For barbecuing.
For selling bottled water.
For napping in a dorm.
For mowing a lawn.
For smoking.
Perhaps you recognize the list. If not, be advised that it represents a few of the slew of recent high-profile episodes in which police have been called out on black people for reasons so trivial, nonsensical and stupid as to beggar belief.
These incidents, many captured in cellphone video, have resulted in anger, ridicule, occasional job loss for the instigators and, in one case, corporate sensitivity training. They have also provided a window, for those who need it, into the challenge of breathing, existing, minding your own business, just trying to go about your day, while black.
Not that there is anything new here. To the contrary, this behavior is as old as the Republic. The only difference is that now we see it on video and more attention is being paid. But if, for some of us, this is a trending topic, it is, for the rest of us, just life. We've never known a country wherein some white people did not feel they had the absolute, God-ordained prerogative to regulate us — nor the right to call police when we declined to be regulated.