Ferguson: Revisited

The grand jury chose not to indict Darren Wilson.  Ferguson has erupted again.  

what eye thynk:   In August, I wrote a blog post I titled "Another Teenager is Dead.  Let's Go Get Stuff!"  In it I questioned why looting and burning were seen as an acceptable responses to Michael Brown's death and how they were supposed to solve anything.   You can read the post here.

As a result of that post, I was called, among other things, an idiot, a b**ch, a white pig, a privileged a**hole, a white princess and a f**king racist.  My posting privileges on the Democratic Underground site were revoked and my blog was blocked.  At first, I was angry that what I saw as an honest question was viewed as an attack and I wanted to defend myself.  I was a child of the 60s!  After several sleepless nights, I realized the futility of worrying about a few names and I moved on.  I found other sites where dissenting opinions were welcomed and uncomfortable questions were not censored.

So, today I hesitated to address the same subject again, but the question still hangs in my head:  Why destroy your own?

Talking to my husband this morning, I was reminded of a conversation I had with a black friend back in the 1960s while the Civil Rights riots were going on in our city.  I don't remember the particulars--it was a long time ago--but I do remember that she called the riots in Cleveland's Hough neighborhood a "war that needed to be fought." As a teenager, I doubt I had anything particularly earth-shattering to offer as a response. I may have even agreed with her war analogy; I was, after all a vocal, if naive, supporter of the Civil Rights movement.  I do remember wondering what these warriors hoped to accomplish by destroying their own neighborhood, but I doubt I was brave enough then to ask that question out loud.  

Years have passed, but iteration after iteration of that "war" continue to appear in the news--outrage gives way to destructive battles fought in similar neighborhoods, scrabbles that accomplish nothing.  And no matter how hard I try, I still do not understand the need to destroy or to take personal gain from whatever is the current offense.  Genuine equality will not be found in a box of looted Air Jordans.  The secret of advancement is not coded in the latest big screen TV.  Destroying the grocery store your family depends on is not going to make your life better.

If only we could retain the innocence of childhood.  Children look at each other and see, not race, but simply another child.  Adults look at each other, tally up their differences, conclude there is menace in our "otherness," and retreat into their own corners to feed each other on the distrust of "them."                      

I don't have any answers to offer; I am beginning to wonder if there are any.  I still cringe at blatant unfairness and I still believe in universal equality; but I don't see how that goal can ever be realized if violence and the willful destruction of your own is the favored strategy.  By that logic, Nazi Germany would have chosen to bomb Berlin instead of London and concentration camps would have been filled with Aryans.