Let me begin by noting that as a white of upper middle class background, no matter how much I empathize, I still cannot directly experience the pain of many in the black community.
Thus I look to the voices of Blacks I respect to see how they respond to things like Ferguson.
I have not been online today until recently - I have spent much of the day writing thank you notes to my students, which they will receive next week.
I have finally gotten around to some reading, and encountered two powerful pieces,
Telling My Son About Ferguson by civil rights attorney and author Michelle Alexander, and Fury After Ferguson by Charles M. Blow.
I will be happy if you simply read both columns. What I offer below the fold will then be unnecessary, although I will be more than happy should you choose to continue for a few excerpts from each and some probably unnecessary commentary by me.
Let me start with the Blow. Allow me to push fair use by quoting what I think is the heart of the column:
Sadly, for many, the Ferguson case reaffirmed a most unsettling sense that they are under siege from all sides.
So people took to the streets. Who could really blame them?
Some simply saw protests marred by senseless violence. I saw that, to be sure, and my heart hurt seeing it. But I also saw decades, generations, centuries of pain and frustration erupting once more into view. I saw hearts crying and souls demanding to be heard, to be seen, to be valued.
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. once said, “A riot is the language of the unheard.” King, a great champion of nonviolence, wasn’t advocating rioting, but rather honoring hearing.
Even long-suffering people will not suffer forever. Patience expires. The heart can be broken only so many times before peace is broken. And the absence of peace doesn’t predicate the presence of violence. It does, however, demand the troubling of the comfortable. When the voice goes unheard, sometimes it must be raised. Sometimes when calls for justice go unmet, feet must meet pavement. Sometimes when you are unseen, you can no longer remain seated. Sometimes you must stand and make a stand.
Here I think back to the destruction of Black communities in the rights of April 1968 after the assassination of Dr. King. In our discussion on Tuesday of the non-indictment and subsequent events, some of my white students had trouble grasping why their were riots, why people who had nothing to do with the events had seen their livelihoods trashed. I tried to explain about mob mentality, I tried to make reference to previous examples like 1968, I tried to point out that the actions of the governor in declaring a state of emergency well in advance of the Grand Jury decision and the decision of the prosecutor to make his statement at 8 in the evening when he could easily have done so while it was still daylight contributed to a sense of rage - in fact one could argue that the prosecutor and police were perhaps hoping for a violent reaction to detract from the reality that there had been no serious attempt to pursue justice against Darren Wilson, as becomes obvious when one reads through the grand jury material that has been released.
Unfortunately, attempting to help people understand when they are looking for excuses to dismiss and criticize will not work. I do not remember some of those voices critical of the black reaction to violence in Ferguson speaking out so forcefully when white teenager and young adults trash college towns in the aftermath of athletic events: this has been a regular occurrence in College Park, home of the University of Maryland. It has happened on many college campuses - I can remember it happening in Columbus in the 1960s when Ohio State was denied a bowl bid. The irony is in these cases most of those doing violence are white (and the further irony is that in today's college athletics, the athletes on football and basketball teams whose successes or failures inspire such riots are disproportionally African-American).
Then there is Michelle Alexander, who wrestles with how to explain to her sweet, innocent ten-year-old son. As she tells us,
As a civil rights lawyer, I know all too well that Officer Wilson will not be going to trial or to jail. The system is legally rigged so that poor people guilty of relatively minor crimes are regularly sentenced to decades behind bars while police officers who kill unarmed black men almost never get charged, much less serve time in prison.
Which contributes to the rage in a case like Ferguson, when once again a white cop who improperly killed an unarmed black kid goes free.
The heart of her column are the words she offers after recognize that she has at first lied to her son in order to protect him:
I am angry that I have to tell my son that he has reason to worry. I am angry that I have to tell him that I already know Darren Wilson won’t be indicted, because police officers are almost never indicted when they kill unarmed black men. I must tell him now, before he hears it on the school bus or sees it in the news, that many people in Michael Brown’s town will be very angry too — so filled with pain, sadness and rage — that they may react by doing things they shouldn’t, like setting fires or breaking windows or starting fights.
I know I must explain this violence, but not condone it. I must help him see that adults often have trouble managing their pain just like he does. Doesn’t he sometimes lash out and yell at friends or family when he’s hurt or angry? When people have been hurt over and over, and rather than compassion or understanding you’re given lectures about how it’s really all your fault, and that no one needs to make amends, you can lose your mind. We can wind up harming people we care about with words or deeds, people who have done no harm to us.
Ultimately neither column justifies the violence.
Both can help us understand better why the violence has occurred.
Both are written by Blacks who have risen to positions of prominence and respect in a still largely white society, but who have not lost connection with what it can mean to be a Black, to be disrespected and dismissed and feared all at the same time merely because of the amount of melanin in one's skin.
We still have a racial problem in this country. Our electing a Black President just made visible the racism that has never gone away.
Our electing Governors and Senators and House Members and Mayors, having some Black CEOs of major companies - these may be advances but they do not change the reality of the racism and racial prejudice with so many people of color still must deal on a daily basis.
This evening I read two columns.
If you have read this far you should now be persuaded you should read both, and pass them on.
Thanks for reading.