by it. It felt horrible,” Black said haltingly yesterday.
“It was just so hard to witness that. I couldn’t believe that the policeman could be so heartless. The guy was just pleading for his life, and the policeman seem to not care… or he was immune, I don’t know exactly.
“Obviously these things go on all the time, and they’re not talked about because they don’t always lead to death. But this one’s caught on tape.”
Black grew up in the 60s at the height of the civil rights movement that was sweeping America at the time, with Martin Luther King and the Rev. Jessie Jackson lighting the torch.
“I’m a black American and I was part of that, I grew up in that,” Black said. “I experienced a lot of what’s going on today, so far, and it was a lot worse then because that was when blacks were still fighting for their rights.”
The former Detroit Piston and head coach of the 1989 Grand Slam team of San Miguel Beer remembers walking into restaurants and being told that he could not be served.
Black wouldn’t go into detail about any menacing encounter with police authorities because “it’s something I don’t talk about a lot,” but he did recall a particular incident in the 80s when he went home to visit his mother and grandparents in Baltimore during a break in the PBA.
At the airport, Black approached a Hertz personnel to rent a car which he does every time he comes home so he could get around the city.
He was told by the lady behind the counter that it must be Black’s lucky day because they have a brand new car that just came in — a Lincoln Continental.
Excited at the prospect of driving a top-of-the-line automobile that has just rolled out of the assembly line, Black signed the pertinent documents and half-sprinted to the parking lot to get his ride.
Then he froze.
Black explained: “I get into the parking lot and I look at the car, and it’s a brand new Lincoln Continental but it has temporary license plates on them.”
He went back to the rental lady to tell her that it might not be a good idea for him to drive around in the inner city with a new car with temporary license plates, and if he could instead get a car with regular plates.
“I was hesitant because I was afraid the police would think that this black man had stolen the car,” said Black.”You’re almost inviting yourself to get stopped by the police.”
But the woman reassuringly told him that there shouldn’t be any problem if Black doesn’t plan on doing anything wrong.
So against his best instincts, Black signed for the car and drove to his mother’s house in the outskirts of the city where she had taken residence in her advanced age.
Afterward, Black took his wife and two kids and proceeded to his grandmother’s place which was in the inner city.
Black tells it as it occurred: Lo and behold! Just as I reached the inner city of Baltimore, I get stopped by the police.”
Staying calm, Black asked why he was being pulled over, and if he had broken any laws.”
Matter-of-factly, Black was told: “No, no, no, you have temporary plates.”
Black remembered thinking: What I thought would happen (if he drove a new car with temporary plates in the inner city of Baltimore), did happen.
Without panicking, Black explained that the brand new Lincoln Continental was rented and showed them the papers. The white policemen, after getting confirmation from the rent-a-car service and asking a couple more questions, eventually let him go.
Decades later, some bitterness remained in Black’s voice as he dragged the incident from deep within him, and put it side by side with what transpired so tragically in Minneapolis with George Floyd.
“My point is, unless you can see something like what happened in Minnesota on tape, you may never believe it could happen. Just like you would never think I would get stopped for no reason for driving a nice car and being a black man in the inner city of Baltimore.”
Having relatives in the force, including a favorite cousin, Black says, has allowed him to understand that the police in the States are “always on edge” and have to be “dominant.”
He adds though: “But they also have to be human. We know that they’re in a position of authority, but they also have to be human.
“When somebody tells you that he can’t breathe, at some point you have to listen to them and be human in that situation. I think that what happened in Minnesota is the policeman is just not human.
“It’s sad, just sad. It’s today’s America. That’s the way it is. We’ve come so far (with the civil rights movement), but obviously not come far enough.”