I Am Ashamed

Michael Brown

I have hesitated to write on the mess in Ferguson, Missouri despite the fact that it has been front and center on every newscast and news publication over the past few days.  My first reaction, which I posted on August 12: "Another Teenager is Dead.  Let's Go Get Stuff!" got me kicked off the Democratic Underground site for being a racist. 

That wasn't my intent. I only wanted to point out that looting and burning are self-defeating responses to grief and anger.  I don't understand when similar demonstrations happen after someone loses a soccer game either, though I didn't mention that in my post.  I was looking only at the narrow example of the mess in Ferguson and how lawlessness was doing nothing to help the family of that dead boy. You can read my comments here.

what eye thynk:  Over the past few days, I've read everything I could find on the conflict, from a Twitter post made by a white woman who offered outrage that the black citizens of Ferguson see themselves victims, (I won't repeat it here, it was embarrassingly ugly and hateful), to editorials on the militarization of police forces across the U.S., to the stories about reporters being arrested in a McDonald's while they were charging their phones and filing their reports.

With the changing of the guard in Ferguson, and the obvious difference it has made to the people there, I find myself relieved...and not a little ashamed. Ashamed that "my people" thought the best way to react was with tanks and tear gas. Ashamed that it took this tragedy for me to recognize that the apparent sense of white superiority demonstrated by the police force in Ferguson is not just the stuff of political or hypothetical rhetoric, but an embedded fact of life in some cities and some states.  I am ashamed that there are places in this country where burning down a QuickTrip market is the only way to get my attention.

I still think looting and burning is wrong and self-defeating.  I don't understand it as a response--to anything--and I probably never will.  Those are shoes I can never walk in.

But I find I want to apologize. And I want to know that Michael Brown's death will serve a purpose; that things will change, that life will get better and fairer, that people will listen to everyone equally.

And I am ashamed to think that it won't.