Then Jesus told his disciples a parable to show them that they should always pray and not give up. He said: “In a certain town there was a judge who neither feared God nor cared what people thought. And there was a widow in that town who kept coming to him with the plea, ‘Grant me justice against my adversary.’
“For some time he refused. But finally he said to himself, ‘Even though I don’t fear God or care what people think, yet because this widow keeps bothering me, I will see that she gets justice, so that she won’t eventually come and attack me!’”
Luke 18:1-4
In the days after Michael Brown’s death, we watched a sadly familiar story play out. The media ran pictures of him staring sullenly into the camera and making “gang” signs with his hands. They emphasized his weight and large frame, listened to his music and declared it “violent hip hop.” For their part, the police made certain to pair pertinent details about his death with seemingly irrelevant details about his life: releasing the long demanded name of the officer who shot him alongside surveillance footage of an unrelated shoplifting incident, leaking a toxicology report indicating that Brown had “marijuana in his system” at the same time they released an autopsy confirming that he’d been shot six times. Black people desperately tried to defend Michael Brown, pointing out that he was a child, that he was gentle, that he never got into any trouble, that he was going to college. If we fail to name the battleground being fought upon, this fight over what narrative to impose on the details of Brown’s life might seem oddly tangential to the argument over the circumstances of his death. So let’s be clear about the stakes of this conflict: we are trying to decide whether or not Michael Brown was a nigger. A dead human being is a tragedy that needs to be investigated and accounted for. A dead nigger doesn’t even need to be mourned, much less its death justified.
As the story in Ferguson became about not only the death of Michael Brown, but also about our reaction to his death, two more similar, and similarly familiar, narratives emerged, advanced by black and white media and celebrities alike. The first is that the black community’s outrage about death at the hands of white killers is opportunistic and misguided. Even if racism is a factor in these murders, and it probably isn’t, the murders of most black people are committed by other black people. The implication being made here is that blacks are quick to seize on racism as a way of ignoring or excusing problems within the black community. The second narrative is closely related to the first, and it is the story that white people may at times act in ways that may appear racist, but this behavior is merely a rational reaction to black America’s culture of criminality and violence. A direct interrogation of each of these stories could fill a book, and I will not undertake that task here. However, the fact that they are being told about the death of Michael Brown gives us a hint about whether we should think of them as valid.
The idea that Michael Brown’s death is being emphasized too much by the black community, which should instead be concerning itself with “black on black crime” is oddly dissonant with the specific details of this case. The death of a person at the hands of a police officer, a person is vested with the state’s power to do violence, should obviously be treated with an even greater seriousness than their death at the hands of another citizen. It also would seem strange to invoke the ancient spectre of black criminality given that, even if we take the questionable police account of events as completely credible, the worst crime for which Brown was stopped was shoplifting a handful of cheap cigars. Why this should be treated as something more than an instance of ordinary American juvenile mischief is unclear. That each of these well-worn narratives are being wheeled out in this this case only seems strange if we fail to recognize the argument’s core: we can’t complain about being treated like niggers when we’re acting like niggers.
And this, ultimately, is the logic of respectability politics. That respectability politics is the narrative of the oppressor digested and regurgitated by the oppressed is obvious. But we shouldn’t dismiss it without understanding its allure and durability: it reframes the terms of power, restoring agency into black hands. For the black upper class, it is the parable that allows them to rationalize their privilege as a sign of their own worthiness, while simultaneously giving them cover to righteously withdraw concern from the plight of the less fortunate of their race. It’s no coincidence that the black people advocating for blacks to somehow be cleansed of their blackness by bathing in the waters of post-racial healing are many of the same complaining that “we” don’t pay attention to “black on black crime”. For the black middle class, respectability becomes an aspirational fable, a promise that they, too can be free of racism if they become successful enough to transcend their race. For the black underclass, it becomes a morality tale that explains their own destruction. Respectability politics is a false narrative, but it maintains its power because, like so many powerful lies, it sits adjacent to the truth and set slightly askew: they are looking for a way to turn you into a nigger, and if necessary, they will find one. You will never leave a body pure enough to not be judged complicit in its own destruction.
When you recognize this essential truth, it becomes uncomfortably clear that an alliance with whites newly uncomfortable with police militarization and misconduct is not an answer. I agree that we should take steps to demilitarize the police, and I agree that that we should require police officers to wear cameras and install them on their dashboards. But let’s not pretend that these measures would constitute a solution to the problem of state violence done to blacks. New regulations to restrict police usage of the paraphernalia of military occupation will not stop them from taking the attitudes of occupiers. The police did not need military weapons to kill Eric Garner. They didn’t even need a gun. Forcing the police to put cameras on their dashes and wear them on their bodies is a good idea, but it will not force them to respect the humanity of black bodies, and it might not even be sufficient to get justice after the fact. Oscar Grant was shot in the back, while lying prone on the pavement, in full view of multiple cameras, and his killer received less than a year in county jail. And let us not fail to name, either, the fear awakened in many white people, that the police force in Ferguson could one day be at the gates of their own town, that it already is: it is the fear of being treated like niggers. The troubling scenes we’ve seen in Ferguson – of the abrogation of basic civil rights, of the lack of respect for the community being policed, of casual brutality and harassment of the citizenry, of a police force taking the aggressive crouch of an occupying army – these scenes might be new to many white Americans, but for black America, they are as old as Reconstruction and as familiar as Sunday. Our white allies can alleviate their fears by returning the country to some imagined golden age of the friendly neighborhood constable, whistling as he strolls his beat, idly swinging his baton. Black Americans don’t have to be civil rights scholars to know that there is no idyllic utopia there for us.
Black people have long been conscious of the fact that the police are not our allies, and it is beyond time for us to realize that the state it protects is not our ally, either. The machine of state was not designed to serve and protect blacks, it was designed to control them and confiscate from them. Ferguson is a city in which 67% of residents are black and 22% live below the poverty line. It is not a mistake that the second largest source of revenue for the government of this poor, black city is court fees and fines. It is not a mistake that this city with an average crime rate serves 3 warrants per household and conducts 1.5 court cases per family each year. It is not a mistake that this city with a 14.3% unemployment rate collects $321 dollars in fines per household per year. The Missouri state government’s own statistics show that blacks in Ferguson are stopped disproportionately more than whites, that they are both searched and arrested at almost twice the rate of whites, despite the fact that police are are more likely to find contraband when they search whites than when they search blacks. That the machine of state wants the grist of black bodies is not unique to the city of Ferguson, and it is not new to America. The thickly knotted vines of petty infractions that can strangle a black family into imprisonment, bankruptcy, and homelessness find their roots in the pre-Jim Crow vagrancy laws that saw blacks imprisoned and pressed into forced labor for the crime of existing. The explosively growing for-profit prison system finds its genesis in the system of prison labor and chain gangs that emerged after the Civil War. The maze of laws and regulations that define governance in America, from the federal level down to the municipal is not intended to be navigated successfully by blacks, it was designed to entrap them. With respect to Ta-Nehisi Coates and his moving, thought-provoking essay, there is no way of making reparations for a crime that is in progress.
Jesus told the Parable of the Unjust Judge, the writer of Luke tells us, to teach us about prayer, but I think it can tell us something about justice as well. The unjust judge of the parable could be petitioned into rendering justice in a particular case if it were made inconvenient enough for him not to. This realization, of course, we have heard echoed by Malcolm and Martin alike. We should notice, though, what does not happen in the parable – the judge does not repent or reform. He does not become a righteous man. He renders justice to the widow out of pure self-interest, but this does not make him anymore inclined to be just in the next case the widow might bring, or indeed the next case that anyone else brings. There is no amount of pleading, petitioning, or protesting that will transform the judge into a just man. We live in under a state that is at best, indifferent to our problems, and at worst, actively seeking to destroy us. It is good and right that we hound the state into giving us justice, but blacks cannot delude themselves into thinking that the state will ever become justice. There are no laws that can be passed or reforms that can be pursued that will allow us to stop being vigilant. There are no victories that will bring us peace. We will never be able to pound our swords into plowshares, because we will always have to be prepared to fight. Dr. King, our beautiful prophet, was wrong. The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular, not in this life. If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.
I wish I were ending this comment with answers or at least encouragement, but I have none to offer. I just have a list of things that I know. I know that I have never called the police, and if in future I do, it will be because I have reached the furthest of last resorts. I know that I am taking steps to learn how to arm myself for the protection of my loved ones and my community. I know that I will always vote “not guilty” if I am on a jury prosecuting a non-violent drug offense. I know that I will always oppose any expansion of the state’s power to harm and jail its citizens. I know that I will be going to community meetings and protests and vigils and organizing sessions and memorial services for the rest of my life. I know that one day I will tell my child, if I am blessed enough to have one, that the world is afraid of them, and that the police are not to be trusted. I know that one day, that child will tell her own child the same thing. And yet, I know that I still have enough hope to want to bring children into this world, broken as it is. That is something.
Photo via Flickr
Tags: Ezekiel Kweku, ferguson, michael brown, racism
The words I have aren’t adequate.
Thanks for writing this.
Thank you so much for writing and Toast for publishing this piece.
“The arc of the moral universe does not lead anywhere in particular, not in this life. If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.”
This needs to be engraved in stone somewhere.
An incredible piece of writing. I’m so sorry you had to write it.
This line struck me, too. This is a beautiful, sad, scary, true essay. Thank you.
An incredible piece of writing. I’m so sorry you had to write it.
Yes, that captures my feelings, too.
That line is a flawless truth in an article filled with many many truths, all acute and painful.
Absolutely agree with his sentiments and yours.
This was intense and amazing and I am pretty much otherwise speechless.
Yep.
Mercy. I don’t know whether to clap or cry. Sharing with everyone I know.
You say that this isn’t a hopeful essay, and of course you’re right. But this:
If it bends towards justice, it is only because it is pulled that way by our constant effort, by our unceasing straining and sweating and shouting.
is a glimmer of hope; thank you for it. A glimmer isn’t enough, but it’s something.
That straining and sweating and shouting works best if we’re all doing it, so let’s never stop.
And it highlights what allies can do: allies can put weight on the arc/sword, can hold it in place to give the marginalized a brief rest while they struggle with it.
Yes. This.
Thanks so much for writing this essay, Ezekiel/Shrill. It was sobering and gave me clarity I didn’t know I needed.
What a marvelous piece.
Thank you.
Yes, yes, yes. Sadly, yes.
I’m glad and thankful that I got to meet you and that we got to talk. I know this wasn’t written for me, but thank you.
Layers on layers, peeled back so succinctly but with every word beating with emotion.
I know you left no answers or encouragement but I’m hopeful despite my more rational judgements. You writing this essay, me having a means to read it, the babies who will come after, I can’t help but be hopeful.
<3
Crying and crying and crying. This is a phenomenal piece, and it somehow encapsulates all the hopelessness and the dignity I’ve seen coming from the Ferguson community. Thank you for writing it.
“I know that I will always vote “not guilty” if I am on a jury prosecuting a non-violent drug offense.”
Not everyone knows that jury nullification is a legitimate choice for anyone chosen to serve. Some jurisdictions have laws forbidding attorneys and other officers of the court from mentioning it, but the Supremes have not yet taken nullification up for consideration (and long may it remain so). It’s a small pick with which to chip at a huge forbidding edifice, but it’s worth knowing that it’s there. [ETA: Jury Nullification: Why Every American Needs to Learn This Taboo Verdict]
Thanks for writing this.
The one time I got called for jury duty (after many years of eligibility in my current jurisdiction, in which some people I knew were called multiple times) I was SO READY to exercise my right to jury nullification, but then I got voir dire’d (verb? anyone know?) for a personal injury case (boring) and then not selected.
Anyways, this is a real thing, it is your right to do so, and no one — not your fellow jurors, not the judge, not the counsel for either side — can take it away from you. You absolutely have the right to not find someone guilty of breaking a law that you find unjust (and some might argue that you have the moral obligation to vote not guilty in the jury room, even if ultimately you cannot convince your fellow jurors to join you.)
(As a historical note, it’s also what allowed all-white juries in the south to acquit white men accused of murdering black men. It’s not a progressive magic bullet, it’s a strategy that’s open to all.)
You can go around verbing nouns all day long as far as I’m concerned. 🙂
I usually get struck from criminal cases. The questions are often, “Anyone here ex-military?” (my hand goes up, one or the other attorney marks me off) “Anyone here in favor of gun control?” (my hand goes up, the other attorney marks me off). I’m out here on the long tail of the T distribution with my fellow veterans for gun control I guess.
I’m an attorney (I don’t do jury trials, tho) and I don’t think I’ve ever heard of this! This is amazing!
I think jury nullification is dangerous as a principle. It could be used to do good, to mete out “justice” in the face of unfair laws. But what about equal protection under the law? What about a jury that views a father murdering his daughter’s rapist as excusable? Are we really OK with the jury throwing out the law (assuming the prosecution proves murder beyond a reasonable doubt and no defense excuses the conduct) and deciding what’s “fair”? I understand why jury nullification is so attractive, I really, really do, in the face of so many stupid drug laws. But at the end of the day–and yes, maybe the system is broken–the public through legislators are supposed to enact laws; the judicial system merely enforces them. Anyway, it’s really a touchy subject, and yes, if you go into the jury selection process and throw out the phrase “jury nullification,” prepare to be struck from the jury. I think one of the questions you’re asked in the jury selection process is whether you can faithfully weigh the facts and apply the law.
An unjust law is no law. If a law is being used to railroad people into a system, then the only tool the people have to right this wrong is jury nullification.
But drug laws and murder laws are very different things. While a murder case might have mitigating circumstances that could lead to a reduced sentence, no one is actually arguing that the law against murder is unjust, while non-violent drug possession offences are (arguably) unjust and, IMO drug use and addiction should be treated as a public health issue, not a criminal issue.
“There is no amount of pleading, petitioning, or protesting that will transform the judge into a just man.”
“There are no laws that can be passed or reforms that can be pursued that will allow us to stop being vigilant.”
It’s something you fully know and realize, and yet sometimes it’s still new and shocking.
Thank you.
Thank you all for your kind words, and for taking the time to read and share. And of course, thanks to Mallory and Nicole for being so encouraging and for lending their platform to A Man. 🙂
Come chill with us anytime, you are always welcome here. Thank you for this gut-punch of a piece.
Thank you.
Thank you for this. So much to think about.
you’ve just expressed what I’ve been feeling for the last year, which is that it is futile to expect justice from your abuser. I had this thought in mind during most of the Case for Reparations, I kept going back to the case being for an international court, not the same courts that sent Dred Scott back into chains, not the same legislatures that hosted and feted Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms.
Thanks for writing.
And in an awful symmetry, Dred Scott’s grave is in Ferguson, on the same street where the main protests are taking place.
Yes, this. My friend posted a vide of a black man being arrested by a plain clothes cop for looking like he might possibly have been drinking alcohol (from a can of iced tea), and this white guy commented, “The policeman here was definitely abusing his power, but I would have just handed him the can.” My friend explained to him that there is no way really of appeasing an abuser. You can try anything, but they will end up finding some internal justifications for doing whatever it is that they ultimately want to do to you.
Ezekiel thank you for this amazing article. I’m posting it everywhere. I appreciate you not writing false hope.
Also, how many of the white people saying, “when a cop tells you to get on the sidewalk, you get on the sidewalk” are the ones reminding people to stand up to tyranny and refuse to let the police conduct searches, etc without warrants? I’d bet there’s some overlap there. Because they know they’re innocent of wrongdoing, of course, but it’s just not reasonable for them to assume that a black person’s also innocent until proven guilty.
Such a crucial, important piece and beautifully laid out. I am sorry you had to write it but I’m so glad you did. Sharing EVERYWHERE.
You’re right. This isn’t hopeful. It’s full of righteousness.
This is an incredible piece, one that is sure to sit in the minds of everyone who reads it for days and days, hanging there for repeated contemplation. As it should. Thank you for writing it.
“A dead nigger doesn’t even need to be mourned, much less its death justified.”
Wow. A gut punch. “its death”, not his death. Absolutely accurate. Wish it were not. But it is. Terribly, horribly accurate.
I had a friend act like a Huge Dick about a gathering in town in solidarity with the Ferguson protests.
“Protesting! What do people think it solves?” he said.
“IT AIN’T LIKE DR. KING JUST WROTE A STRONGLY WORDED LETTER AND VOTED!” I said.
I wish I could have articulated myself as strongly and beautifully as you did in this piece, sir.
This was clear and terrible and beautiful. Thank you!
“You will never leave a body pure enough to not be judged complicit in its own destruction.”
This is, all of it, phenomenal.
That was the phrase that really caught me. No matter what, people will find an excuse to blame the victim, because then you can say “well it wouldn’t have happened to me.”
So many lines that I want to pull out and hold up for the world to see. Some that others have already mentioned. And this one, which I think so many of us don’t want to believe but we know, deep down, to be true:
“Forcing the police to put cameras on their dashes and wear them on their bodies is a good idea, but it will not force them to respect the humanity of black bodies, and it might not even be sufficient to get justice after the fact.”
Thank you for so eloquently expressing what SO MANY are thinking. Thank you.
I think my favorite line is there is no making reparations for a crime that is in progress. This is why I get so angry when I hear the phrase “white guilt,” which inevitably carries the connotation that we’ve chosen to take on the guilt for some deep, ancestral wound. No, guys. You know why decent white people feel both angry and guilty? Because this is how it’s going on *right now,* and it’s being done in the name of our “safety,” and we don’t know what to do to stop it. It’s like watching some crazy person beat your next-door neighbor to death with a tire iron while he tells you in a soothing voice that you’ll be much happier, it’ll be a much nicer neighborhood when he’s finished, you’ll thank him when you understand what he’s done for you. It *is* in progress, and it’s appallingly racist to so much as imagine that this is somehow about history.
Beautiful piece.
The feeling of utter powerlessness to do anything to stem the horror being inflicted by others of my own race just sickens me. I vote, I try to reason with people and when that fails, argue. But these are not people bound by reason, but by knee-jerk emotion and the reptilian brain. I don’t know how to make a difference when my whole life I’ve been taught that reason, intellect and rationality will win the day.
Thank you for writiing this.
I keep coming back to this and thinking about it more. Thank you, thank you for expressing it so honestly and unflinchingly. I want everyone to read it.
If my white younger brother (20 years old and no angel) was shot and killed after smoking pot and then shoplifting a few cigars (probably off to roll a blunt) you can be damn sure I’d be protesting. He’s my brother. Any white person who looks at it this way can see that there is no equality here.
This right here is amazing. Just amazing. Every word is a perfect word. Thank you.
Thank you for writing this and thanks to Nicole for relinking today–my browser crashed yesterday mid-Toast. This weekend I overheard my aunt giving her eldest grandson The Talk after she’d read TIME’s cover story on Ferguson, stepping as carefully as she could but being clear that if the police stop you for any reason or none at all…I thought I was awake to the news before that, but it reopened the wound in a new way, much as this did. Thanks for expanding my perspective.
Thank you for writing this and thanks to Nicole for relinking today–my browser crashed yesterday mid-Toast. This weekend I overheard my aunt giving her eldest grandson The Talk after she'd read TIME's cover story on Ferguson, stepping as carefully as she could but being clear that if the police stop you for any reason or none at all…I thought I was awake to the news before that, but it reopened the wound in a new way, much as this did. Thanks for expanding my perspective.
I just read this again, and thank you. This really is an amazing article and a disgusting supremacy.
Ouch. Gut punch. Thank you for writing this.
This is the best piece I’ve read on Ferguson and the subject in general. Thanks./JR
Everyone else has said it better – but this was phenomenal! Thank you!
Thank you
This is so powerful. I’m rereading it for like the 8th time.
I’m crying in the library. Thank you.
Thank y’all for running this again. And thank you for writing it.
This. As I get older, I’m startled to find myself thinking less about systemic oppression and institutionalized racism and thinking in very personal terms. No change to the system transforms contempt into care inside of a person. As long as our systems are run by people — and although systems do take on a life of their own in a sense, they depend on the choices of people — they will be as just or unjust as those people are, not as the rulebook is.
The problem is that we find it very easy, as a rule, to dehumanize and Other certain people. Everything we see teaches us that there’s this difference between suffering human beings and “dead niggers” or “sluts who probably loved it” or whatever line we use in our head that justifies the distinction between us and them. I’m not saying there’s an easy solution, but this is definitely one of these “hearts and minds” problems. Dashboard cams are a good thing; perhaps they’ll save lives, and that’s great. But we are going to remain toxically racist until we can figure out how to make it unthinkable that a human is only really human if we say so.
thank you for writing this, and thanks to the toast for publishing it.
Thank you, again, for writing this and the Toast for republishing it.
Thank you so much for these words, they are not only profound and potent, but beautifully written. i was not sure till the last what you meant, where you were going. And that in itself showed me my own biases…thank you for this. bless you and the work you are doing
This piece is so incredible.
Rereading it for like the 18th time, I see how you, shrill, prognosticated the EXACT way that Wilson would dehumanize Brown…He would call Brown “it” in his testimony,
How fucking terribly obvious and obviously terrible.
Sorry to reply here, I don’t see how to comment independently.
This was a beautiful piece, and very powerful. Thank you.
I am in complete agreement with you. However, there was one discrepancy (that I got to hear a whole lot about from every other person at a very awkward Thanksgiving dinner) in the common narrative: People are saying the greatest crime Mike Brown was guilty of was trying to take an officer’s gun away, pointing it at him while he was still in the car (allegedly it “failed to fire”), and punching Wilson.
Of course my response to this is that the only evidence we have for that bullshit is Wilson’s testimony, and even if it was what happened, when someone is running away from you, do you really feel they need to die because your life is in danger at that moment? As someone from a law enforcement family, I can tell you: The mentality of cops is that their lives are more important than anyone who has or is committing any crime–and that’s wrong.