Disclaimer: Apologies to my African-American friends and colleagues if I have misrepresented your culture in any way and especially for my failure to use politically correct terminology in this post. Please correct me gently in comments if you feel it appropriate.
I write this post with deep sadness. This has been a week when I would have liked to bury my head in the sand and ignore what has been going on in the world and imagine that perhaps by ignoring it I can wake up and find that it will have gone away. But I know that things don’t happen in that way. In reality, they only change if I confront them; and I can only confront them responsibly if I pay attention.
I have been following the news coverage, both in print and via video and audio, of the events in Baltimore in response to the death of Freddy Gray. I have numerous things to write about because of what i have been reading and hearing. I am a Caucasian person, and I grew up in a multi-ethnic community. I deeply loved the multicultural environment, and I did not fear it. I live in a predominantly white community now, and I miss the richness of multicultural life. The violence against Black people and other forms of racism that are prevalent in this country trouble me in ways that I do not know how to put into words. We may have nice laws on paper; but we have a very long way to go until we stop expecting everyone to speak only perfect English, until we stop telling racial jokes, until we stop expecting Black people to be nothing more than thugs and druggies until they prove otherwise… I have personal reasons for feeling so strongly.
I am part of a minority group, and the majority group often expects very little of blind people. If you all could understand what that does to members of the stigmatized group, you would stop doing this. It holds most of them down and forces them to play the part you set for them. It creates a society in which the only way for them to achieve anything more is for you who are in positions of power to help them get there, but when that happens it disrupts the good society that you like; so you unknowingly keep them down so that you keep your good-life position because that position keeps you from having to disrupt your understanding of who they are. This is something that I live every day. I live it every time a sighted person says to me, “Wowwwwwww! How do you teach Hebrewwwwwww????? That must be sooooo hard for you! … Who cooks your dinner? Does someone clean your house for you?”
So if Black people feel kept down by white society, I don’t begrudge them those feelings. If they feel afraid when they are confronted by police, I think about how often my white friends feel panicky about being pulled over for traffic violations, and I think about it being ten times worse because the Black person is stigmatized for things beyond traffic violations simply because he/she is Black. If you don’t believe me, I ask: when is the last time you made a joke about the Hood, tried to speak Ebonics because it was funny, stereotyped welfare moms on food stamps with ten kids and assumed they were Black? Is that our right as white people? No, it is not. (By the way, the majority of food stamp recipients are not Black.)
What I want to speak about most today is the impact that the video of the Freddy Gray arrest had on me. And I want to speak directly to people who work in positions concerning security. This means law enforcement; but it also means people who are in any position to transport and/or restrain another person.
Under normal circumstances, I do not hesitate to use the words “watched news coverage” even though I am blind–my opinion is that a sighted person still watches TV in the moment while their back is turned, and I still watch TV as I am aware of what is going on. However, in this instance, I have intentionally avoided that term for one reason, and I want to bring this to light. Please keep in mind that part of the news coverage this week has also included the claim by another passenger in the van that he believed that Mr. Gray may have injured himself intentionally during the ride.
Unlike sighted people, I was not able to observe visually what happened to Mr. Gray in that video. I cannot form a solid opinion based on reading the reactions of others to this footage. My opinion is limited to what I heard in the video. What I heard was profoundly terrifying and does not lead me to the conclusion that Mr. Gray was defiant or in a mindset to kill himself. On the contrary, it leads me to the conclusion that he was experiencing extreme terror and pain. Of course, this is only my opinion; and I am thankful that professionals have worked tirelessly to come to an appropriate decision regarding evidence in this matter.
This leads me to what I need to say to security personnel. You are charged with ensuring the safety of the community–not only those whom you are protecting from offenders but also that of the offenders as they await justice. Perhaps this seems like a contradictory concept, that someone who commits a violent crime should be guaranteed any safety. But if our legal system is to have any honor, and especially if we expect anyone who exits later to feel safe on the other side and to experience hope for rehabilitation, we must do much better than this. I speak especially to those who are Christians working in this field. You are not torturers. You are the body of Christ, charged with the balance of justice and mercy. Do your duty, but stop this ridiculous violence that is not in keeping with the way of peace. Is there any reason for these incidents of shooting people 20 times, denying medical aid, etc? Our society was not founded on these principles. We have a Constitutional guarantee against cruel and unusual punishment. When a person is strangled to death, or their spine is severed during the arrest process, surely that is far more cruel than the things we have determined met criteria for cruel and unusual punishment. How heartless do we have to become before we will confront what we have done?
I have included other security personnel in this address because these problems are not limited to police. I am acquainted with a young person who has a plate in her arm due to an injury that was sustained during psychiatric restraint. She recalls hearing the personnel laugh and assume she was not hurt badly. Doctors and other personnel who were present at the time of her injury refused to testify against one another because of possible negative impact on their careers. Her life has been forever altered by this injury–she can no longer lift more than 10 pounds with the affected arm. Her trust in psychiatric personnel has been negatively impacted as well. My friend and I are left to wonder whether a career is more important than the actual impact of what one does in the course of discharging the duties of that career. What one does has effects that reach well beyond this day. If you harm a person in the course of the performance of your duties, you not only commit an offense; but you also make it difficult for that person to relate properly to other personnel who are in the position that you hold. Is it proper to place your personal interests above that person’s well-being and the well-being of other personnel after an incident like this? What has happened to honesty and accountability?
It is natural to place blame as rioting and violence escalate in communities around the country, especially if you yourself have not committed an offense. I have read a lot of push-back from the white community and from police families who feel like there is too much focus on the violence against Black people by police. It seems, though, that our justice system is very cautious in investigating these things; and hense the uprisings. Read How Rare It Is for Police Officers to Get Charged in a Death. What Black people are crying out for is truth and a climate of equality. We are not there yet. This article shows that officers are not charged when the case would be difficult to prove; and an increasing number of situations over the last year have arisen in which shootings occurred because danger was perceived.
Minority groups tend to band together in order to give each other strength. This banding together is something that white people tend to fear. It evokes perceptions of gangs, even when it doesn’t necessarily imply the presence of a gang. It is not so typical of white culture (except in the case of sorrorities, fraternities, and teenage girls). If you have ever worked for a company that had a union, you understand the concept somewhat. What hurts one hurts them all. In fact, this is a very biblical form of relationship, and we would do well to respect it and stop insisting that Black people just get over their racial memories already. Security work is stressful and emotional. If you haven’t done so, I strongly encourage you to seek out the best therapist in your area and develop a plan for coping with the situation and evaluating your responses to situations. Incidentally, pastors and mental health professionals are often encouraged to do this as well. Because we are in close contact with people’s emotions, it is always important to sort out how much of what we are doing is a reaction to our own emotions and how much is an appropriate response to the situation at hand. If you have not considered this in your own work, run and do not walk to someone who can help you with this, because it is probably overdue. This balance is one thing that will help to restore peace in our society.
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