A blog for the Civil Rights Movement class at Rhodes College, Fall 2014
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Mike Brown shooting is controversial for a couple reasons . 1) we will never really know what happened, and 2) it never really mattered. Whenever there is black on black crime we chuck it up to life and survival of the fittest in impoverished areas, but when there is a racial incident in which power is abused or the illusion that power is abused we break out in an uproar. Let me be candid when I say, it never mattered to me what actually happened. There has been more than enough acts of domestic terror has plagued the lands of this country since Black people were free by legislation. So whether Darren Wilson was innocent or not, which he wasn't because albeit Mike Brown was audacious in his attempts to physically engage Darren Wilson, at some point , Mike Brown laid siege and raised his arms in the air. At that point all notions of danger should have been irradiated for a trained official, especially someone who is licensed to carry a fire arm. Darren Wilson murdered Mike Brown not because he was accused of stealing, but because in this day and age , it was justifiable .
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I agree that we'll never truly know what happened in the Michael Brown case. There are too many inconsistencies; however, more important than the issue of the truth itself is the narrative that this story reinforces. We're all familiar on some level with the way our society perceives black men. Black men are still seen as violent by law-enforcement and many citizens. There has been a long list of acts of violence against black men by law enforcement from Rodney King to Eric Garner. A story like that of Michael Brown reinforces that narrative regardless of what happened between Wilson and Brown. Some might simply label this as prejudice and move on; however, I think that this fails to acknowledge the depth, breadth, and pain that those experiences have imparted to people. The narrative that many people feel the death of Michael Brown enforces is one that has been imparted to them by many hard experiences large and small. If nothing else comes out of the Michael Brown case I can only hope that we take a look at each other and try to discern the narratives in which we all live and simply ask why. Not even that we do something or other than look at each other and for once simply try to see where the other is coming from. I know it's cliche but you don't know a man until you've walked in his shoes and until we try to do so we won't be able to move forward as individual or as a culture.
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