Editorial
We are Angry
Many people are puzzled; wondering why it took so long to announce that the Grand Jury in Ferguson, Missouri was not going to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of Michael Brown, an 18-year old black man. But there’s another emotion carousing the veins of many a black person: Anger. We are angry – incensed – that a jury decided not to even charge Mr. Wilson with a simple misdemeanor for what many thought was an open – shut case of guilt. After all, all evidence showed that Michael Brown was unarmed. It does not matter, people feel, that Officer Wilson saw a large lout reach his waistband for some imaginary pistol while charging. We believe that there is just no real justification for someone to discharge his or her weapon more than 10 times at another human being. In fact, on top of asking when a group of people will get a little more justice, this same group cannot help but feel that a charging Rottweiler would not be treated as worthlessly as Michael Brown was. The boy, people say, was not armed, and if this is not an excessive use of force, perhaps nothing else will present things any better. People whisper that in spite of his size and girth, he was an unarmed man facing another man with a gun. Did the officer of the law have to use lethal force? Some say yes. But did the force have to be deliberately lethal? Again, we are outraged that in the face of what seems like overwhelming evidence, a man is, free while another lies dead in his grave because of what is, interpretively, a racial injustice.
On a night when Black America is reminded that the battle for respect or the end of racism cannot be defeated or completely uprooted, some reminded us that the U.S. Supreme Court in the Seattle and Louisville cases suggests that there is an ideal scenario within which to frame racial equality or treatment. While we may parse this case for some sense of comfort in history, these ideal things are too sequestered from this open, raw and festering wound espoused by the death of Michael Brown. In fact, while we referred to him as St. Trayvon Martin, the canonization of Michael Brown cannot be underestimated.
In a bizarre press conference featuring a prosecutor laying blame for this brouhaha on the media, the November 25, 2014 announcement was simple: The 18-year old Mr. Brown died, ostensibly, as a result of his own actions. We were aghast: Darren Wilson is a 28-year old man – trained by a reputable police institution. Why did he not use a taser on Mr. Brown? After all, even hulks of pure evil would not remain standing if electrical volts shot through their veins.
Invariably, would Michael Brown have ended up dead if he were white? A false equivalence, some may say this is. Bollocks, we intend to respond: Slavery, Apartheid and Colonialism were laws of the land in their respective times – and they were, outright in their unfairness to a certain section of the people. What was, in fact, so wrong about them was not that they were law; they were just bad to the fair doctrine of human rights. So, if we can prove, beyond reasonable doubt that racism is a de facto reality in American society, then we have a legal right to fight for our rights up front. In Michael Brown’s case, we may even conclude that he fought and lost against a system he did not trust. Thus, although Michael Brown is not on trial – and Darren Wilson will not suffer his trigger happiness, what stands on trial is this subliminal and oftentimes overt system that is inherently unfair to a section of people – at the level of slavery, apartheid and colonialism.
On a different level is a question of value: Is a black life of less value than a white life? Many in the American society seem to think that because black on black crime is commonplace, the young men and women that meet a violent end to their lives do not bleed the same red blood or feel the same pain. But this is biologically improbable. On a humanitarian basis, the fact is that if none of the police officers or people involved in Rodney King, Amadou Diallou, Abner Louima, Trayvon Martin and now Michael Brown were found guilty of wrongdoing, why should society feel like people of color have any value?
But perhaps these Michael Brown circumstances will be different: When the non-indictment was announced, protests rang out in various U.S. cities. As at November 27, 2014, media reports suggest that over 400 people across these United States have been arrested for disturbing the peace. People in the United Kingdom were appalled that we in North America let things go to this level. Even Russia took a dig at the United States. In a statement to the Russian media, someone in the Kremlin crafted nonsense that suggested that the U.S. had better look into its own human rights record before lecturing to those who seek to claim what is theirs territorially. And this is why Michael Brown may be different: Much to the chagrin of conservatives, Barack Obama mentioned Ferguson’s filthy underbelly in his speech to the UN this summer. As Russia sees it, Ferguson and Michael Brown are now a matter of geopolitics, and closer to home, the pulsating pain of the lack of indictment is what, obviously, led to the aforementioned protests, gun shots and return fire in Ferguson, buildings on fire in Missouri. In places like Times Square in New York City, that city’s Police Commissioner received his share of fake blood in the face. Some major roads and highways into and from St. Louis, Missouri were blocked by human blockades in the immediate aftermath of the press conference – and the fires that raged past 2 a.m. were still not quelled on the morning of the day afterwards.
Interestingly, someone smashed a Fox News camera while they were broadcasting live on air. Of course, the CNN reporter was stoned – but the person that broke the Fox camera specifically cussed the cable news channel by name. This is the same network that took the side of Trayvon Martin’s killer – the one that trumpeted the fact that Officer Wilson had a fractured eye socket while showing Michael Brown flashing gang signs. Attesting to this camera incident, it seems as though just as many a black person has had a direct racial altercation with the police, people know who is for them and who is against them.
