Ferguson: Time to Break the Silence

Or at least my own silence, both on the matter and in this blog.


Let me preface this all by stating that my father was a police officer for several years, admittedly before I was born.  I grew up on his cop stories – and his were ones which taught me the values of fair play, respect for all people (regardless of any of the labels we stick on them), and finding the balance between justice and mercy.  I have tremendous respect for those who choose to put their safety at risk in order to protect and serve the rest of us; whatever problems I have come down to those people and those times when police force is used to harm and exploit.  To interpret anything that comes after this as a dismissal or denigration of our police forces is wrong. 

But there is a wrong that needs to be discussed.  The death of Michael Brown – rather, the murder of Michael Brown.  I cannot think of a different word than murder to describe the shooting (six times) of an unarmed teenager, regardless of whatever stories are told about his possibly being involved in a robbery.  A teenager.  Shot dead by a police officer for reasons that remain unclear.

One of the saddest, and most infuriating, aspects of all of this is that, even without a single reference to race, I’ll bet that every single person reading the “A teenager.  Shot dead by a police officer…” phrase above  would have already imagined a black youth being shot by a white cop, even if this were two weeks ago, before Michael Brown was killed.  Because, at least in this country, nearly all the teens shot by police are black, and the police who shoot them are nearly always white.

A quick Google search for actual crime statistics reveals that the usual arguments – “black people are just more involved in crime!”  “Self-defense!”  “Drugs!”  “Thugs!” – all break down.  The contention that Brown was fighting back, or was being pursued as a suspect in a crime, still fails to justify the use of deadly force against a person who is unarmed.  As someone who was raised on cop stories, I grew up with the very distinct impression that a police officer should only discharge his (or her) a firearm in a situation of extreme duress, and should only shoot to kill when the perpetrator's intent to kill had already been displayed.  Six shots is not an accident; six shots is not a product of confusion.  Six shots is proof that the officer who shot Michael Brown made a conscious choice that Brown needed to be shot dead.  Given the lack of any meaningful evidence that Brown was a serious threat to his life, that equals misconduct…which equals murder, in this case, at least as far as I'm concerned.

But, then again, he ONLY shot an African-American teenager.  Let’s be honest – that’s what a lot of us in this country thought.  “Just” another black kid shot…you know how it is.  Probably into drugs, and in a gang, and a baby daddy, and likely to have been carrying a gun, and dropped out of high school, and…the profusion of “yeah, but…” never ends.  As long as the dead person is of African descent.  All of this ignores the fact that Michael Brown was, as far as we know, none of these things, but even that shouldn’t matter.  An unarmed man was shot dead by a police officer for the shoddiest of reasons; that should be problematic enough on its own without having to play the game of re-casting Brown as a “good kid.”  Even an unarmed “bad kid” doesn’t deserve to get shot dead in the street by the police.

The inescapable reality is that this would not have happened in a white community with a white teenager…and we all know it.  You want to know why people are mad?  Why people are protesting, and rioting, and taking to social media to vent their fury?  Because it’s that simple – Michael Brown would be alive today if he were white.  Because he was black, though, he’s dead.   He’s dead because his dark skin makes us assume that he’s a “bad kid” without any more evidence needed.  He’s dead because we assume that all young, black men are criminals against whom we need to defend ourselves.  He’s dead because we are a society defined by racism.

Before you cry out about how YOU’RE not racist, hear me out as I define what racism is, and is not.  I differentiate between “racism” and “prejudice.”  Prejudice is exactly what it sounds like – pre-judgment of a person based on a characteristic of their identity.   Racism is prejudice plus power – social power.  Prejudice said that Michael Brown was a “thug” because he was young and African-American; racism is why this kind of event never happens in a white neighborhood, and why each year scores of young, African-American men are shot by police, but all white criminals seem to make it to court unscathed.  Racism isn’t just “I don’t like black people;” racism is “I don’t like black people…and because people like me have the power and benefit from the system as is, I can do what I want to a black person and probably get away with it.”  Racism is why the War on Drugs has filled up our prisons with people from black and brown communities, even though white people are every bit as likely to use and sell drugs.  Racism is why a town that is 70% African-American is patrolled almost exclusively by white police.

Racism, in other words, has less to do with any of our individual, conscious prejudices and more with the system.  If you are white and live in the U.S., then you benefit in all kinds of ways (seen and unseen, known and unknown) from racism.  You want an example?  I’ll give you one.  People have made jokes and comments about my “ethnic ambiguity” since the day I was born – comments about how Mexican I look, and so forth.  I grew up in Texas.  One at least a few occasions, people in stores in my old stomping grounds have assumed (just from looking at me) that I must be Mexican…and therefore need to be watched like a hawk because I’m poor, a thief, and a threat.  The moment I open my mouth and speak fluent English with an accent that betrays only that half my family is from the Northeast, I’m suddenly a “safe” shopper again.  My whiteness is my ticket not to have automatic assumptions of criminality layered over me.  People’s prejudice leads them to respond to difference negatively (“he’s going to shoplift!”), whether they consciously recognize it or not, and racism provides the social support to act on that prejudice.  You might not consciously parade around your prejudices, and you may in fact have done the work to make yourself aware of them so that you don't act on them...but that doesn't make you, and me, and every other white person in the U.S. not a beneficiary of racism.  It's as American as apple pie, and as ever-present in the social fabric of the U.S. as oxygen molecules are in the air we breath.  Racism, actually, IS all around us, and a part of every life lived in this nation whether you're aware of it or not.

That’s why Ferguson happened; that’s why Trayvon Martin is dead and George Zimmerman is acquitted;  that’s why Amadou Diallo was filled with bullets; that’s why lynch mobs and police violence and antebellum “pattyrollers” have always reaped a harvest of black lives with near-impunity.  Frankly, if that is not a reality worth the sort of uprising we are seeing on the streets of Ferguson, than I don’t know what is.  And, don’t forget – if this had been a white teen, Congress would already be writing and debating legislation to rein in police violence…but since too many of us, consciously or otherwise, think Brown “had it coming,” the streets are the only public forum where change even seems possible.

But..you don’t have to take my word for it.  Read The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander.  Learn about why Ferguson is Ferguson, and why so many people are so deeply upset.  If you see this for what it is, then speak up.  Speak out.  Racism lives on largely because of silence and ignorance; if you don’t talk about it, then who will?  If you don’t make yourself aware of it, as a societal force, then who will ever change it?  If you don’t work to undo it, bit by bit, then who will?  Racism traps us all; it enslaves all of us, regardless of our skin color or privilege, in a system that snares some of us in living prisons of discrimination and others of us in a gilded cage of fear and paranoia.  It will keep on killing more Michael Browns and destroying the lives of more people on every side of the issue, black and white alike.  Racism will thrive as long as we ignore it and focus more on “colorblindness” and insisting that “I’M not racist!”  It doesn’t have to be this way; it can be rolled back…but not without you.

There are lots more conversations to be had that intersect with the events in Ferguson – the militarization of police forces and its effect on civil liberties; the “War on Drugs” and its destructive effects on life and society; the interrelatedness of race and opportunity for socioeconomic advancement.  Too much for one blog post, and plenty of people (from multiple points along the political spectrum) are putting out some good thoughts on various other facets of all of this.  At the end of the day, though, the death of Michael Brown comes down to one thing, and one thing only.  It wasn’t police militarization, or failed drug policy, or even denial of opportunity for advancement that killed him.  It was six bullets from a police officer’s gun that would never have been fired if Michael Brown had been white.  Until we wrestle with that, until we finally deal with our national reality of racism, then it will just happen again and again and again and again – more black bodies dead in the street for no reason other than being born.