Regarding the confrontation between 18 year old Michael Brown and Police Officer Darren Wilson, let\’s look at the facts no one disputes (which takes very little time, since so few of them qualify):
-Michael Brown and Officer Darren Wilson had a confrontation.
-It culminated in Wilson shooting Brown.
-Brown died as the result of being shot.
After this, just about everything is at issue.
Given the extent to which facts in this case are in dispute, and the vast disparity between how different people view what happened, I thought it would be useful to put up two very different takes on the Michael Brown/Darren Wilson incident:
–One of them comes to us from Professor and columnist Melvyn L. Fein, writing for the Marietta (GA) Daily Journal.
–The other comes to us from journalist and author Lee A. Daniels, writing for NNPA, a Black-oriented news service.
I urge you to use the links I\’ve provided and read both pieces in their entirety. But, for the meantime, I\’ll post salient excerpts from each so that you can consider their overall points.
In the words of Mr. Fein:
Blacksare understandably suspicious of whites. Even Attorney General EricHolder gave a nod to their sensitivities. Accordingly,African-Americans sometimes see racism where it is absent.
Butthe media is another matter. How can reporters have been so”even-handed” as to portray the police the same way they didvandals and fire-bombers? Why were cops wearing protective gearaccused of fanning the flames of distrust merely because of how theywere outfitted?
Reporters are clearly obsessed with a need todownplay black misconduct. Apparently, the worst thing that canhappen is someone might label them racist. Accordingly, they bendover backward to avoid saying negative things about blacks.
Thinkabout this: A black thug – a young man with a criminal record -declares the police officer in question reached out to grab MichaelBrown by the throat and drag him into his vehicle. How is thiscredible? How could a cop, or would a cop, do this to a person twicehis size?
And how did the rumor that Brown was shot in theback survive when multiple autopsies showed it was untrue? After all,it came from the same felon.
The media credulity that glossesover these absurdities owes to nothing less than racism. Members ofthe press do not hold African-Americans to the same standards theyapply to others. Rather, they excuse behavior they would nevertolerate elsewhere.
Why? Evidently because they do not believeblacks have the same ability to exercise self-control as otherAmericans. Yet this is racism! In an attempt to protect blacks,journalists assume they are inferior. How ironic is that?
Wewill never overcome racism in this country until we are honest aboutrace. To this extent, Holder was correct when he said whites arecowards when it comes to these matters.
In the words of Mr. Daniels:
We\’venow moved to a new stage of the racist reaction to the police killingof Michael Brown: the largely overt assertion that he deserved to bekilled.
But,once the Ferguson police released the video of Michael Brownpurportedly snatching a box of cigars from the convenience store andintimidating its clerk, that advice was quickly replaced by that oldstandby: criminalizing the person who was killed.
Now,the slimers have simplified their defense of Brown\’s killing. Hewas not an 18-year-old teenager, but a man-sized Black male 6\’4″tall and well over 250 pounds was a threat to public safety. In otherwords: a “thug” – and therefore someone whom any White personshould be able to execute with impunity.
That\’sthe first-level meaning that saturates many of the racist readerresponses to articles on Brown\’s killing in the blogosphere. Thosekind of responses vividly recall the crude, cowardly mentalstates-of-being that animated not only the mobs of racists whogathered in Southern cities and towns to harass and beat the civilrights demonstrators during the 1950s and 1960s but also theirenablers among most of the White South\’s civic and politicalleadership. Last week, it was most succinctly expressed by twoconservative commentators who\’ve long shown their willingness tojustify any injustice.
Appearingon the Fox News channel, Linda Chavez said that describing Brown asunarmed at the moment of his encounter with Ferguson police officerDarren Wilson was misleading. “That description,” she claimed,”in and of itself actually colors the way in which we look at thisstory. We\’re talking about an 18-year-old man who is 6\’4″ andweighs almost 300 pounds, who is videotaped just moments before theconfrontation with a police officer strong arming an employee androbbing a convenience store.”
BenStein, a conservative pundit familiar to most of America as apitchman for a brand of eye drops, showed up on Newsmax television,to make the point in even simpler terms: “The idea of calling thispoor young man unarmed when he was 6\’4″, 300 pounds, full ofmuscles, apparently, according to what I read in the New York Times,on marijuana. To call him unarmed is like calling Sonny Listonunarmed or Cassius Clay (sic) unarmed. He wasn\’t unarmed. He wasarmed with his incredibly strong, scary self.”
Thesecomments exemplify both the conscious and the subconscious characterof the racist reaction.
TrayvonMartin was far from the height and weight of Michael Brown, but thatdidn\’t save him from being criminalized because of the most salientfeature they shared: skin color. In other words, both weretransformed into that fearsome monster of the White racistimagination: the \’hulking\’ Black brute.
ButWhite racist pathology can\’t obscure this blunt fact: policeofficer Darren Wilson, who was armed, shot to death Michael Brown,who was unarmed, from a distance of more than 30 feet.
Do I have an opinion about what each man says? You bet I do. But in this one blog I will swallow hard and not offer my personal views. All I ask is that you consider both sides before coming to your own conclusions.
Fair enough? I hope so.
