Ferguson, Our Ferguson

From the beginning there was something very wrong with this case in Ferguson.

Immediately after Mike Brown was shot and killed by Darren Wilson, the Ferguson police department showed video of Brown stealing cigars from a convenience store. Even as his body lay on the hot pavement, dead, the police showed more interest in protecting themselves and their officer than in anything else. They were going to jump in front of this, and make sure the American public knew that Brown was no saint.

That in and of itself is no surprise; there are no human saints, and teens more than other age groups are often rebellious, not interested in following any rules. Teens push the envelope as a matter of course, no matter his/her color or ethnicity.

But it was really important for the Ferguson Police Department to get that image and perception of Brown out, because it fed into white America’s belief that black people are criminals; if, then, Brown was shot and killed, everyone could see that the officer was justified. This was just another black thug.

As the protests and anger welled up in Americans across the country after hearing what witnesses said happened, the police in Ferguson stayed the course. Instead of talking to and with residents of Ferguson, at least pretending that they understood their angst, police dressed up like soldiers, putting on riot gear and using military weapons to protect themselves against the protesters. These people, the message was, are bad news. They are dangerous, out of control, angry for no reason.

It didn’t help that some of the protesters looted. That was fine with the police and the media, though. The looting fed into America’s image of who black people are and what black people do. The talk on the news was of violence, ironically but intentionally forfeiting discussion about the violence regularly meted out to black people by police – white and black.

Then, as we awaited the decision of the grand jury, all the media worried about was the threat of violence. They were worried about keeping the peace, not working for justice. There was nearly no empathy or concern shown for Brown’s family, and there was certainly no credence given to the people who protested daily – peacefully – on the streets in Ferguson.

A police officer on CNN yesterday said that the protesters were out there daily, “trying to kill the police.”

Please.

Now, the decision of the grand jury has been rendered, a grand jury which was made up of nine white people and three black. Their goal, it feels like, was to get that officer off the hook, which they did. It never felt, from the way the procedure was being reported, that the grand jury was interested in letting a family have reassurance that there would at least be an attempt to obtain justice for the murder of their child.

Darren Wilson got on television and thanked everyone who supported him.

He never voiced an ounce of empathy or sympathy for the parents of Mike Brown.

I did read that, in his testimony to the grand jury, he said Mike Brown looked like a demon. I imagine that when he said that, that the people sitting on the grand jury listening shuddered, grabbing hold to their own images of and beliefs about, bad, black people.

What this whole situation has reinforced is the notion that black lives, black people, do not matter. I daresay that if the kid killed had been white, and the shooting officer black, there would have been no grand jury. The officer most likely would have been arrested. That’s the way this nation works.

Black people all over this nation are angry, hurt …and discouraged. When will the lives of black people become as important as are the lives of white people?

Probably never. Not in this country.

A candid observation ….

Can America Be Saved?

On this day, the nation and perhaps the world is waiting to see if Darren Wilson, the white police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in August of this year, will be indicted.

The media has concentrated most on its fear that if there is no indictment, that Ferguson will erupt in violence. In every interview they have done, the presiding reporter and/or anchor person has eventually, somewhat uneasily, asked the question, “What do you think will happen if Wilson is not indicted? Will people go to the streets?”

The question is maddening and insulting, for at least two reasons. First, the people have already taken to the streets. Peacefully. People have been protesting …peacefully …for over 100 days, and the media has not chosen to highlight that. Innocent people have been manhandled by police and thrown into jail for protesting …peacefully. The media does not seem to get it: the people are not looking for violence. They are looking for justice. They want Darren Wilson to at least have to go to trial for killing Mike Brown. That really is not asking much.

The second reason the question is maddening is because the issue of justice for black, brown and poor people is almost never covered by the media. The media are largely responsible for the images and perceptions America and the world have for black people. What the media does is portray black people as animals, non-humans, who cause trouble. Not too often does the media seek to get into the hearts and souls of the people, the parents, the friends, who are left behind after one of their loved ones has been killed by a law enforcement officer. No. The attention is given to the few people in mass demonstrations who loot and throw things at police.

The media could do much in letting America and the world know that this thing with Michael Brown …and Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis …is not a new thing. The media could let people know that police have been killing black people for literally years and have been allowed to get away with it. The cases are there, the stories, of black people, most often black men but black women as well, being pulled over for a “routine traffic stop” and somehow ending up dead. These are not criminals, many to most of them. They are guilty of one thing: being black in a country which does not regard black people as humans. These cases happen, the people are gunned down, and the offending police officers are allowed to get back on the streets after an “internal investigation” which almost never finds them guilty of wrongdoing.

The media doesn’t cover the disparate ways police relate to and with black people. Police don’t come into black neighborhoods to see what good they can do. No, police come into our neighborhoods, by and large, and harass young black men. They do it because they know they can …and can get away with it.

Police are no different from the masses; many to most of them are white, and have never known a black person. All they have known is what the media and our schools have taught them: black people were slaves. Black people do bad things. If a black person gets shot by police, that black person deserved it, plain and simple.

Those types of pronouncements lets America and its officers off the hook. America is filled with white people, primarily from the South but certainly not confined to that area, who are angry. Many to most white people think that black people do not belong here; that America was created to be a “white man’s country,” and that black people are out-of-place. They conveniently forget that white people, in search for big bucks, brought black people over, who really did build this country. They forget that had it not been for black people, America would never have become the economic powerhouse it has been for a long time.

I listened to a white attorney say that God meant for America to be for black people, and he said that God sanctions and approves of violence against black people. (see “The Last White Knight”) For whites in this country, blacks are, simply, a problem. Blacks are blamed for their poverty. Blacks are considered to be lazy and therefore, unemployed and unemployable. Whites conveniently forget that too often, now and in our history, white employers have refused to hire black people, some even putting signs up that say “Whites need only to apply.” (see, The Warmth of Other Suns, by Isabel Wilkerson). Whites conveniently forget that black men have stood out in lines waiting to be hired when jobs were scarce and that they were always the last hired, if at all. Whites do not know the extremes black people have had to go through in order to survive and make it in America.

Because white people do not see black people as human but, rather, as subhuman (per our description in the U.S. Constitution), they have not really been able to care, to feel, to understand what it is black people are wanting. Black people do not want hand-outs. Black people want what white people have without thinking about it: black people want justice.

I don’t imagine that many white people understand that the parents of Mike Brown and Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis and so many others …are aching….not just because their sons have been murdered by people who are supposed to protect us …but because they have had to fight to even get authorities to see that it is important that they get justice. Yes, there is black-on-black violence, which is horrible, but that is a different kind of situation than the one I am referring to. Black-on-black crime happens, many times, because poverty and joblessness breeds that kind of behavior; crime is high in any ethnic group or neighborhood where the poverty is rampant and the opportunities lacking. Those parents are grieving, too…but in many cases, they see the assailants of their children put into jail. Not so when police kill our children. Black people cry because the governments – state and local – not only get away with killing black people, but many of them in government and law enforcement agencies are participants in the violence.

Black people are not protected in this country. Black people are disposable. Black people are objects, and therefore, black people can be killed and nobody will have to answer for it.

This way of looking at black people is an illness. It is America’s illness, and it is cancerous. It is killing us as a nation. No nation can call itself “great” or “exceptional” that treats its own citizens this way. America is rotted in its center, but will not address or do the work to scrape the rot out. America’s political system is based largely upon feeding racist language to a base of white people who are afraid of black people, who think black people are America’s problem, and who want black people out of here.

Can America heal? Can the pus that is oozing from America’s sores and infecting more and more of this nation stop, a sign that the illness has been treated and cured?

I don’t think so, not unless and until it decides to treat the rot. And I just don’t see that happening, not any time soon.

A candid observation…

Justice Denied

As an African-American, I find myself ever wishing and hoping for …justice for our people killed by law enforcement officers…but it almost never comes.

Yesterday, the officers who shot and killed John Crawford in a Wal-Mart store in Beavercreek, Ohio, were not indicted. In spite of the fact that Crawford was holding a toy gun in a store where it is OK to carry guns …he was gunned down and his killers will go free. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/09/24/john-crawford-iii_n_5876574.html)

The names of the officers are, by the way, Sgt. David Darkow and Officer Dean Williams.

There is always “something” that we the public “don’t get.” There’s always a “reason” why African-Americans are gunned down and killed by police, and the “reason’ is enough to clear the officers of any wrongdoing. The grand jury must have seen something, heard the “something” that we, the public, “don’t get.” They found that the officers’ actions were justified. No excessive force…

We in the African-American community have seen police work in our neighborhoods; we have seen and heard the harassment, the taunting and daring officers give in our communities. They do not protect us. They seem to feel we don’t deserve protection.

Instead, they goad our people, especially our young people …and then blame them for any altercation that might ensue or, ultimately, any shooting death that might occur.

When Rodney King was attacked by police officers years ago, I, for one, rejoiced because the beating was caught on tape. Now, I thought, the people will see how police treat African-Americans. They will be arrested, I again thought erroneously. They will lose their jobs. They will be held accountable.

But the justice I thought would be a no-brainer did not come. The officers were cleared of wrongdoing …and the African-American community in Los Angeles went up in flames.

I have been holding my breath as the grand jury in Ferguson has been out, considering the future of Darren Wilson. Officer Darren Wilson. There is nothing in me that believes he will be indicted.

But in the case of the officers who shot John Crawford, I thought, just like I thought when Rodney King was beaten, that surely these guys who shot Crawford would be made to answer for their actions. That would have been justice. But, as usual, it is justice …denied.

When Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam killed Emmett Till there was a trial …but it was a farce. An all-white jury found the two white assailants innocent…and took only minutes to come to their “verdict.” Later, they arrogantly confessed in an article which appeared in Look Magazine. They were arrogant, cocky, unrepentant…Mamie Till, Emmett’s mother, who insisted that the world see what these men had done to her son, never got justice. What agony she must have felt for the rest of her life.

I would imagine that the officers in Crawford’s death are likewise feeling on top of the world today. Arrogant, Cocky. Ready to get back to work, feeling like they can do whatever they want and get away with it.

People have said to African-Americans, “Wait. Don’t jump to conclusions before “the facts” are known. Let the system work.”

Thing is, we’ve been waiting for “the system” to work in our favor for some time. Mothers and fathers, wives and children, have been robbed of justice in the deaths of their loved ones which has come at the hands of “law enforcement” for literally decades in this nation. In addition to weeping over the loss of their loved one, they have wept and are continuing to weep over the fact that the assailants have been cleared of wronging and are free. I call that justice …denied.

“The law” in America is held up as sacrosanct. If one is truly American, one obeys “the law.” And if one doesn’t, one should expect to be punished.

But that proclamation seems only to hold for certain situations. White people in the South ignored “the law” when the federal government ordered schools to be integrated after Brown vs Board of Education. Some governors closed schools rather than integrate them. “The law” didn’t apply to them, they decided, …and they were none the worse for it.

Word: Whenever a person or a family has justice denied, there is deep pain, then deep frustration, followed by depression…and then anger. The anger amongst African-Americans is bubbling, America. Can’t you feel it?

I can.

A candid observation …

Fear Produced Ferguson Disturbance

Police are allowed to use deadly force if they are ‘in fear for their lives.” I get that. It makes sense…

Except that when it comes to black people, it seems like police are always in fear for their lives.

Fear of black people is nothing new. Time magazine calls it “Negrophobia,” and defines it as “the unjustified fear of black people.” (http://time.com/3207307/negrophobia-michael-brown-eric-garner-and-americas-fear-of-black-people/) The article talks about phobias in general; they are “extreme aversions,” and they can cause impulsive, irrational, behavior. When I was a child, I had a phobia about bees; if I saw one, I ran. If one, God forbid, was in my car, I was prone to want to stop the car wherever it was and get out and run. My daughter has a phobia about spiders. If she even thinks she sees one, she will grab whatever is near to spray on it and will spray it until it drowns. She even bought a special vacuum cleaner which she kept near her, plugged in and ready to go, so that if she saw a spider, no matter how small, she could get her vacuum cleaner out and get rid of it.

It seems that many white people have…that kind of unnatural, unjustified fear of black people. A friend of mine said he got onto an elevator which already had a passenger – a white woman. As soon as he got on, he said, he could see her tense up. He stayed on the other side of the elevator, so as to try to reduce her discomfort. When the elevator door opened, she darted out …only to run smack into another black man who was getting on. My friend said he thought she was going to faint. Negrophobia. We who are Negroes have seen it and felt it.

In the recent debacle in Ferguson, it felt like fear was running the agenda. Those police officers, wrapped, as they were in riot gear and equipped with military weapons, were afraid. All they saw was a sea of black faces, people whom they do not really regard as people, people whom they have not cared to try to get to know. They saw people who, they believe, are mere brutes, objects, not people, devoid of feeling, emotion and, frankly, human worth. What I saw was a group of frightened white people ready to kill “the enemy,” i.e., black people. It didn’t matter that most of them did not loot and were not armed. They were part of the “enemy camp,” to be feared as much as an Iraqi soldier might be feared in the war over there.

Brandon Hill, the author of the article in Time, wrote, “Phobic people hyperbolize a threat that is not actually present, and trip themselves into aggression.” Police, mostly white, have been given a steady dose of “black people are bad people,” as has been the general public. Many white people still, in the 21st century, have not met and do not know any black people. All they have is the myths, the sound bites and the media depiction of black people as animals, aberrant entities in this nation who, frankly, are bringing the country down. Bill O’Reilly said that the problems with black people come from “the culture.” He is, of course, inferring that black culture is deficient in and of itself, not allowing one iota for the impact of racism, poverty and general oppression on the lives of so many African-Americans. He obviously does not know the culture of this people which has sustained and strengthened them as they have fought racism in every aspect of their lives. He does not know, or care about, black fathers and mothers who work two and three jobs to sustain their families. He does not know about how central faith and God is to this people who have been discarded by the country they helped build. He does not know this culture which teaches a crazy lesson that people are to forgive their oppressors, because that is a central tenet of Christianity.

When my son was little, he was unbelievably cute, and people, white and black, would stop me and comment on the same. I found myself resenting the compliment coming from white people, though, because I knew that as he grew, he wouldn’t be so cute. He would be just another black man. He is now a strapping 6’4″ and has fallen into the category of those to be feared; as such, he is at risk of being approached by and harassed by a Negrophobe.

Fear caused the debacle in Ferguson, not the protesting people. A few bad apples looted, feeding into the “bad Negro” motif Americans have embraced, but the debacle was not caused by the looters. The debacle was caused by frightened white police officers with too much power and too many military-grade weapons. Had the officers treated the protestors like human beings, and not like “f***ing animals” the outcome, the response would have been different.

I know that because I know “the culture.”

If more white people knew the culture, they’d be able to replace the fear with respect …and that would create an entirely different vibe between whites and blacks.

I don’t think the fear will disappear any time soon, though. Negrophobia is an American malady which is probably here to stay…

A candid observation …