First off, let me say this: I will never be pulled over by a cop because I'm driving "in the wrong part of town," nor will I ever be followed by security or rent-a-cops through a store because I "look suspicious" based solely upon the color of my skin. I'll never be stopped and asked to get out of my car, while my questions about why I was stopped remain unanswered. I will never, ever, ever know what it's like to be black in America (or Latino, for that matter; they get some of the same treatment from law enforcement that blacks have historically gotten in the past). No amount of books read, movies seen, music listened to, will ever make me understand, really understand, the trials and tribulations of those of color in a society in which they are always "the suspect" when anything goes wrong or is suspected of going wrong. I'm planning on writing my final paper for one of my classes about Arab-Americans in the wake of 9/11, yet I'll never know what it's like to be on the shortlist of "possible terrorist suspects" simply because my name is wrong or my skin is too dark.
So I can't speak to whether Michael Brown was innocent or Darren Wilson was justified, at least not without bringing in a lot of speculation on my part about what happened. I do believe that Brown's name was dragged through the mud because that's just the way the media works: blame the dead victim, if you're uncomfortable questioning the suspect because he's in a position of authority. Look at the Bill Cosby case, the multiple allegations of rape against him. I don't *want* to believe that he did that, but my instinct is that yeah, he probably did. We don't know these people.
But to get back to the Ferguson situation: it's intolerable to me that there won't be a trial. At least in the Trayvon Martin case, there was a trial. Anytime someone without a gun runs up against someone with a gun and the unarmed person ends up dead, there should be questions asked. Sometimes it's not even racially motivated, sometimes it's just one person with a gun who has to feel like he has the cojones to use it. I have family members who fetishize weapons, who seem to be attached to their guns (and not their guns to them). I feel sorry for them, really.
We live in a country where race is almost always a factor; that's just a fact. If Wilson had been black, or Brown white, would we have seen the level of outrage first at the murder, and then at the grand jury results? Probably not. Is Wilson a racist? There's no evidence of that as far as I know, though of course it could easily come out tomorrow that he's a Klansman or something equally abhorrent. Was Brown guilty of theft, as has been argued by those who seem to suggest, with their words, that he "had it coming?" I don't know, though I suspect that, if the video leaked to the media from the store where this all started is legit, he very well may have been. Does that justify shooting someone until they are dead? I think it's likely that Brown might very well have been the badass that Wilson paints him as, slamming doors and reaching for guns and trying to tackle Wilson instead of running away. Myths arise around incidents like this, until the truth gets lost. What we do know for sure is this: Michael Brown is dead, Darren Wilson is alive. And the people who treat this like "team Darren Wilson" or "team Michael Brown" are sick.
Nobody wins when something like this happens; a grand jury indictment wouldn't have brought Michael Brown back any more than the acquittal of Zimmerman brought Martin back. We discussed a book in one of my classes this past week, arguing whether survivors of the Holocaust can really be "witnesses" because they didn't go through the ultimate point of the camps (i.e., the gas chambers). Michael Brown can't speak for what happened, and I doubt Darren Wilson will ever really tell the truth; he has to tell a version of it (a "narrative," which has become an over-used word outside of literary circles of late) that he can live with, in which Brown is "strong like Hulk Hogan" and he's just the little man, the Barney Fife of the situation, only with a gun. I hope to God I never face a situation like that (odds are I won't be armed, considering that I don't own a gun and have no desire to own one). Like George Zimmerman, Darren Wilson may be out of jail, but he'll never be free. Neither will the Brown family.
Riots, marches, these are to be expected, and I applaud the peaceful ones while I find the amount of looting done by those taking advantage of the uproar heartbreaking. I understand the frustration and anger, though. A lot of people who put on the badge of police officer, whether in big cities or small towns, do so because they genuinely want to serve and protect. But there are those who use it as an excuse to back up their prejudices with a badge and the authority granted them by the pistol on their hip. We have a lot of wannabe John Waynes running around, basically, and they are more of a threat than the unarmed black teens they tend to gun down. When you shoot first and ask questions later, you don't make time for the possibility that you're wrong. Why in the world didn't Wilson use a taser instead? I have no idea if he had one on him or not, but that would've been the best solution all around. Bullet wounds have a nasty habit of being permanent.
So that's my take, anyway, and I hope that people remember (but I doubt they will) that this story all started with two people on a small-town road somewhere, one armed and the other one not. One person didn't get to walk away from this, nor give exclusive interviews. One person didn't get to tell his side of the story to the grand jury, to be cross-examined (assuming that Wilson did, which seems unlikely with all the stuff we've learned about the prosecutor's office in that part of Missouri). One person won't be charged with the robbery he allegedly committed, nor the possible "assaulting a police officer" charge he might have faced (and could very well have been guilty of, on both accounts). One person died in the streets of Ferguson that day, the person who didn't have a gun.
Think about that before you open your mouth about how Michael Brown "deserved" what he got.
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