Editorial
The Death of Another Young Black Man
On Friday, November 23, 2012, a 17-year old young black man, Jordan Russell Davis was sitting in a convenience store parking lot, listening to very loud music while sitting in the back seat of an SUV with 3 of his friends. A little while later, he was dead from gunshot wounds. Before this, a man and his girlfriend parked close by, asked that the music be turned down, and on being insulted by the teenager and his friends, the man, Michael David Dunn, pulled out his gun, shot 8 or 9 times into the vehicle with the kids, and promptly drove off.
Many in Africa or the Caribbean may relate to this. Some in Uganda and Nigeria may even remember the impunity with which soldiers shot first and asked questions later. Chinua Achebe ends his Anthills of the Savannah with a similar episode and your humble correspondent’s uncle was shot in the head by a soldier simply because the soldier was not offered a ride!
But in America, this kind of death must be put in similar but special context: The life of a young black man is not as valuable as that of just about anything else. America would, in fact, have been more outraged if a defenseless dog were shot at 8 or 9 times – like the Late Mr. Davis was in this case.
Dunn, a 45 year old white man [on his way back from his son’s wedding] felt justified or threatened enough to blow another human being into the next life simply because he lost an argument and his temper over music!
When such senseless things happen, most of us want to blame someone: Yes – we could blame America’s gun laws and the prevalence of weapons of mass destruction. However, guns do not kill on their own. Yes – there are many misanthropes and psychos everywhere; but most people do not necessarily look forward to killing other things. Thus, if someone wantonly shoots at another and drives away, that person may feel some sort of vindication, righteousness or even sense of duty – like one feels when they cut a tree down or behead a chicken.
The Hutu in Rwanda killed ‘cockroaches’ during the 1994 genocide, and during WWII, many Germans killed Jews without an ounce of remorse because they were doing their national duty.
In the same vein, Mr. Dunn only found out that he had killed someone from the news the next morning, and even then, he did not turn himself in. If a witness had not taken his number plates down, Dunn could have gotten away with a grave sin. When he was brought before a judge, he pled ‘not guilty’ for murder or attempted murder and his lawyer even said that he saw a gun being aimed at him from the vehicle in which Davis was sitting. But the police did not find evidence of a gun. Besides, people are asking: If he felt threatened, why did he not report this incident to the police? Dunn’s daughter says her father is a ‘good man’ – completely missing the irony that this man took the life of someone only 3 years younger than her!
