I'm not going to waste your time mourning; I have no performative emotional displays left for anyone or anything. I only know that the harassment or indiscriminate murder of a black person seems to happen with disturbing regularity.
What is more disturbing is the pattern I see in some of my fellow whites. There will be a superficial acknowledgment that something has gone wrong. Then there will be a plea to "let all the facts come out," which is the precursor to finding some justification for the killing. Do we honestly believe that the world would fall apart if we fired every police officer in America, and started over? Do we believe that the morally ordered universe would simply fall apart, if we decided that such a radical change was necessary?
I think the comedian Chris Rock was right about us. He said that for most whites, we passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and decided that every injustice was righted at that time. No other protest or complaint would be accepted. There is something structurally wrong; people aren't supposed to die while in police custody, to say nothing of use-of-force decisions, and weapons discharge decisions. I suppose I am naïve enough to believe that protecting and serving are what police are supposed to be doing. If you were black, would you feel protected and served right now? Would you have ever felt that way?
Quite frankly, I think open mistrust of police is now morally justified. If good cops don't want to be distrusted, they should start policing their own. They haven't.
Flagrant, repeated injustice demands a swift and heavy response. If there ever were a time to overreact, this is now the time. The friends and family of the dead don't want to hear about "a few bad apples". The whole tree is bad; we've just been in denial about it this entire time.
What is more disturbing is the pattern I see in some of my fellow whites. There will be a superficial acknowledgment that something has gone wrong. Then there will be a plea to "let all the facts come out," which is the precursor to finding some justification for the killing. Do we honestly believe that the world would fall apart if we fired every police officer in America, and started over? Do we believe that the morally ordered universe would simply fall apart, if we decided that such a radical change was necessary?
I think the comedian Chris Rock was right about us. He said that for most whites, we passed the Civil Rights Act in 1964, and decided that every injustice was righted at that time. No other protest or complaint would be accepted. There is something structurally wrong; people aren't supposed to die while in police custody, to say nothing of use-of-force decisions, and weapons discharge decisions. I suppose I am naïve enough to believe that protecting and serving are what police are supposed to be doing. If you were black, would you feel protected and served right now? Would you have ever felt that way?
Quite frankly, I think open mistrust of police is now morally justified. If good cops don't want to be distrusted, they should start policing their own. They haven't.
Flagrant, repeated injustice demands a swift and heavy response. If there ever were a time to overreact, this is now the time. The friends and family of the dead don't want to hear about "a few bad apples". The whole tree is bad; we've just been in denial about it this entire time.
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