Why I have been posting about Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice

I remember in August, watching the first round of protests in Ferguson. Watching is a strong word, I don't have cable and even if I did, the major news networks had no cameras in Ferguson. I "watched" via Twitter. I began following protest leaders and journalists who have been talking about race and police violence for years. I will never scrub from my mind images of tanks rolling through an American city. Never.

Getting my initial news from protesters was a strange experience. I am used to hearing from professional journalists first. Not from the streets, not from the fray.

I think that has shaped much of my interpretation. Prior to that night (which humorously, involved me watching Muppets Most Wanted with my family while constantly refreshing Twitter), I had used terms like "systemic injustice", but I had no knowledge of the number of police killings of black men. I would have assumed it was higher than whites, but I had no understanding of how skewed the ratio is. According to the Centers for Disease Controlled and Prevention, blacks are killed by police at twice their rate of the general population. Are more simply, African-Americans make up 13 percent of the population, but are victims of 26 percent of all police shootings. 

And very few people from outside of the black community knew, or cared until people started protesting and tweeting about what happened between Mike Brown and Darren Wilson.

I have heard from friends who believe this is a media creation. It isn't. The media had no interest in Mike Brown (or Trayvon Martin before him). Protesters and social media started the story.

Absent of my friendship with a black friend who was tweeting and posting of facebook like crazy, my first exposure to the story would have been CNN, or another national news source. I am indebted to my friendship with someone more personally impacted for gaining a grassroots perspective.

But this is all background data. I want to talk about why I personally care, post stories, host prayer vigils and unabashedly feel like there is a major problem with race, power and policing in America. I realize many who I consider good friends disagree with me. That's fine. I don't expect universal agreement. But recently I spoke with a friend who misinterpreted a comment I made on facebook over a year ago and came to some pretty inaccurate conclusions about my beliefs. I would rather explain in long form and hopefully further dialogue.

For simplicity, I am going to say what I believe and don't believe about these issue. I will start with the negative, frankly because it seems like where most anger and misinterpretation exist.

What I don't believe:

• I don't believe that Mike Brown was necessarily "innocent". I use innocent in quotations here because of all the charges that have been levied at Mike Brown. So yes, I concede that Mike Brown probably hit Darren Wilson and generally acted aggressively in a mutually aggressive situation. He also probably enjoyed weed and was a jaywalker. All of these crimes probably earned him an arrest and potential jail time. So no, Mike Brown was not innocent of the crimes that have been lobbied against him in death.
• I don't believe Darren Wilson consciously chose to kill Mike Brown because he was black. While I believe racism is alive and well, don't think that Darren Wilson likely is a proud racist killing black people out of a personal agenda. This is also likely true for the police in Staten Island and Cleveland.
• I don't believe that Darren Wilson would have been found guilty in a trail. As much as I wanted an indictment and spent hours raging and praying about their not being one, I don't think that Wilson would have been convicted. In America today, if an officer "feels" in danger, they are authorized to use lethal force. I think that is asinine, but people are not convicted by the laws we want, but the ones we have.
• I don't believe that Mike Brown was a super human demon. I have honestly not been more horrified by any aspect of this case than I was listening to every white member of a panel on NPR agree that Darren Wilson made for a compelling witness. I read the testimony. He assigned mythical powers to Mike Brown. The ability to run through bullets, the possession of super-human strength, the power throw a death punch. I don't necessarily think that Wilson is a liar, but I think that his recollections are impacted by other factors. 

What I believe:

• I believe the justice system is skewed to protect police. I will not attempt to quote this whole article, so just read it: http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/ferguson-michael-brown-indictment-darren-wilson/.  Basic gist, if a case to goes to a grand jury, there will be an inditement. Unless you're a cop. That is wrong. When you combine this reality with the increased likelihood of blacks being shot by  police officers, you end up with a system that blocks the pursuit of justice. 
• I believe that the police are given too much leeway in how they enforce laws. From Randly Balko of the Washington Post: 

             Sen. Rand Paul took some heat this week for pointing out that Eric Garner was essentially executed for selling untaxed cigarettes. I’m not sure why this is a controversial thing to say (especially since Paul also explicitly said the video itself was “horrifying”). Every law, no matter how seemingly innocuous, is enforced with the threat of violence: If you fail to follow it, the state is saying it reserves the right to use violence to force you to comply and/or force you to submit to a penalty for violating the law. Every law passed also creates more opportunities for interaction with police officers, the people entrusted to use the violence necessary to enforce the laws. How a proposed law will be enforced, and potentially abused, ought to be considered in addition to the content of the law itself.

For example, primary seat belt laws give cops another way to racially profile black motorists. It’s another excuse for a pretext stop. Earlier this year, I put up a post about the harrowing video showing South Carolina state trooper Sean Groubert firing a barrage of bullets at motorist Lavar Jones as Jones reached for his driver’s license. Groubert had pulled Jones over because Jones wasn’t wearing his seat belt. It isn’t the first time a seat belt stop has escalated to violence. In September, an Indiana family filed a lawsuit stemming from a seat belt stop that resulted in police smashing a car window and tasering one of the occupants. A Georgia family has filed a lawsuit after a traffic stop last January that ended with a teen being pulled from the car and handcuffed at gunpoint. He was cited only for not waring a seat belt. A seat belt stop in Florida last year led to an officer inadvertently running over and killing 38-year-old Marlon Brown.

Now, I doubt that New York city council anticipated that failure to comply with this particular law would result in a man’s death, any more than legislators in Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina, or Florida anticipated that seat belt enforcement could end in tasings, shootings, or arrests. But you enforce the laws with the police institutions you have, not the police institutions you want. Low-level offenses are a tool police sometimes use to do sweeps for outstanding warrants, or as part of a “broken windows”strategy of law enforcement. These are tactics overwhelmingly deployed on low-income and minority communities. 

I realize that some Balko's ideas sound a little Libertarian, but I feel like his large points are worth looking at. If police are practicing "broken windows" law enforcement (basically treat petty crimes with great seriousness and it will clean up larger crimes before they occur), then they should be obligated to practice the same policy on themselves. Treat even small infractions concerning abuse with absolute seriousness. Self-police more harshly than you police others. Isn't that the heart of Jesus' teaching about removing splinters with a log jammed in your own eye? Furthermore, as long as police have carte blanche on how they enforce the law, we may have a moral obligation to only have laws that are deemed worthy of intensely physical enforcement.

• I believe that people operate with personal prejudice and that police are people. From Constance Rice, a Civil Rights lawyer who works with LAPD to build trust between white cops and black communities: 

          Cops can get into a state of mind where they're scared to death. When they're in that really, really frightened place they panic and they act out on that panic. I have known cops who haven't had a racist bone in their bodies and in fact had adopted black children, they went to black churches on the weekend; and these are white cops. They really weren't overtly racist. They weren't consciously racist. But you know what they had in their minds that made them act out and beat a black suspect unwarrantedly? They had fear. They were afraid of black men. I know a lot of white cops who have told me. And I interviewed over 900 police officers in 18 months and they started talking to me, it was almost like a therapy session for them I didn't realize that they needed an outlet to talk.

They would say things like, "Ms. Rice I'm scared of black men. Black men terrify me. I'm really scared of them. Ms. Rice, you know black men who come out of prison, they've got great hulk strength and I'm afraid they're going to kill me. Ms. Rice, can you teach me how not to be afraid of black men." I mean this is cops who are 6'4". You know, the cop in Ferguson was 6'4" talking about he was terrified. But when cops are scared, they kill and they do things that don't make sense to you and me.

This makes so much sense to me. In spite of my personal experiences with black men (good friends, spiritual leaders, never one violent or threatening situation), I still find myself nervous on city streets and at night. This is in part to still being part of mostly white communities (InterVarsity, Moscow Idaho, WSU, my church) and in part because I have been told over and over again by news and television programs to fear black men (especially "thugs", whatever that actually means).

But, as long as our laws only require that police "feel" scared, then they are going to be more inclined to act more violently towards those they perceive to be scary.

• I believe this is a spiritual issue. I believe that world has a real spiritual enemy. I believe that he wants to kill and destroy. I believe that unity is antithetical to his purposes. Racism; deep embedded fear of the "other" increases his purposes and takes us further from the dream of Revelation 7:9, of every "tribe, tongue and nation" praising God together. (Right now, do you feel like white and black church are closer than they were 6 months ago?) If irrational (and generally unnoticed and unexamined) fear is combined with institutional power, it bombs unity and costs lives. Both serve to benefit the kingdom of the devil and weaken the witness of the Kingdom of Heaven. This is as old as Eden. This is why Jesus went to Samaria, drove merchants away from the Gentile gate and commanded Peter to not call anything that he made unclean. Jesus' ministry of reconciliation wasn't PC, it was Kingdom building. Over half of the New Testament is written by Paul; and Jewish, Roman Citizen. He left positions of comfort and safety to boldly cross lines of division. This is the work of the Kingdom. I believe with all my soul that these long term, long standing places of injustice and prejudice and violence are being exposed by the Holy Spirit Himself (yes, I think God can use Twitter). 

          The uncomfortable reality that we in the white church need to embrace is that the perspective of the New Testament is the perspective of persecution and occupation. The early church was so harshly persecuted, that to call anything that the white Christians are encountering now persecution is borderline insulting (yes, including IVCF's campus access issues). The challenge that faces most of us is how to translate these early church writings into a post-Christendom context. I worry that we are used to empire-defending, because we are used to being the empire. When events happen like are happening in Ferguson, Cleveland and Staten Island they rupture our sense of injustice and re-calibrate our sense of victim hood. It is simply easier to look away, or to blame the source of that rupturing. 

• I believe that is time to listen. I have been accused of making many of these problems worse by using terms like "white" church and "black" church (as well as Latino, Asian, etc). My response is simple: look at Sunday mornings in America. Our churches, for the most part are segregated. And as such, our theology is shaped by our cultural experiences. This is why during a time of civil unrest around race, white Christians need to lend their ears to black Christian leaders. We are one body. We can't now (especially now) ignore part of our body. Paul (who was a cross-cultural missionary, who bridged the gap between race, power and politics) says: 

15 Now if the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 16 And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” it would not for that reason stop being part of the body. 17 If the whole body were an eye, where would the sense of hearing be? If the whole body were an ear, where would the sense of smell be? 18 But in fact God has placed the parts in the body, every one of them, just as he wanted them to be. 19 If they were all one part, where would the body be? 20 As it is, there are many parts, but one body. 21 The eye cannot say to the hand, “I don’t need you!” And the head cannot say to the feet, “I don’t need you!” 22 On the contrary, those parts of the body that seem to be weaker are indispensable, 23 and the parts that we think are less honorable we treat with special honor. And the parts that are unpresentable are treated with special modesty, 24 while our presentable parts need no special treatment. But God has put the body together, giving greater honor to the parts that lacked it, 25 so that there should be no division in the body, but that its parts should have equal concern for each other. 26 If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honored, every part rejoices with it.-- 1 Corinthians 12:15-26, NIV

It is imperative that we listen right now. We have to have "equal concern for each other" right now. Here is a great place to start: http://jonathanmerritt.religionnews.com/2014/12/05/eric-garner-black-christians-react-anger/

• Final Thoughts: I don't expect total agreement. I don't expect Christian Democrats to start voting Republican, or vice versa. I don't expect to see masses of white Christians join protests who are not inclined to do so already. But I do hope and pray for respect. I do hope for listening ears. I do hope to see issues like these discussed in churches. I have had several white Christian friends say to me: "people don't realize how much better it is now than during the 60's. People are ungrateful". Try hearing that. Try hearing someone say to you: "I realize that it is bad and that black people are more targeted and villianized than white people,  but it's about as good as it can be expected to be". That is not solidarity. That is not mourning with those who mourn. We get to disagree with the "how's" and even the "why's" for the inequality that is being painfully exposed right now. But I don't believe that we get to ignore it or call coverage of it inconvenient. Our body is wounded. We need all of our limbs.