Making Heads Turn

Scott Stantis makes one of the few statements about Ferguson that doesn't overreach.

There is a long list, not only of nits to pick, but of significant problems with the reaction to the no-bill in the Ferguson shooting, and it has quickly turned into a neverending Officer Krupke cycle of "the trouble is ..." expert statements and the Jets' sarcastic but reasonable response of "Gee, Officer Krupke, ("thrug") you!"

The death of Michael Brown, like the death of Emmett Till, has become not significant for itself but for all the other cases it represents. 

And it is valid and appropriate to seize the opportunity to spotlight the issue.

But the death of Emmett Till could not have been a more perfect example if it were fictional: A good kid, a bit of a wiseass and outsider but only to a degree shared by boys his age, shows off for his cousins and is dragged away by a lynch mob, tortured and murdered, and then the mob leaders are let off in a clearly rigged show trial.

Add a courageous mother who insisted on letting his brutalized body be seen, a national press willing to pick up the story and a social movement which was, at the time, under some strong direction and control, and the death of Emmett Till, by happenstance, was as well-placed as were the more well-planned moves of the time, like Jackie Robinson's integration of major league baseball and Rosa Parks' testing of in-state bus segregation.

Ferguson was not nearly as neat a package, nor is there as defined a conversation on any level, and expecting a coherent narrative to emerge from this is simply to expect what could never be.

Start here: There are enough disconnects between the police and the black community in any number of places across the country that the question "Is it really that bad?" shows an insulting lack of awareness.

Part of the Emmett Till narrative is that, having grown up in Chicago, he didn't realize the depth of peril being a typical 14-year-old smart-mouth kid would bring him down in rural Jim Crow Mississippi, and the part of the narrative that made it important was that, in those days of limited media, limited travel and limited interracial contact, a huge portion of the nation had no idea.

But for God's sake, it's been 60 years and people still don't get it?

How many times can a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn't see?

The first time I used this brilliant Cory Thomas cartoon was eight years ago, on my personal blog, after an articulate, accomplished, well-regarded offensive lineman for the Houston Texans was pulled over, Tased and arrested for what is known to those who care to know as "Driving While Black." 

Fred Weary's prominence rocketed the story to at least the front pages in Houston. I suppose it might have gotten more national attention if he'd been a more well-known athlete, a Michael Jordan or an Arthur Ashe.

Or if they'd shot him.

But the point isn't how famous a person has to be before the Rest of America finds out what's going on.

The point is that the Rest of America would know this, if they weren't actively trying not to find out, because there are enough of these local stories in papers all around the country that it's hard to avoid except by turning your head and pretending that you just don't see.

In fact, two and a half years later, I used Cory's cartoon again when another Texan, running back Ryan Moats, was stopped for DWB as he took his wife to the hospital bedside of her dying mother. Granted, it was not as neat a case, since Moats had broken some traffic laws in his haste. We can't know if the officer might have listened to a white driver who pleaded for an escort to the hospital.

But we know the officer didn't listen to Moats and ended up drawing a gun on him in the hospital parking lot, because a dashcam in his patrol car captured the incident and the police department did not respond by stonewalling.

 

On one hand, this helps to emphasize how much effort you have to make not to realize these things are going on, and that surely, if it is happening to upper middle class, educated, successful athletes in nice cars, it must happen to other individuals in less respectable settings as well.

On the other hand, it is also worth noting that, outrageous as the conduct of that officer was, the response not only of the department but of his fellow officer on the scene helped to keep a horrific incident from getting any worse.

It makes me wonder if a similar response in Ferguson might have defused the riots, but my understanding is that relations between the community and the police there were already outrageously toxic and that the lack of outreach in the immediate aftermath of the shooting was as much a symptom and a trigger as was the incident itself.

Still, Jeff Stahler suggests a toxicity that extends far beyond Ferguson, and this bland indifference is a very large element in the problem.

Racism is not just about burning crosses. It's also about a self-satisfied, self-centered failure to give a damn about anyone but yourself.

Stahler's piece is an interesting contrast with the controversial Gary Varvel cartoon on immigration, which raised a storm and was subsequently withdrawn by the Indianapolis Star.

In that ill-considered piece, a typical American family gathered at the Thanksgiving table while a typical illegal-immigrant family climbed in the window to share their meal, uninvited and unwelcome.

Aside from ignoring that the proposed reforms don't apply to new arrivals, the cartoon went off the rails by depicting the typical immigrants as brown-skinned, and the typical Americans not only as white but with a blue-eyed blonde daughter shown in particular panic at the invading dark folks.

The offense was, I am quite sure, unintentional. But that's the problem.

And the next level of the problem is the people who have lept to defend the cartoon by claiming that any objection to a claim that typical Americans are white is "political correctness," a term that would be far less offensive if it were applied to over-sensitive types on both sides of the spectrum (e.g. "Happy Holidays" whiners), but, as it is used, simply declares that it is wrong to question their proclaimed status quo, even when it is clearly inaccurate and unfair.

By contrast, Stahler shows a white family around the table specifically to depict the insular, self-satisfied ignorance that was supposedly shattered when Emmett Till's mother insisted on an open casket, when the Freedom Riders faced down mobs, when the bodies of Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Chaney were dug out of the Mississippi dirt.

And before that, and before that, and before that.

Don't you folks get sore necks from straining so hard to turn your heads?

 
Ignorance is no excuse.

 

Comments

[parnell nelson]

It seems to me that much of the negative reaction to President Obama is the result of 'GWB", which, during the previous administration, stood for George Walker Bush and during this one stands for 'Governing While Black'.

[Mike Peterson]

... and we have a late entry for "Comment of the Year" ...

[Murdoch]

Uh . . . that Stantis cartoon? BOTH sides turn backs on conversation? I would have thought that one side knows all about racism and would love to interest the other side; the other side doesn't want to know.

[Lost in A**2]

In reality, though, both sides talk only to themselves. Or, perhaps, are largely heard only by themselves.

I don't often hear of white kids being shot by police, so I wonder how much is selective reporting. Mother Jones thinks the ratio is something like 4 African-Americans for every White.