If Michael Brown had been Michael White, would the still-unfolding tragedy of Ferguson have occurred? When was the last time you heard of a white college student being shot down in cold blood by a police officer? Kent State, maybe? Yeah, it’s been that long.
There is no excuse for the police officers hired to protect the peace using their weapons to kill unarmed citizens on the street.
There is no excuse for the kind of racial profiling that has spawned the bitter joke among Black men that they were stopped for DWB—driving while Black.
For a naturally empathic species, we humans can be remarkably insensitive to the well-being of others. I have realized, through examining my own experience closely, that this is due to cultural conditioning that enjoins us to put ourselves first—as individuals, as members of families and cultures, and as human beings.
We are not encouraged to think of ourselves in relationship to others. And without that sense of relationship, it’s hard to get worked up about what happens to others. It’s their business, their concern, not ours. Michael Brown? He must have been causing trouble.
The riots that came down in the wake of Brown’s killing show us that people of color knew otherwise. They took this murder personally because it could have been any one of them shot down by police. They are standing up for their rights in the way that people without power do: putting their own bodies on the line and raising a ruckus too loud to be ignored by the authorities.
Sometimes smashing storefront windows and setting cars on fire is necessary. It’s the last resort of people pushed beyond the bounds of civility.
There is a song that keeps running around in my head lately, from the Civil Rights Era, called “It Isn’t Nice.” It goes like this:
It isn’t nice to block the doorway
It isn’t nice to go to jail
There are nicer ways to do it
But the nice ways always fail
It isn’t nice, it isn’t nice if you told us once you told us twice
But if that’s freedom’s price
We don’t mind.
Well we tried negotiation
And the token picket line
Mr. Charlie wouldn’t see us
And he might as well be blind
When you deal with men of ice
You can’t deal with ways so nice
But if that’s freedom’s price
We don’t mind.
What about the years of lynchings
And the shot in Evers’ back?
Did you say it wasn’t proper
Did you step out on the track?
You were quiet just like mice
And now you say that we’re not nice.
But if that’s freedom’s price
We don’t mind!
When yet another unarmed black boy is shot by police for no apparent reason…well, it isn’t nice, and the authorities can’t expect a nice calm response. Further curtailing civil rights by imposing a night curfew won’t help matters either.
What’s needed is first of all an apology; and secondly a real sit-down between the Black and the white communities, a sincere and prolonged effort to come to terms with reasons behind the continuing segregation and impoverishment on the Black side of the tracks, and strategies for making things better.
Barack Obama’s rhetoric from early in his presidency—we are not Black Americans and white Americans, red Americans or blue Americans, we are all Americans—comes back to haunt me as I think about the killing of Michael Brown. For too long we humans have seen the world in terms of differences and separations, rather than recognizing the ways we are all the same and connected.
One day I hope humans will look back on this period of history and shake their heads, wondering how their ancestors could have been so misguided as to imagine that people with dark skin were any different than people with pale skin. I hope that in this future time, it will be inconceivable that a life could be snuffed out for no reason.
We humans are blessed with incredible powers of creative imagination, and the ability to manifest what we dream. We need to focus our imaginations now on envisioning a safer, saner world, where respect and mutual aid are the highest values—and not just respect for humans, but for all the life forms on the planet.
If we can use the situation in Ferguson as a catalyst for moving forward in the dream of radical equality, then Michael Brown’s tragic death will not have been in vain.
Transition Times 
Diane
/ August 17, 2014Jennifer, I wonder how many of these disturbing incidents will have to occur before we see that catalyst come into play.
These days, I see erosion of civil rights – be it for people of color, women, or whoever. Those with intelligent thoughts to share in public forums suffer incredibly rude comments at best and viscous demeaning attacks to death threats on the other end of the spectrum. Ask some of the high profile climate scientists. Even when beloved public figures like Robin Williams dies, there can’t be respect for his legacy or his family from some.
I keep waiting for people to stand up and yell “enough” but it isn’t happening.
I am generally an optimistic individual, but finding less and less reason to be so.
Margaret Randall
/ August 20, 2014I think the problem is between power and no power, and race is all too often part of that equation. But not always, nor only. In Albuquerque, New Mexico, trigger-happy members of our police force have murdered 23 citizens over the past four years. These were not people in the act of committing a crime. Many had their hands up in surrender. Few had weapons. But all were poor, many were mentally ill, and a good number were people of color. In other words, all were powerless against officers trained to “shoot now, ask questions never.” The officers who killed them were promoted, and some were given what can only be called extra bounty pay. Rodney King, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and others are three high profile cases in which race clearly played a major role. They remind us that racism is alive and well and dangerous in America. But I feel we must also take a hard look at the growing distance between those who hold power in our country and those who are rendered powerless. It is a distance that is becoming greater by the day.