According to the wife of former Detroit Lions linebacker (now with the Chicago Bears) Christian Jones, her husband was nearly pepper-sprayed by an Uber Eats driver when he went to the door to pick up his food.
Liz Jones posted the story to her Instagram account.
I love this black man more than anything or anyone in the world. Last night, we experienced something that really hit me hard in an indescribable way as a biracial woman married to a black man.
We ordered some dinner on uber eats and when Christian went to the door to meet the delivery man, he was visibly startled by Christian’s appearance and was holding pepper spray in his other hand, prepared to spray it. Christian kind of shrugged it off (as he usually does) but I lost it and burst into tears. We ended up having a deep conversation about why Christian’s demeanor is the way it is – if you know him you would say he’s inadvertently non-threatening; when he approaches any white person he’s OVERLY nice, accommodating and reassuring to them. Goes out of his way to ask people how they’re doing as we’re walking down the street or let’s out a big, nice grin when he passes by white people. It’s always kind of bothered me how he goes out of his way to make white people so comfortable all of the time because for me- it’s unnecessary; but this time it really clicked for me that my husband has HAD to adapt over his life time in order to appear “non-threatening.”
He’s a 250lb black man, pure muscle, with braids. I live in constant, I mean *constant* fear that one day he’s not going to make it home alive after speeding, perhaps, having his music too loud, or getting pulled over for having a nice car or picking up water or candy at a convenience store. He’s even had cops called on him by neighbors for walking our dog late at night. Because of this, Most of the time I prefer to just be with him when he goes anywhere because I feel that my lighter complexion will help him appear less threatening to others. THIS is his reality, &our reality as partners.
I don’t want sympathy from this post & I actually hate garnering this kind of attention via social media… but I just needed to get this out because a lot of y’all don’t seem to give a f*ck about what’s happening to black people in this country that we all call our home. I think it would do all of us good to envision a day in someone else’s non-white shoes. It isn’t, and never has been safe in America for black men.
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