Before I get to the questions though, it occurs to me that anyone who thinks the riots in Ferguson and other cities are only about the shooting of Michael Brown are fooling themselves. If you think that, you need to watch this video, in which 35-year-old John Crawford is shot by police for carrying a BB gun that he picked up in the sporting goods department at WalMart and carried around the store, apparently intending to purchase:
(This video ought to be especially chilling to my numerous Facebook friends who think it is their Constitutional right to open-carry. Does open-carry apply to all gun owners?)
And this video in which Levar Jones is stopped for a seat belt violation and is told by the officer to get his driver’s license. When the driver reaches into his car to comply, the officer fires four shots at him. It happens fast:
Then we have this video of a 12-year-old boy in Cleveland who was killed by police for carrying an air-soft gun. The police are on the scene for less than two seconds before they begin firing:
And then, in the Michael Brown case, there is this video of (white) onlookers reacting to the shooting by throwing their hands in the air and saying, “He had his fucking hands in the air!"
Was this video presented to the Grand Jury? I don't know. I only know the Grand Jury decided there was not enough evidence against Officer Wilson to hold a trial. If Michael Brown were here to tell his version, would there be enough evidence?
One last thing under the heading of “Ferguson is not only about the shooting of Michael Brown” is this investigation by ProPublica into the stats of who gets shot by police, which finds that a young black man is 21 times more likely to be “shot dead by police than their white counterparts.”
The above article is quoted here in an article from Christian Science Monitor that examines the reality of “black on black” crime that was talked about so much about in the days following the Grand Jury decision. Which made me wonder, should police officers be held to a higher standard than criminals?
So, the questions I can’t shake:
What if what we are seeing in Ferguson is the eruption of people who feel powerless? In fact, what if, in some ways, they actually are powerless? Powerless against being stopped by police at rates markedly higher than whites are stopped by police, and once stopped, are searched, arrested, imprisoned and executed at much higher rates than whites.
What if white people can never understand this level of powerlessness? The kind of life-long powerlessness that leads to hopelessness and fuck-it-ness that comes from finding yourself in a game whose rules are applied differently to you than to others. What if the game is actually rigged? Or, if it’s not actually rigged, what if all these stops, arrests, incarcerations, low-quality schools, segregated neighborhoods, what is it like to grow up suspecting that the game is rigged? Is it this feeling, and the hopelessness it would give rise to, that causes simmering anger that explodes into a wildfire and makes looting and burning seem viable? If the rules are stacked against you, would you be crazy to keep trying to play by them?
What if you’ve tried to live a productive life but are met with institutional obstacles everywhere you turn? What if you were born into a segregated neighborhood? Any why do all those black people live in one neighborhood in Ferguson anyway? Is this a choice? Or a vestige from the time when the US government (before the banks took over the practice) were redlining cities in order to discourage desegregation and investment in certain neighborhoods?
A map of redlining: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Home_Owners%27_Loan_Corporation_Philadelphia_redlining_map.jpg
(For an overview of housing and segregated neighborhoods and a fantastic story in which Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, as the director of HUD from 1969-1973, is the hero (before he was fired by Nixon), check out this episode of This American Life.)
What if there were no segregated neighborhoods? And especially no segregated schools? What if we had a national property-value tax that went into a giant fund and then was split evenly, per pupil, to every school in America so that every child received a quality education? Doesn’t this seem so simple and self-evident that the fact it hasn’t been done look like proof that our current school-funding system is designed to keep people born into impoverished neighborhoods poor? Is this our own American caste system? Isn’t it hard enough to make it, I mean really make it, even when you went to good schools that prepared you to succeed in college? Are we afraid to let poor kids and kids of color compete with our kids on a level playing field? What if we educated equally instead of arrested un-equally? What are the costs to our society for our current system? What are the costs to the black families who lose sons and friends and neighbors? What is the cost in hopelessness and fuck-it-ness? What is the cost to Ferguson? What is the cost to police? Why is everyone taking sides? And how does everyone immediately know whose side they are on? How can anyone who says they are for the police not recognize that this simmering anger over the unequal rates of police stops, searches, arrests, incarcerations, executions, is a problem and an issue that puts police officers in danger? Is anyone out there interested in solutions? Michael Brown’s parents are calling for all police officers to wear video cameras; is this a solution that would protect officers and citizens?
In the video posted above where the citizen was pulled over for a seat-belt violation and was shot when complying with the officer’s order to get his driver’s license, you can immediately hear the “oh shit” and contrition in the officer’s voice. He does everything but apologize. This officer, Sean Groubert of South Carolina, was arrested and charged with assault and battery of a highly aggravated nature and, if convicted, faces twenty years in prison. Do I think he is racist? No. Do you? Do I think he has a fear-based bias that black men are inherently more dangerous? Yes. Do you? Does the entire incident make me deeply sad for both men? Without a doubt.
