A measure of hope is surfacing in a deadly, grievously predictable pattern. Unarmed black man – usually neither saint nor Public Enemy No. 1— dies after an encounter with police.
Long-stoked anger flashes over to full inferno. Property is wantonly destroyed; hospitals filled with uncivil uproar’s victims.
And on the far side of the Great Gulf of race and class, in spit-and-polish neighborhoods reflecting the full payout of the American Dream, the comfortable further distance themselves from both the unjust looter and the law-abiding souls unwittingly ensnared as their neighborhood burns. “Those” people get what they deserve could be the lawn banners here.
That’s a tired, static narrative defining part of the standoff on remaining matters of race in America.
What’s changing to the good is that the cries for simple justice now seem less likely to fade away unheard. On Friday, one day after receiving an investigative report of a man fatally injured while in police custody, a Baltimore prosecutor announced criminal charges against six police officers in the death of Freddie Gray. In North Charleston, S.C., a police officer was quickly fired and charged with murder after firing multiple shots into the back of an unarmed, fleeing man.
That’s America now — as a moment that will be writ large in future history roils a complex mix of consciousness, rage, denial and dismay.
At the core is an American pattern of policing that too often leaves unarmed black men dead after relatively minor confrontations. There isn’t really much debate about it — each side bellows over what the other’s saying.
I suspect there’s less of that counterproductive volatility in the Atlanta metro, which has long embraced diversity with more gusto than other places. Even so, we’re not perfect. I’m sure there are black and white neighbors in Alpharetta or Peachtree City who hold opposite views about where the problems lie. And many people in Buckhead or Clayton County are likely equally disgusted by images of looting.
The really rough work will come in gaining enough common ground to coalesce around solutions.
That will be hard in this stubborn-hearted age where we keep desperately digging deep trenches along rigid lines of politics, class, race and culture. It’s a hard task to strain to understand each other. It’s easiest to hunker in isolation, surrounded only by those who think, blog and tweet similar thoughts.
Among the Bible’s most frightful passages is a thrice-repeated warning that “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.” That truth should worry an America hell-bent on picking opposing corners – and staying there. We have to somehow learn to listen to each other, discern commonalities and act accordingly.
For example, I strongly believe courtroom-proven criminal behavior deserves tough punishment. That includes the few criminally rogue cops, as well as the looters who ran riot in Baltimore, Ferguson and elsewhere. I suspect agreement on this bridges some color and class lines.
Meanwhile, rioting’s criminal mayhem distracts attention from real problems. Last week, it overshadowed peaceful mourning for Freddie Gray.
Worse, it gave plausibility to those disinclined to see a rising pattern of troubling deaths at police hands.
It makes it too easy for too many to proclaim that so-called “thugs” got their just deserts – on-the-spot death without charges, trial or conviction. This trend should be appalling to those who claim to support the rule of law.
Cries of “race-baiter” and the like, or boneheaded rioters who shout slurs and hurl missiles at police, also shows unwarranted disdain for the many who live or volunteer their labor in troubled neighborhoods, often to good effect. Their work embodies ex-slave Frederick Douglass’ 1848 admonition that, “We must rise or fall, succeed or fail, by our own merits.”
Take Baltimore’s Rev. Donte L. Hickman Sr. His church was backing the senior center destroyed by fire last week. Hickman’s bio notes, humbly, that, “Having been raised in a single parent home … it seemed as if Rev. Hickman would become another statistic. He was expelled from three high schools living a life that was destined for failure. Nevertheless, with the help of God, the church, his faithful mother and an inner determination he turned his life around … .” Indeed.
Hickman’s is a not-uncommon, American-style triumph of the kind not easily seen by those intent on reflexively condemning entire communities. Are stronger two-parent families needed in poor or black neighborhoods? Certainly. Would that magically fix all the remaining problems — ones often shared by poor people of any hue? Certainly not.
And who lives — or dies — in encounters with police should not hinge on fatally flawed assumptions around race and intent. Getting beyond that will be a long, tough slog. To succeed as a nation, we have no other choice.
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