Ferguson

I think I want to say a little bit about this.  It is, after all, tearing my country apart in many cities as I type.  On the other hand, I really have not followed the case very closely, for the simple reason that I have not had the heart to do so.  So, my opinions are formed not knowing full details and not really hearing all sides (then again, I think a lot of people are hearing a lot more of one side than the other--even those who follow it closely--to an extent we all hear what we want to and it is so easy to go to just the media outlets more likely to present the side you want to hear these days).  And, it is such a touchy subject that I risk offending many readers.  I'm sorry if I do.  I hope we can all respect that reactions to this are varied and colored by our own experiences and stories.  And, of course, part of my experience is that I grew up as a white girl, which I am sure tilts my views more than I can ever realize.

I haven't been reading about people's reactions (ie--who tweeted what or what individuals are saying, beyond reading that Michael Brown's family asked people to remain calm and non violent and reading what my own friends say on Facebook), so I might repeat things from others---realistically there are only so many ways to feel about the situation and I am sure I am not unique.

So, I'm going to take a deep breath and plunge in with my thoughts (and then maybe I will read more).

I think this specific case is a pretty murky one, that there is no simple answer here.  I doubt very much that Michael Brown was totally innocent and clearly not armed and not in the least bit threatening and shot for no reason at all.  I also doubt very much that Darren Wilson had truly good reason to believe deadly force was needed to protect himself and I doubt he would have jumped to that in the split second decision making process had the criminal he was trying to apprehend been white if for no other reason that it seems often we perceive a greater threat from someone with dark skin than someone with light.  I also doubt very much that the officer's actions were out of line with what he had been trained to do and told to do as a policeman or that his actions really stand out as all that different than thousands of similar cases over decades which simply did not get this kind of media reaction and attention.  When I ramble my way through, I nearly always conclude that the grand jury probably made the right decision given what evidence there is and what we currently expect of police officers and how we train them.

Which does NOT mean that I don't think there is a problem here.  This case is a very small symptom of an overwhelmingly massive problem in our country.  We may have a black president these days, but we cannot pretend we do not have a gigantic and horrific problem with institutionalized racism in the US, most especially as seen in our criminal justice system--in which being black increases your odds of being incarcerated nearly 6 fold (and, no, this is not reflective of actual criminal rates among the groups--don't even try to go there.  In fact, in one of the ares we can trace fairly well, drug use, whites use drugs more often than blacks but blacks are considerably more likely to be jailed for it.  As in about 10 times more likely!).

We see time and time again that race plays a huge role in whether someone is charged, whether they are found guilty and in how large the penalty is if they are.  It works the other way too.  Missing white children, get much more media attention overall than their black counterparts (I should note that in all the trends Hispanics are somewhere in the middle--it seems we have a racism sliding scale in America), when a victim is white, there is more likely to be a severe penalty for the perpetrator than when the victim is black, etc   Let's go back to another case that got lots of media attention, I truly doubt that the Trayvon Martin case would have played out in quite the same way had Trayvon been a white kid called by his middle name of Ben and George Zimmerman been black.  It's sad and appalling that I feel that way--our system ought to protect against such things but at the end of the day, I do, and I bet I am far from the only one who does.

 This points to an iron grip of racism still having a huge sway on our society as whole in 2014.  Which is a frightening (more so, I am sure if you happen to not be white) and depressing concept.

Which brings me back to the Ferguson verdict and subsequent rioting that is happening there and in many places across the US today.  The anger and upset and fear over this pervasive racism is boiling over and doing so in destructive, harmful ways.  Ways that often harm the very people and communities who the protesters claim to be supporting.  Ways that are getting attention, but are not likely to lead to change.  I can understand WHY this feeling is so strong and people are losing control (and, of course, we all know that many people are just using the excuse to get out there and cause trouble with no real concern for justice at all).  But, it scares me.  Not just for the current situation, but for the future.

If we focus too much on this one case, and not on the underlying problems, and if people allow their emotions to all be vented in a few days of rage and them move on and forget about the issue, letting their concerns drift to the background while focus shifts in an almost ADD like way from Ebola fears to football players acting badly to the latest Duggar wedding nothing will really change.

This is not a small problem.  There is no quick solution.  And it can't all be blamed on one errant police officer.  It is a nationwide problem, affecting all of us and perpetuated by all of us (even black jurors are more likely to find blacks guilty than whites) and made much worse (in my opinion) by our insanely high incarceration rates and private prison system as a whole (did you know the US represents 5% of the world's population but holds 25% of it's prisoners?).

I hope that after the dust settles and the riots stop that we can not only help those who have been damaged by the riots be made whole again (and I believe we need to do that), but that we can, as a nation, stay focused on the underlying problem and have a long, intense and much overdue serious national conversation and make some true changes over the next few years.  We need to totally re evaluate how we train officers and what we expect of them, find new checks and balances to even out incarceration (and charge) rates and set goals to achieve a more fair system, with concrete steps to do so.  We need to stop the for profit prison system and stop arresting and incarcerating people for minor things, so that our police can worry about serious issues and not be the "bad guy" to so many (that "us" vs "them" feeling sure does not help keep our officers safe, does it? and when they are not safe, and often are seen as the bad guys, they are going to feel more threatened and be more likely to respond to situations in lethal ways).

I think it is going to take us collectively realizing and admitting that we are doing something terribly wrong and wanting to fix it and working HARD and long to do so.  We are all in this together, republicans and democrats, men and women, black and white, gay and straight, Christian and atheist,North and South,, rich and poor,  police and teenagers, and about a thousand other options in between.  I hope we can do it.  I believe we can.  That is what has made us great as a country--those times when we see that we need to do better and we get together and we DO.  I hope we are at that point now.  I hope that when the fires in Ferguson burn out the passion in the people does not, I don't want to wait any longer and see any more headlines (or, almost worse, the many, many cases that are barely blips buried in the papers of Chicago, LA, Houston, and so many other places--so common they are hardly worth mentioning in the media's eyes).

--Hadley



http://www.naacp.org/pages/criminal-justice-fact-sheet