Adrenaline, Confusion, and Race in the killing of Jazmine Barnes
TL/DR: How the murder of a seven-year-old epitomizes our toxic national discourse
The story is simple enough. A family made an early morning coffee run to their local Walmart. While in the parking area, a red pick up truck pulled up alongside them and shots rang out. Glass shattered, the family took cover, and the truck sped off. A seven-year-old girl was struck in the head, killed in front of her family.
The attack seemed unprovoked. The family was black. The suspect was described as a forty-year-old white male, driving a red pick up truck. In the current political climate, one could practically see the “Make America Great Again” and Confederate flag decals on the back of the truck.
Controversial activist Shaun King offered a $25,000 dollar reward for information leading to the arrest of the shooter, which ballooned to $100,000 with additional donations. A tip led to the confession and arrest of Eric Black Jr., the alleged getaway driver. The shooter has also been apprehended. Both Eric and the alleged shooter are black.
Unusual Suspects:
How did the suspect description change so much?
Adrenaline, pure and simple. During a life and death situation, the heart rate spikes, blood pressure surges, and the mind goes into overdrive attempting to gather information. Only what is immediate and necessary is recorded, often tinged with the fear and anger of such a situation. The red truck, described by victims and witnesses, was likely the closest vehicle to the victims. The quick flight of the truck made it suspicious to onlookers. Right wing political resurgence, media hyperbole, and the rash of very real right wing attacks, led to assumptions on everyone’s part. No one even saw the shooters or their vehicle in the ensuing chaos. The driver of the red pickup truck was very likely a frightened bystander, and the shooters mistook the victims for a different target.
Attention and Perception:
The attention given to this shooting is almost certainly the result of our toxic national discourse. In the wake of the Charleston Church Shooting, the Charlottesville Car Attack, and the Pittsburgh Synagogue Shooting, it is easy to imagine a right wing terrorist committing such a heinous act. But it wasn’t. And the statistical prevalence of hate-based homicides is extremely low. In 2017, the Federal Bureau of Investigations Uniform Crime Report only recorded 15 hate-based homicides, with over 16,000 Law Enforcement jurisdictions reporting. This makes being killed for your race or religion extremely unlikely, but that’s not the perception.
Rick Wallace, a Houston-based psychologist, has a small YouTube channel featuring a video discussing the event. As a black man who grew up in a rough area, Rick describes his own experiences with violence, the psychology of such an event, his distrust for the judicial system, and his skepticism towards the media and justice advocates. In the piece he asserts that black men and women are routinely brutalized and assassinated for their race. This is a popular narrative in Liberal and Progressive circles, and the disconnect between Conservatives and Left Wingers could not be more important.
The Blame Game:
Progressives assert that people of color are the victims of a White Supremacist system that is purposefully designed to exalt “Whiteness” and keep everyone else down. They point to the history of colonialism, slavery, and the “Redeemer South,” in which Africans and Americans of African descent were brutalized. In this worldview, modern Law Enforcement, costly licenses, obscure permits, victimless crimes, and the drug war, are all thinly veiled pretexts from which to continue abusing people of color. Video recordings of severe beatings and controversial shootings are not the side effects of the system, they are the point of the system.
Conservatives view history through the progressive narrative they were taught as children. Colonialism was brutal, but everything was brutal back then. Slavery was bad, but 500,000 Americans died to end the institution. Jim Crow was bad, but the Civil Rights act guaranteed the legal equality of citizens. The drug war is bad, but the cycles of poverty and crime can be broken by individual responsibility, effort, and good life choices. Law Enforcement is largely viewed as a necessary and noble institution, of which violence and corruption are merely the foibles of man in a caustic and harsh environment.
When confronted with the Progressive version of history, Conservatives point to the widespread acceptance and wealth of black celebrities. When confronted with police brutality, they bring up crime statistics and law enforcement policy. When confronted with the poverty of minority groups, they cite the working class history of their own ancestors, and chock everything up to individual life choices and consequences. Along with this counterargument they use examples of Asian and Jewish success rates to prove that the American system is aracial, and that Capitalism is merely the blind judge of who is most intelligent, aggressive, and industrious. In this way, every historical example can be relegated to the past, and every problem of the present can be shifted back onto the suffering.
If American race relations could be conceptualized as a horse and cart, then Progressives are arguing that the cart was overloaded and dragged the horse into the ditch. Conservatives are arguing that the horse drove itself into the ditch. What we should all agree on is that we need to get the horse and cart out of the damned ditch, and that brings up important questions.
- Why did these young men believe it was acceptable, even praise-worthy, to fire a weapon into a vehicle in a public place?
- What is going on in their lives, homes, and opportunities, that they believe that killing a rival is a good thing to do in one of the most wealthy and developed nations on earth?
- What has happened in the victims’ lives, homes, and opportunities, that they felt that a likely explanation of what happened was that they were targeted and attacked by their countrymen for the crime of having a different skin color?
- What has happened to our media, that we only seem to care about homicides that play into this broader culture war?
We have to address family. We have to address cyclical poverty. We have to address education. We have to address culture. We have to address justice. We have to address opportunity.
We have to talk about how to get the horse and kart out of the ditch, and then we have to start pushing.
