As the American citizenry of 2016 continues its emphatic outcry against the victimization of unarmed black men by police, it leaves me to wonder about one particular question:
What will it take for the dying to end?
Back in 2014, when the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner were the center of attention, I thought the end would come following some adjustments to how police apprehended suspects and our society would be able to coalesce and move on.
In 2015, I thought the end would come via the implementation of body cameras for police officers, negating the slants of news organizations in favor of raw documentation of events. However, I grow increasingly cynical in believing that change is not coming, and that in fact it is not change at all that people want.
Given the warning signs, it seems now all people want is blood.
The major news media have identified a constant, steady supply of viewership in reporting on the subject of police violence against the black community the last few years, and from the ashes of these incidents has risen the Black Lives Matter movement.
At first, it felt like the objective of the group was progress, but recently there cannot be a video released or a story published without some kind of horrid response from Black Lives Matter supporters. Rather than trying to convey the truth to people, the media and Black Lives Matter movement have instead decided to play off of the base assumptions of its audiences to provoke riots.
Don’t believe me? Take, for example, the latest instance of social debate: the shooting death of Keith Lamont Scott last Tuesday in Charlotte. Originally when I heard about this story, I heard that an unarmed, disabled black man was shot to death by police while reading in his car. I felt disgusted at the time, wondering how and why a situation like this would end in the death of a man, and I was not at all shocked to learn of the riots taking place in Charlotte. At first glance, the story seems to be a picturesque rendition of the social tensions narrative: cops shot a mentally unsound black man who was simply reading in his car! How unjust, O system of white patriarchy!
However, the last few days have included some shocking revelations that further convolute the story. The Charlotte-Mecklenberg Chief of Police Kerr Putney asserts that the video from police body cameras shows that Scott was in fact armed, and an eyewitness’s picture confirms that there was indeed a gun on the scene next to his body following the shooting.
On Friday, Scott’s wife Rakeyia released a cell phone video of the incident to the public, where the police can be heard identifying that Scott had a weapon. After many verbal directions to “drop the gun,” the phone is pointed to the ground and gunshots are heard.
So, let’s recap: an armed black man, who apparently suffered a traumatic brain injury and was on medication, was shot and killed after failing to comply with police telling him numerous times to drop his weapon.
Immediately following the incident, articles and headlines were run without complete information, brandishing a narrative that an unarmed, mentally-handicapped black man had been shot and killed by police in Charlotte. Immediately following that was massive, city-wide riots that lasted three days and led to the death of one protester. Since then, more information has come out that corroborates the story of the police officers who were at the scene.
In other words – much ado about nothing!
I feel horrible for Scott’s family that this travesty happened to them, but the evidence released so far seems to show that the situation was an inherent threat to the officers on the scene, and they acted accordingly.
What people seem to forget during stories like these is that police officers have families to return to as well, and when they feel that their lives are threatened in the line of their work, they are authorized to do what they must in order to defend themselves. Investigations are carried out following the incident to determine that the officers acted by the book. If an officer is potentially guilty of a crime, a judge and jury, not a mob of protesters, have the responsibility of determining their fate.
Perhaps it’s time for our society to take a long, hard look in the mirror. Look at the lack of progress being made towards a more egalitarian America: racial tensions are very quickly devolving back to the days of the Civil Rights Era, and for what?
What exactly is the Black Lives Matter movement trying to prove or change at this point? The federal police crime statistics database reports that only four percent of all black homicide victims in America are killed by police. In 2016 alone, 488 people have been killed in Chicago; 322 of the victims were black.
In contrast, only six people have died at the hands of Chicago police this year. According to a recent study by the Department of Justice, blacks make up about 15 percent of the population in the 75 largest counties in the United States, yet they were charged with 62 percent of all robberies, 57 percent of all murders and 45 percent of all assaults in these areas.
If the objective for the Black Lives Matter movement is to prove the validity of black life, why not start with trying to instill change within these communities? Why not institute the teaching of proper values in younger folks, so that they may grow and prosper as wiser people? Most importantly, why is the lens held only on the shootings of black civilians by police when it’s such a disproportionate issue by the numbers?
The movement is becoming counter-intuitive. Rather than becoming a bastion for discussion and growth of our melting-pot society, the Black Lives Matter movement has become the sword that follows the orders of the media’s pen.
Instead of forming our opinions and basing our actions on speculation and hearsay, why do we not build on fact, reason and logic? In our hyper-modern age, there is no excuse for a lack of communication, and our only way towards real progress is to recognize that sometimes, the biggest problem standing in the way of our own success is ourselves.
Scott Vogel is a second-year student majoring in English. He can be reached at SV845618@wcupa.edu.
This article is so woefully ignorant and is honestly the most disgusting piece I’ve ever seen published in The Quad. It was physically painful to read.
Glad to see someone is still carrying the white burden torch and has The Quad to lean on to do so. This is the grossest and most incredibly misinformed article I’ve ever seen. I can’t even fathom how it was published. Much ado about ignorance and white supremacy I guess.
I would first like to point out that this response is very typical of someone in your position – a white male who has never suffered from systemic oppression and rather only benefited from it. Of course you see the BLM as a threat to your position in this world. What has been identified in our country long before the BLM movement is a stratified system that inherently benefits those of a certain skin color over others and you are a beneficiary. The oppressed in this situation are those of dark skin. We have identified that there is a disproportionate rate of deaths at the hands of police of black folk. Often times people like yourself like to diminish that by saying “oh there was a gun!”, “oh the officers just want to go home to their families!”, “oh there were drugs!”. None of the things you state are cause for death. In your article you insinuate as if the victim and the officer started on the same level but there is a really dangerous power relationship here that was created before the victim was even born. You see, an officer can take off his uniform and keep himself safe because nothing aside from his badge suggests he is an officer. A black male cannot take off his skin. A black male can do nothing to prevent the stereotypes and implications that his outward appearance has in this society. And because he is black, people like yourself think that brandishing a weapon or drugs is license to kill. And because he is black and you dont get it, you have taken it upon your white privileged self to say that the BLM movement is a waste of time and in some way hinders you! Whether it is because you feel threatened or inconvenienced by the social injustice around you that you felt compelled to write this I do not know. But it is people like yourself that will continue to allow these systems to stay rooted where they are. If you are silent in times of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor and you are the oppressor. Read some Belle Hooks/Kimberely Crenshaw pieces about White Supremacy.
An unarmed black man is killed by the police in this country every 28 hours, but don’t you worry the dear writer is here to reassure us it’s all nothing! They’re lynching people in your streets; fight back or stop talking.
Instead of forming our opinions on an issue that has nothing to do with police brutality and relating it to police brutality, why do we not objectively view the situation humanely?
It’s unsettling to know that such an ignorant article was published for the Quad. Next time you want to use black on black violence as a way of fighting against BLM, think about this: when a civilian commits a crime, nine times out of ten the civilian will be held accountable and put on trial. Especially if the suspect is a person of color. That much isn’t true for the members of our police force. In fact, it is rare that a police officer is held accountable for committing a crime while on the job. BLM isn’t just focusing on violence and loss of life, they are also fighting against the lack of consequences seen by officers who take black lives. Think about that next time you want to use black on black violence as an arguing point.
Checking my white privilege and responding. “Much ado about nothing” is akin to Hilary Clinton’s agitated soliloquy regarding Benghazi, ending with “what difference does it make?” It’s an absolute, albeit unintended dismissal of the senseless loss of life. We as a white community admittedly have a different paradigm than the black community. We generally have no reason to fear the police, therefore have come to believe that they are the good guys. The helpers. Our protectors and defenders, and as such, we respect them. We don’t understand a different paradigm. The black community however has lost that trust – quite possibly, never had a chance to fully build it. The erosion of trust in those who are tasked with protecting you leads to feeling vulnerable, angry, and quite frankly scared. So while I agree that violence in response to violence is not the answer, I also try to put myself in the shoes of those who are afraid, and understand that hopelessness in a system that has shown very little motivation to change can ultimately lead to violence born of frustration.
The solution to any problem is never reached in trying to solve the results of the problem.. You have to go to the root. Dismissing the violent protests as meaningless only goes to further divide. Empathy and compassion is required. That doesn’t mean that one can’t disagree with the violence itself, but one must seek first to understand the very real issue that led to it. The issue is, black men are being killed, and there’s no way around that fact. Killed for selling CD’s, killed for having the misfortune of a vehicle that broke down, killed for fitting a profile of someone else, shot while doing their job in caring for a man with disabilities. Those deaths, and others are the problem. Senseless, tragic, and all too familiar. And absolutely not “much ado about nothing.” I don’t judge you for having an opinion. However I challenge you to examine your bias. I challenge you to see past the white community and black community, and see a single community that is divided and broken, and figure out what your role is in fixing it.
White-supermicist patriarchy is most definitely a real thing. Even if we’ve begun to move into a egalitarian America, patriarchal ideals are still very much in full form. Read some Bell Hooks and stop listening to that Milo Yiannopoulos guy. He’s an elite, a professional troll and the new face of the racist alt-right.