As I follow the news coverage of the protests across the country following the grand jury decisions not to charge the white police officers in Ferguson, Missouri and Staten Island, New York, I am moved to take a public stand in support of blacks in this country. I was disappointed with the decisions because I think there was sufficient evidence of excessive force in both situations. The decision not to indict the police officer in the New York case was especially disturbing because there was video evidence of what happened. But what disturbs me even more than the grand jury decisions is the public reaction, primarily the reaction of whites, to a civil rights movement that is long overdue, in my opinion.
A typical reaction at the sign of any conflict is to immediately pick sides. Us versus Them - this is the American political and cultural mentality. Either you have to be for the police officer or for the person the police officer killed. Either you have to support the protesters or find fault with them. And what more convenient way to choose sides than to align yourself with someone you can easily identify with? Someone of your own race.
Another common reaction is to blame the victim. If a person is a victim of violence, there must have been a reason. He provoked it. He was someplace he shouldn't have been or did something he should not have done. And God forbid that anyone should question the actions of "The Law." Yes, we should respect the authority of police officers and be grateful for their public service. Their jobs are dangerous and unpredictable. Most officers of the law are good people. But the police are not above reproach. Police officers occasionally do use unnecessary or excessive force and that issue needs to be addressed.
In the haste to choose sides in these conflicts, many people miss the big picture. If you focus too much on the facts and/or allegations in the tragic encounters between these black men and the police officers involved in their deaths, you will not see the forest for the trees. If you focus too much on who was right and who was wrong, you will not hear the important message that blacks are trying to send.
This is not about the wrongness of destroying property because you are angry about a decision. This is not about whether there is a right or wrong way to protest. This is not about who was the better man or who deserved to live or die. This is not about Eric Gardner or Michael Brown. These black men have been pilloried; their lives have been dissected, scrutinized, and dismissed by our justice system. Yet the lives of these black men matter. They were human beings endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Individually, they each had promise even if they weren't living stellar lives when they died.
I read a beautiful blog post yesterday written by Erin Brown, titled Current Events and Compassion. Unfortunately, many people are incapable of empathy, of understanding life from another person's point of view. To put yourself in a black person's shoes, ask yourself: how would I feel if I spent a lifetime being judged by the color of my skin? How would constantly being treated with suspicion influence my choices? How would I want to be treated?
To fully understand current events, we must examine both sides of the issue and we must not jump to conclusions. We've got to ask deeper questions and we've got to learn from history. When it comes to racial issues, we've been living in a state of denial for too long. We hold up black people who have achieved fame or fortune as if to say, "See, everything is okay now" while ignoring the plight of those stuck in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. This is not a post-racial America. Racial stereotypes continue to persist in this country long after the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the question Where do we go from here? in his last speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When I read this speech, I was struck by the fact that the socioeconomic issues he raised persist even today - higher levels of black unemployment, poverty and infant mortality.
My hope is that from here, we will "massively assert" the value of blacks in this country and "develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values." I hope we will move on to a discussion of how to improve the lives of African Americans who still languish on the fringes of society. Black lives matter.
Another common reaction is to blame the victim. If a person is a victim of violence, there must have been a reason. He provoked it. He was someplace he shouldn't have been or did something he should not have done. And God forbid that anyone should question the actions of "The Law." Yes, we should respect the authority of police officers and be grateful for their public service. Their jobs are dangerous and unpredictable. Most officers of the law are good people. But the police are not above reproach. Police officers occasionally do use unnecessary or excessive force and that issue needs to be addressed.
In the haste to choose sides in these conflicts, many people miss the big picture. If you focus too much on the facts and/or allegations in the tragic encounters between these black men and the police officers involved in their deaths, you will not see the forest for the trees. If you focus too much on who was right and who was wrong, you will not hear the important message that blacks are trying to send.
This is not about the wrongness of destroying property because you are angry about a decision. This is not about whether there is a right or wrong way to protest. This is not about who was the better man or who deserved to live or die. This is not about Eric Gardner or Michael Brown. These black men have been pilloried; their lives have been dissected, scrutinized, and dismissed by our justice system. Yet the lives of these black men matter. They were human beings endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Individually, they each had promise even if they weren't living stellar lives when they died.
I read a beautiful blog post yesterday written by Erin Brown, titled Current Events and Compassion. Unfortunately, many people are incapable of empathy, of understanding life from another person's point of view. To put yourself in a black person's shoes, ask yourself: how would I feel if I spent a lifetime being judged by the color of my skin? How would constantly being treated with suspicion influence my choices? How would I want to be treated?
To fully understand current events, we must examine both sides of the issue and we must not jump to conclusions. We've got to ask deeper questions and we've got to learn from history. When it comes to racial issues, we've been living in a state of denial for too long. We hold up black people who have achieved fame or fortune as if to say, "See, everything is okay now" while ignoring the plight of those stuck in a cycle of poverty and hopelessness. This is not a post-racial America. Racial stereotypes continue to persist in this country long after the civil rights movement of the 1950's and 60's.
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. asked the question Where do we go from here? in his last speech to the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. When I read this speech, I was struck by the fact that the socioeconomic issues he raised persist even today - higher levels of black unemployment, poverty and infant mortality.
Now, in order to answer the question, "Where do we go from here?" which is our theme, we must first honestly recognize where we are now. When the Constitution was written, a strange formula to determine taxes and representation declared that the Negro was sixty percent of a person. Today another curious formula seems to declare he is fifty percent of a person. Of the good things in life, the Negro has approximately one half those of whites. Of the bad things of life, he has twice those of whites. Thus, half of all Negroes live in substandard housing. And Negroes have half the income of whites. When we turn to the negative experiences of life, the Negro has a double share: There are twice as many unemployed; the rate of infant mortality among Negroes is double that of whites; and there are twice as many Negroes dying in Vietnam as whites in proportion to their size in the population.This is why I stand behind those who protest against social injustice across this country. Michael Brown may not be the poster child for a civil rights movement but his death has "made an indifferent and unconcerned nation rise from lethargy and subpoenaed its conscience to appear before the judgment seat of morality on the whole question of civil rights."
My hope is that from here, we will "massively assert" the value of blacks in this country and "develop an unassailable and majestic sense of values." I hope we will move on to a discussion of how to improve the lives of African Americans who still languish on the fringes of society. Black lives matter.
There are so many things we need to work on. Childhood poverty, which often relates to broken families and families that were never whole in the first place. A lack of good employment opportunities for unskilled labor. A minimum wage that is well below a living wage. An education system that favors the wealthy and middle class and provides substandard education for inner city and rural students. A university system that places many students deeply in debt before their first job. A justice system that provides unequal justice between the rich and against the poor, and penalizes crimes the poor commit more heavily than those committed by the rich. De facto segregation that prevents the interaction between the races that build trust and confidence in one another. A prevalence of guns in our culture that leaves law enforcement feeling vulnerable to the public. Though most of us aren't armed when we encounter the police, enough are that the police just assume that we may all be armed and dangerous when they encounter us. It wasn't so long ago that they could assume that a young boy with a gun was carrying a toy gun, or that when a person reached into their pocket they were reaching for their ID. Now they shoot first and check to see what we're carrying or reaching for later. That's a sad situation for all of us.
ReplyDeleteInjustice isn't always about race, but it is a fact that law enforcement tends to be white, and the percentage of those who die unarmed at the hands of police, and those convicted of crimes they didn't commit tend to be those of color. While hiring more blacks and Hispanics in law enforcement would help, there is seriously no good reason that white law enforcement can't provide equal treatment for everyone. We are all capable of changing the way we treat one another, and the first step is to agree that there is a problem.
We know that poverty causes much of the crime in major cities. Today there are too many families with only one parent in the home and as you said, many of them don't even start out with two parents fully committed to raising the kids. Poor children often do not have good role models. In Denver, high school students have been protesting and the police have agreed to have forums to speak with them.
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