As a rule, I hate the word “victim.” If one claims oneself to be a victim, he or she will invariably act like one.

That being said, there are times when people ARE victims…and when they are, to be blamed for their state of being adds insult to injury.

Over the years we have seen women blamed for being raped. If they hadn’t worn certain clothing, hadn’t acted in a provocative way, some have said, they wouldn’t have been raped. The argument is as infuriating as it is insulting.

I thought about that when, as a I talked with a “progressive” white person who is understandably upset about the looting going on in Ferguson, Missouri, expressed his disgust that I was believing the accounts of what happened that day that were not so complimentary. After calling me an “anarchist,” he pooh-poohed my assertion that black people have been oppressed historically in this country. Not so, he said. “Everyone here is treated fairly.”

He outright said that the police officer is “innocent of any wrongdoing.” “The facts will support that,” he said. He despaired that I and so many others were so eager to believe the “Brown side” of the story …and said he was tired of black people complaining, that all black people wanted was special treatment.

I was angry, and then I was sad. If a white “progressive” feels that way, then there is less support for the human and civil rights of black people than I thought. Don’t get me wrong; I have never thought there was a whole lot of support for black people, but if a “progressive” who grew up in integrated neighborhoods (he said) and who has always believed in civil rights can say this, then the base of support for black people is thinner than I imagined.

There was not, in the words of my “progressive” white friend, a shred of compassion for what happened to Michael Brown. He was glad that the video tape of the strong arm robbery in which Brown was allegedly involved had been shown. “Brown was no angel,” my friend said emphatically. “He wasn’t just a good kid about to go to college.”

That may be true…he was no angel, but I daresay not many 18-year-old males are “angels.” And regardless of his “angel” status, there is something profoundly wrong with how he was gunned down by a police officer.

My friend didn’t seem to care that Brown, after being shot, lay on a hot street, bleeding and uncovered, for hours. It was as though this young boy was just “another one of them” who deserved what he got. “Wait until the facts come out,” he hissed.

What got me was not just that my friend was so vehement in his remarks; what got me is that he is not alone. The police officer who has yet to be charged with shooting Brown is on paid administrative leave, and he has a ton of online support, with people donating money, prayers and support.

My gut level feeling is that this man is going to get off.

It happens so much in our community.

So Brown, dead and now autopsied three times, is being blamed for being dead. Had he not “bum rushed” the officer, as a third-party has offered as “the official account” of what happened, he would not be dead. My “progressive” friend doesn’t doubt her account at all. Facts, she has the facts…

The officer (who I have not named on purpose because he represents, to me, “everycop” who has done this kind of thing and gotten away with it) will keep his job. The St. Louis District Attorney is working hard to get the case to the Grand Jury as soon as possible, where anything said will be kept secret. The Grand Jury will undoubtedly be all white, will lend a sympathetic ear. The word and account given by the police officer will be taken as fact.  It id doubtful that the Grand Jury, which will be heavily controlled by the prosecutor (as all grand juries are) will vote for charges to be brought against the officer but if he is, a subsequent trial will be nothing more than a formality.

If this is the way “progressives” think, then I can no longer take comfort in the fact that such a group of people exists, as I once did. This man sounded more like a hard-core right-wing American.

The thought was and is so disheartening that I wept. I hate the violence. I hate the looting …but I also hate the injustice that has been the trademark of the relationship between “the justice system” and black people for years. I hate it that the white police officer is being protected while the dead kid is being vilified and blamed…for his own death.

It is sad, and troubling, and disturbing.

Yet, it is the landscape on which we all stand. And it hurts.

A candid observation …