My thought for the day has to do with the burgeoning movement that has grown from the original Mike Brown/Ferguson/Don't Shoot/Hands Up demonstrations and which now seems to be localizing. The shooting death of a homeless man in LA a few days ago and the mass shooting of a rock throwing Mexican man in Pasco, Washington join the really egregiously WRONG killings of two young black men in Ohio last year to make clear that this is not a narrowly conceived or cynical "movement" (Tawana Brawley?) but perhaps a seminal moment.
The "Black Lives Matter" marches may be the beginning of a deeper and long term shift in Black Consciousness (and White perceptions and response) whereby needless deaths are no longer matters to be routinely absorbed as they have been to a greater or lesser degree since the first Africans were landed here in chains nearly 400 years ago. Black lives have never mattered as much as white lives. Not even when they were paid for with the slave master's gold. This is not arguable. It's in all the books. It is also not arguable that black lives have not mattered as much with blacks themselves: the staggering black-on-black homicide statistics allow no serious dissent. And this fact is deeply painful and shaming to blacks themselves. Yet, what can a black person do?
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Die Blau Schuyte by Pieter van der Heijden, circa 1530 (after H. Bosch) |
No individual, no family, no neighborhood can turn the tide of this self-destructive mayhem. All the theories attributing the slaughter to the evil designs of the Man or the System, to White malevolence, to someone else, don't fool the very people who utter them and publish them. They know that no one can really force you to commit suicide. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make him drink? Well, you can lead a young woman or man to crack or prostitution or drive by but you can't make them light up or give it up or pull the trigger: that is ultimately a choice. To deny this is to deny the agency of millions of people. But this is a problem affecting millions of people in a complex relationship with their country, their larger society and with History itself, so this Ship of Fools is not easy to turn around. Herein lies the real challenge and paradox.
My initial reaction to this movement was negative, but it was a complex negativity. In the first place, I had found the use and abuse of the Oscar Grant tragedy extremely tedious. Yet I also think the film "Fruitvale Station" is a minor masterpiece. I am one of those people who reacts negatively to being treated as if I were stupid by someone who actually may be or who is cynical. This reveals a certain lack of confidence on my part. After all, what do I care what any particular "moron" thinks, right? But apparently I want even the morons to have regard for my intelligence. Obviously I'm needy and naive! Part of my naivete is a tendency to examine any public event as minutely as possible so that I can form a working theory as to what happened. Did you ever know anyone like that? Yikes.
Consequently, I have very specific reasons for believing that JFK was killed by Oswald working alone. I had reasons for believing Johannes Mehserle, the cop who "murdered" Oscar Grant, had unbelievably drawn his pistol instead of his Taser. No other explanation was possible unless Mehserle was insane. He didn't seem to be. No one else seemed to think he was. He seemed totally depressed and defeated from the first time we saw him. A racist murderer who executed a young man in full view of scores of witnesses? Please. The real thing is out there, get up off the couch and go find him. Oscar Grant was the victim of stupendously negligent homicide. And the system worked despite the deranged efforts of the formerly oppressed to lynch an obvious retard. Sorry. I said it. But that is how Mehserle seemed to me and all testimony bears it out... How many black men suffering from tourette's were lynched by whites shocked and angered by being disrespected and feeling their power nonetheless? To hell with Lord Acton's axiom about power: all power corrupts if it is not counter-balanced. In Mehserle's case, he wisely resigned immediately, kept his mouth shut while everyone demanded he speak and no one really wanted to hear him, and told the awful and unfathomable truth: he made a mistake that none of the rest of us, in our vast competency, could or would ever have made, right?
I have reasons for believing that Mike Brown was almost entirely (80%) responsible for his own death, but his is the only of the recent deaths of black men by police and vigilantes that I no longer question. Still, though one may argue about the extent of MB's attack on Officer Wilson, the videos of other police shooting suspects all over the country do not allow of serious question or justification. A cop is not supposed to shoot unless in reasonable fear of his own or someone else' s life, but the shootings, fatal and otherwise, in Ohio, South Carolina, Washington and now LA, can only be described as groups of cops (a single cop in SC) acting as a firing squad. So where does all this leave me in my thoughts?
American policing has undergone a number of tune-ups, and it seems another one is coming. When I was born, it was standard for police to beat confessions out of suspects. Phone books leave no bruises I always heard. Look at the quality of police in Alabama in 1965. You won't see anything like Bull Connor anymore. Not even the odious Sherrif Arpaio, a clear outlier among comtemporary law enforcement officials. Wannabees, perhaps, but the Civil Rights Division of the US Justice Department is real. The current anger and call for change arises partly in an objection to the military style of policing (a style said to have first appeared with Daryl Gates in the LAPD 50 years ago which was criticized after the Rodney King fiasco) which has gotten a huge boost with the paranoia and high-powered surplus equipment applied to our police cultures in the past dozen years. EVERYONE it seems believes that things are a bit out of hand: even a lot of cops do.
Most Americans want the police to stop shooting people who are clearly crazy or high or inebriated. Or as in the case of young Mr. Rice, obviously a child fooling around--why race up to within touching distance when unsure of the situation? Why not pause at a distance and order the person to relinquish the apparent firearm? I'm not an expert in proper police procedure, but then I dare say the murderous armed clown in the blue suit wasn't either. And who put him out there? There is near unanimity in wanting these cruel and stupid official murders to stop, whatever their number.
One could argue that males between the ages of 15 and 25 are all insane, toxic on testosterone, often intoxicated and impaired and prey to cultural nonsense. Clearly law enforcement faces a tall challenge, but it seems that society has changed it's mind. WE want the law enforcement community to find a more effective way of dealing with US. We are going to need to work together. I imagine that we will do so (we already are in several venues.) And how will this affect the real problem in the Black Community and our American Society: the shame of black on black homicide? I am hopeful that a solution to this problem of despair and hopelessness will make itself visible in the coming years if there is a sustained and courageous effort on everyone's part. And if we decide what the relationship between economics, wealth and our economy is with the survival of decent living in our nation. For sure it will have to begin with a dawning realization in the minds and hearts of young men (and women) of color that THEIR lives ALL matter and that killing someone who looks like you is a particularly obscene act, one not to be tolerated, one not to be protected by the "no snitching" rule. Stay tuned.
By the way, the majority of homicides in the US are of white victims, and their murderers are also overwhelmingly white. The differences are merely of degree and how they affect the respective communities in the aggregate.
I have enabled "Comments" now and will leave them on. I really would be glad to hear anyone's thoughts, unless they involve stoning me.
1 comment:
Most Americans want the police to stop shooting people who are clearly crazy or high or inebriated.
totally agree with this and also the militarization point.
btw, it's "its" (= of it) not "it's" (= it is). But you knew that.
This is Dave W. btw.
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