“It was very unfortunate, with everything going around, and I’m trying to explain to my 8-year-old why George Floyd lost his life and try to explain to him the best as I can for an 8-year-old that this is not right. This is wrong. And, you know, it really brought me to tears because it’s like the world should never be like this. We shouldn’t treat people the way we treat them just based off the color of your skin.”nfl jerseys from china

When Harmon tried to explain Floyd’s death to his son, his son struggled to grasp why a police officer would do that. He knows the police officers who come to his school and are friends with his father. Harmon said his son called them “uncles.”

So how does he explain to his son what has happened? Harmon tried to focus on love, on what he’s learned from his faith.

“Through the midst of it, you’ve got to love. No matter what, right, wrong or indifferent, you’ve got to love,” Harmon said. “Just tried to instill that in him, that no matter the skin color, people are people. It’s the human race and we got to do better as a community to just push that out there.

“To do that, we have to identify the issue and have to realize, some people get upset when we say black lives matter. Some people pull back and say, ‘well, all lives.’ Yes, all lives matter but until we view black lives the same as white lives, all lives matter, that means nothing.”

Harmon had a conversation about race with his parents when he was 17 years old — a talk, looking back now, he says was maybe a little too late. It came after an incident where a police officer in Delaware made Harmon get out of a car while he was waiting for his parents outside of Wal-Mart. The officer, Harmon said, threatened to break the glass of his window if he didn’t get out of the vehicle because he was parked in a fire lane, which he said he was ticketed for.nfl jerseys wholesale

“My mom and my father, they told me, look, you are a black man,” Harmon said. “Right, wrong or indifferent, you are feared. When people see you get upset, they think and they see the big black guy who is angry. So you need to do a better job of controlling your emotions. You need to do a good job when you’re in a situation with the police, always be respectful, always show your hands, always roll down the window.”

Harmon said the police department learned he was a football player going to Rutgers and his family ended up going to the station to watch video of the incident. Watching it — and seeing the microphone and video cut at points — opened his eyes to the reality that he needed to be careful.