The tragedy of Ferguson, is so much greater than many of us realize. The loss of a young man’s life is certainly a great tragedy. The pain and violence experienced by the residents of Ferguson is an additional tragedy, but the finger-pointing and blame-gaming going on from both sides is destructive and useless. The real tragedy of Ferguson, is the fact that we continue to ignore the giant, awful elephant in the room. We focus like a laser on the details of what happened between Michael Brown and Darren Wilson, because we are afraid to look at the real problem, which continues to rear it’s ugly head throughout our nation. Let’s call it the “discomfort” that continues to exist between the races in our beloved country. Each time something like the killing of Michael Brown happens we view it as an isolated incident or at best, another in a long line of incidents and we struggle to find an explanation for it. The reality is that each of these incidents will produce a different set of circumstances. In some, the police are clearly overstepping their bounds... In others, there will be clear evidence that the officer acted properly. Focusing on what is the truth about each incident leads us into monumental arguments about who is right and who is wrong... and whether or not “justice” has been done... The struggle to determine whether justice has been done in each case allows us to ignore the real problem... the lingering “dis-ease” that separates the racial and economic strata of our society... The long-held, but mostly denied fact that we are all still struggling with the leftovers of the racial and economic divide that we think is buried in our past... but continues to live, often subconsciously, and sometimes quite consciously in all of us... The purse-clutching behavior of a White woman encountering a Black man in her path, or the locking of the car door by a White man when a Black man approaches... the heart-quickening feeling a Black man or woman gets when pulled over by a White police officer... a reaction much different than the one caused by concern about a traffic ticket... or the fear a young Black man will feel when stopped and questioned by a White police officer. In so many small, but significant ways, most of us are on some level, suspicious of and fearful of those confrontations… because we don’t really know each other… and we have been taught to be afraid… because we still live in separate neighborhoods… attend different schools… and worship in different churches… we see each other as “different” and have different attitudes about who we each are… The solution to Ferguson will not come from Grand Juries… or lawsuits… or violent demonstrations… it will only come when we accept the reality of our relationships with each other… when we begin to see humanity in the faces of those we think are “different”… when we see ourselves in the lives and struggles of each other… when men like Darren Wilson and boys like Michael Brown… see a child of God… just like themselves… in each other…
Posted on: Tue, 25 Nov 2014 22:38:00 +0000
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