‘Til Death
I don’t know what to say. I’ve felt this way for several weeks now and see no end in sight. The difference now is that I am overflowing with the desire to have something to say whereas I had previously been much more internally tame.
I’m a middle class white guy. Family of four plus a dog. The fence isn’t white, but it’s there. I’m 27 and work in tech. I really can’t get too much more generic, I suppose. Oh, and I moved up to a up and coming tech city, Indianapolis, earlier this year from the Deep South. Just want to get all of that profile stuff out of the way so we can all know the vantage point from which what follows will flow.
I often feel like complex issues, not least of all racially charged ones, are entirely slanted towards one side or the other. The greater the complexity, the greater the visceral response and emotional foothold. As such, biases that can be shrugged off as simply the nature of the beast turn into the beasts we have to war against and so the cycles perpetuate seemingly ad infinitum.
So, when the Michael Brown issue began boiling over I kept my silence. There was plenty of vitriol on both sides to require no extra help from me. I engaged in absolutely zero discussion on it in any public context. No tweets. No Facebook posts. No writing here on Medium. A few private discussions, sure, but only with those closest to me. While I in no way mind hard lines being drawn on issues, I also don’t enjoy polarized issues that are polarized primarily by emotional investments.
I felt that the community’s outrage was more than understandable. When you look at the statistics regarding our alleged justice system you see a storied tapestry that begins with black and ends in red. There’s no denying it. Well, there’s no good reason to deny it at least. There are, of course, plenty of people — name calling would be so easy and gratifying at this point, but we’ll hold off for now — on the staunchly conservative side of the fence that by default assume such figures are nothing more than a hoax. Their take on any numbers which confront their prejudices or ideals is that they are nothing more than the love child of the bemoaned liberalism of academia and media. There’s certainly a group on the other side of the coin that wants everything to be decidedly racial in nature — and premeditated at that — but the latter’s existence doesn’t justify the former’s. Let’s just agree to not even entertain the finger-pointing method of justification that some use at this point.
Despite being understandable, and in many ways justifiable, there was far too much ambiguity in my mind to do anything besides mourn the fact that we live in a world where this kind of tragedy can occur. And it’s worth stressing the fact that it is a tragedy regardless of which account of that day is true. The larger conversation that came from it all is well beyond being overdue, but the foundation was too cracked by unknowns to be strong enough to support the movement in the long term. Again, all of this is simply some incredibly average white guy’s processing of things. Feel free to assume I’m completely wrong. It’s probably a safe bet in most cases, not least of all these.
On the basis of simple intellectual honesty I couldn’t really make any sort of ruling in my own mind. As such, it is very hard to interpret events that followed the point of origination and make subsequent rulings on them. The only thing left to do was, again, grieve the tragic nature of it all. While there have been some good push backs to Benjamin Watson’s now famous Facebook post, I thoroughly appreciated the dual nature of his words. Whatever the truth of the whole matter is, tragedy is the major plot theme. It’s the recurring star of the show, period. The details may go one way or another, but they all arrive at the same sad final chapter: a dead boy, a hemorrhaging community, a nation bleeding out.
My hope was that there would be swift action taken to employ body cameras for police men and women. It seemed as if having one such camera rolling would clean up this whole mess. We’d know what had happened and could then deal with it appropriately.
But then the Eric Garner ruling came through this week.
There was no police body cam. There was a third party, entirely objective camera capturing it all. And we completely, wholly fucked it up. There’s no two ways about it. No amount of strong language can begin to express how asinine this ruling is. No clever combination of phrases can hold the weight of this monumentally hope thrashing decision. There are no words. And even if there were, #WeCantBreathe due to this unbelievable blow to the gut. Our capacity for erring away from justice is much greater than we would have hoped or dared to imagine.
But that’s only the first half of it. The second comes quickly and even more unexpectedly. You have men like Sean Hannity, apparently a martial artist, saying that’s not a choke hold. Peter King has the gall to blame Eric Garner’s health for his death. Worst still is that his argument is made in such a way that is still dependent upon said chokehold — I mean “backwards hug” a la sensei Hannity — requiring it before compounding Garner’s already ailing body to the point of expiration. Coroner’s report be damned.
It’s bad enough that a grand jury of Eric Garner’s peers couldn’t figure out heads from tails. And let’s not forget they hail from the most diverse city in the U.S. This isn’t Selma we’re talking about. But then for the idiocy of so many talking heads to crop up and defend such a ridiculous ruling or even make light of his death by means of their discussion is simply beyond comprehension.
We are broken.
We are broken. That’s the sad truth beneath it all. And so I don’t know what to do. I don’t know how to raise my voice. I don’t know how to add my weight to the growing momentum. Frankly, I don’t know if I’m even allowed to. And, if I am, then I’m not quite sure how I am.
I’ve seen back and forth online about this sort of thing before. Can men be part of the feminist movement, i.e. can they be a solution to the problem they have engineered (or in themselves are)? Can whites really take any sort of ownership in the attempt to push back racial lines till they no longer exist — again, a solution to the problem they’ve created and represent in essence? Fair questions and necessary discussions.
It may be unnecessary to take a quick detour here, but for the sake of clarity we’ll do so. This is not white guilt. This isn’t some sort of “Oo man, we (whites) messed this thing up so now I need to help glaze over it by doing some positive stuff.” No, no. Sunny Hundal of The Guardian hits the nail on the head:
Not much annoys me more than the stereotype that to be liberal is to be full of guilt. To be socially liberal, in my view, is to be more mindful of compassion and empathy for others.
The question, then, is how that compassion, empathy, and longing for justice can be fleshed out. Maybe I can march. Maybe I can protest. Maybe I can tweet or post or write enough to chip away at some of the injustice. Maybe I can push for people like Rep. Pete King (R) in New York’s 2nd district to be dismissed from office, help remind people that forthcoming candidates like Hillary have been laughably silent on these issues, or help support candidates who have a lick of sense in these complex matters. Maybe it’s more indirect than direct. Or maybe I’m missing something.
Here’s what I’ve come up with thus far.
One thing I’ve realized that I can’t do is spread a general sort of awareness. Recent studies have indicated that raising awareness of an issue without intentionally and overtly denouncing it actually raises the amount of perpetration. You read that right: awareness by itself not only helps people to continue in their ways, but actually aids in recruiting new people to follow suit. So I have to take an explicit stand, not just hurl articles or stats at people.
Perhaps most cynically, I just have to die. I want to attribute the idea to Jeff Atwood, but I can’t be certain if I am ripping this from his comments or not. I’ll assume so. He has mentioned that these sorts of gross injustices require the dying off of generations, including the very people who admit that fact, before we can fully shed our old skins. That’s the part that is cynical and jaded. Here’s the hopeful part: valar morghulis, all men must die. This means that it’s bound to happen. Progress is inevitable and it will cost us all our lives.
So while I am formulating a few action items like the above, ultimately I care about simply not being in the way. Not slowing things down. Not hindering forward progress. Not being a stumbling block or hurdle.
I may not know what to say quite yet, but I can still breathe and thus owe it to Eric Garner and countless others to join the chorus of shouts against gross, systemic injustice. That’s a much better way to grow hoarse than simply from clearing my throat in awkward bits of silence. I may still be wondering exactly what to do, but I don’t have 5 police officers pinning me to the ground to stop me.
Regardless of the answers to the above, I’m going to die. And so are you. Until then, let’s fight for those who shouldn’t have.
This is my lowly attempt to get some of this out on paper in general and to ask sincere, general questions: What am I to do? How do I join in? Where do I start?Here’s a list of some things I’m reading to help:
12 Things White People Can Do
Poor People’s Campaign: A Dream Unfulfilled
How White People Got Made
Thanks a bunch for reading. If you want to dialogue, please leave comments. If you enjoyed this or found it helpful, I’d appreciate you hitting recommend below.
