A social worker friend of mine was asked to visit a 14-year-old boy who was in jail for burning down his family’s home. The interview revealed the boy was being sexually abused by a relative and that he had reported the abuse on three occasions to three different adults with nothing being done by any of them. He had concluded no one was going to help him and it was up to him to find a way out. He did. He burned down the house. Was it destructive? Yes. Did he damage his own future? Yes. Was it effective in getting him out the abusive situation he was in? Yes, his abuser was arrested. He, of course, had already been damaged; first by the abuse. then by those who ignored it, and then by his own desperate efforts to escape that abuse. The lesson I learned from this story is this: If those with authority fail to protect the abused, the abused will sooner or later find a way to make themselves heard and it will be in an angry voice a lot of people won’t like.
In recent days riots have broken out in cities across America because African-Americans as a group feel abused by the police. Yes, I know, #notallpolice and most are likely professionals who do their job well. But the pattern is clear and persistent. In the presence of the police, unarmed black people die at an incredibly higher rate than armed white people. People who are wringing their hands and complaining about the riots should hear the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., “A riot is the language of the unheard.”
I’m an old white guy. In many states, I could strap on an AR-15 and stroll into a store with small concern for my safety. I know this because multiple white men have done so with no consequences. If anyone even bothered to call the police, history suggests the odds of my getting shot are minimal even if I’m angry and shouting. The police might think I’m a jerk, but they wouldn’t shoot me for it. But tell that to the parents of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old African American boy, killed by police for holding a toy gun, moments after they arrived on the scene. The police officer who fired the killing shot, in a previous police application, had been deemed “an emotionally unstable recruit and unfit for duty.” Or tell it to unarmed social worker Charles Kinsey who was helping an autistic young man who had wandered from a group home carrying a toy truck. Someone called the police because they saw his young Latinx client with what they thought was a gun. Police arrived and found Charles Kinsey attempting to persuade his client to return to the group home. The police ordered Kinsey to lie down—which he did—and raise his hands—which he did—while begging police not to shoot his client seated nearby because there was no weapon, only a toy truck. And, by golly, it worked; the police did not shoot his client. Instead, they shot Kinsey.
Screengrap from video by Hilton Napolean, courtesy of Miami Herald.
Another officer there with binoculars had confirmed to everyone present that no weapon was in sight, but inexplicably, another police officer then shot the unarmed and supine Kinsey in the leg. He was flipped over, handcuffed and arrested. When Kinsey asked the policeman why he shot him, the policeman answered, “I don’t know.” The policeman was later acquitted of attempted manslaughter but convicted of misdemeanor culpable negligence.
Charles Kinsey was fortunate in that he survived. Among unarmed African American citizens who did not survive their encounter with the police are Breonna Taylor, Dontre Hamilton, Eric Garner, John Crawford, Michael Brown, Ezell Ford, Dante Parker, Tanisha Anderson, Akai Gurley, Rumain Brisbon, Jerame Reid, Tony Robinson, Phillip White, Eric Harris, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, and of course, George Floyd. Ahmaud Aubrey was killed by a retired policeman acting as a vigilante. It required two months and a public protest to get the former policeman and his son charged and arrested.
Let’s be clear. Violent protests, looting, torching businesses, and harassing otherwise innocent police are not acceptable, but neither is this pattern of abuse. If the rioting outrages us, we best carry the outrage back to the source of the rioting – injustice. Until that is addressed, we should hear again the words of Dr. King: “And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” I point out that these words were spoken nearly 60 years ago, and yet here we still are today.
If we want peace, we must want and demand justice, with better police training, and more legal consequences for police who fail in their duties to protect and defend. If the abuse—and the ignoring of it—continue unaddressed, the house will continue to be set on fire until someone listens. I’m not saying that is the right response, but it is the inevitable one.
In the hope for justice and peace – AB
Thank you for such a thoughtful analysis of the current tragedy. I would only add that in the vast majority of these situations, the violence and looting only starts *after* the police begin firing tear gas and flash grenades at otherwise peaceful protestors. It’s as if the young boy in your example is not just ignored, but slapped across the face when he asks for help. Of course he burns down the house. What else is left for him to do?
Thank you. I don’t know how frequently the overt violence starts with which side in any individual event, but I do know that we have ignored the needs and excused the violence against the Af-Am citizens for far too long. Let’s keep pushing for resolution and justice.