Dear fellow white people,
It's me again. So, in light of recent conversations I've been having and witnessing, I'm going to try and guide the conversation to a deeper and more abstract place. I can't promise I'm going to do the best job at it, so have some patience as I attempt, perhaps clumsily, to tease out some of the additional issues that are coming up in the wake of the #Ferguson events. Remember that I, like you, am looking at things from the vantage point of my own "otherness" and so I can't rightfully claim any firsthand knowledge, and I am completely open to being corrected if my assessment strikes someone who does have firsthand knowledge of such things as inaccurate.
There has been a lot of talk around the question of whether Darren Wilson was acting from a place of racism or race-based prejudice and how (if) that informs both the legitimacy and ultimately the outcome of all of this. It's obviously true that we do not have "all the facts", which seems to be the biggest concern for a lot of people, especially those who know and love individual (ostensibly non-racist) cops. So I'll say maybe this is one of those "Yes, AND" conversations. Yes, I agree that we *don't* have any idea whether that particular cop holds any racist attitudes. Reserving judgment on that particular police officer isn't difficult for me personally. But that is because I don't think that Darren Wilson needed to be racist in any intentional way in order to hold unconscious bias that might lead him to be more quick to shoot an unarmed black kid. The bigger question is why he might -consciously or unconsciously-believe himself to be in greater harm because Mike was black, and how that could have influenced what happened. Regardless of Darren Wilson's PERSONAL CONSCIOUS FEELINGS about black people, the situation is still problematic because it speaks to a perception issue that IS directly linked to race.
There are several studies demonstrating this phenomenon (http://fairandimpartialpolicing.com/bias/)
Part of the larger systemic problem that people are angry about, and my understanding of at least a contributing factor to why this is continuing in Ferguson, is that black and brown men are statistically significantly more likely to be pulled over, detained, arrested, charged, sentenced, and incarcerated - AND/OR SHOT TO DEATH- than their white counterparts in otherwise similar circumstances. Ultimately, in the bigger and more abstract social justice picture, it's not really about Michael Brown or Darren Wilson and what happened specifically between those two men on that day. That situation is tragic and sad and confusing for all of us who are paying attention to it.
However, it seems that the events in Ferguson are also serving as a catalyst for a larger conversation around (among other things) how black men, particularly young urban black men, are perceived and responded to as if they are more dangerous than white men. For people who keep asking, whether out of genuine confusion or out of irritation at an age-old American problem that just won't go away, "Why are we talking about racism? The cop might not even be racist. Racism isn't the issue."
Let me be clear: racism IS the issue. In an abstract way, it's the WHOLE THING. Racism is the principle that drives the conversation around what happened and why it matters, regardless of the exact details of that day. I am struggling with how to take this idea from an intuitive, abstract place (which I totally understand can be confusing to people who aren't used to critically engaging in this way) and turn it into a digestible nugget of information that will make sense to people who are stuck on the idea that what is ultimately at issue is whether Darren Wilson is racist and/or clearly used excessive force in this particular case. I just don't think that is the issue at all and that it's a distraction from grappling with the bigger, uglier elephant in the room, which is the long legacy in America of devaluing, disenfranchising, and ultimately criminalizing black men.
No comments:
Post a Comment