On Baltimore, Ferguson and Looking for “Outs”
It amazes and terrifies me how widespread the thinking has become of considering one's criminal history to somehow mitigate the severity of the crime and violence committed against that person. These are justifications that are frequent, and muttered loudly to approving nods in many corners of political thought.
Mike Brown: "He committed a robbery, so the death was justified." (No, the justification COULD be the altercation with Darren Wilson, the specifics of which will forever be mired in opposing interpretations of vague and poorly collected evidence.)
Eric Garner: He was selling loose cigarettes illegally and didn't immediately comply with police orders, so naturally five officers are within their rights to jump on him and ultimately choke him to death as he begged for air.
Freddie Gray: A long history of possession/distribution of narcotics, so breaking his spine is a-okay. (A meme is currently going around listing his criminal offenses to somehow discount the movement's legitimacy, as if there's a good reason for police to break a man's spine well after he's in custody.)
The criticism of a movement's "martyrs" comes with the dangerous implication that they are somehow LESS HUMAN than people who hadn't committed crimes, that their lives are more acceptable to end than others. "He was a thug anyway." To even begin to argue that this sentence isn't coded language is, well, cowardice.
The criticism of a movement's more violent wings as somehow delegitimizing the whole enterprise simply reeks of desperation, of wanting to avoid a very uncomfortable conversation and seeking the easiest way "out." Of course, there is no "out." It's in front of us. It's on our news feeds. It's outside our homes. The world doesn't just go away when you close your eyes, now does it? (credit: MEMENTO)
And if you pull out to a larger view, responses from Brown to Garner to Gray (with so many more, too many, before-after-and-inbetween), have become louder, stronger, bigger. The scope is growing because the speeches have not been truly heard.
As people use MLK as yet another way "out," they ignore a very telling quote of "rioting is the language of the unheard." While not condoning violence, there's empathy in his characterization of violent responses during the civil rights movement. Empathy that people who use the good Dr. as their way of criticizing and dismissing the movement lack.
Empathy is not condoning. Empathy is not saying that rioting is good, that people should trash their communities and overturn cop cars and set them and anything else they can get ahold of on fire. Empathy is not sympathy.
It's empathy that we collectively, in our responses to incidents like these, have to find again. Because single-sentence dismissals of problems that are growing in size and intensity before our very eyes has never, in the history of ever, done anyone any good.
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