Posted on 09/03/2014 2:54:18 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Approximately two times a week in the United States, between 2006 and 2012, a white police officer killed a black person.
On August 9, it happened again. That day, Ferguson, Mo., police officer Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, an 18-year-old, unarmed black teenager, as he was walking home from a convenience store with a friend. According to a private autopsy report commissioned by the family, Brown was shot four times in his right arm and twice in the head.
None of those shots appear to have been taken at close range.
Brown’s body was left in the street, uncovered, for four hours, reminiscent of the days when black men and women were lynched and left hanging—a signal to the rest of the community to stay in line and remain conscious of their oppression. Witnesses have reported that Brown’s hands were in the air, and that Brown was unarmed, at the time he was killed.
As of yet, Officer Wilson’s police department and friends of the officer are the only individuals who have challenged this narrative given by several eyewitnesses. They claim Brown was aggressive and reaching for the officer’s gun. Following his death, community members have had to defend Brown to the public as a nice, black teenager, and not a dangerous black thug; that he was fully human and whole, and not three-fifths of a person; that he was somebody’s son, brother, and nephew, despite how anonymously black he may have appeared to Wilson.
But the Ferguson Police Department was not going to stand by as Brown’s achievements and humanity dominated reports of the shooting. On the same day he released Wilson’s name, Ferguson Police Chief Thomas Jackson released a video to reporters implicating Brown in a strong-arm robbery at a local convenience store just before his death. In the press conference, Chief Jackson claimed that the tape was released “because the press asked for it” and that the initial contact between Officer Wilson and Brown was not related to the robbery. Wilson was not aware of the robbery when he confronted Brown.
But in doing this, Chief Jackson minimized Brown’s position as the victim and distracted from his department’s failure to release a thorough police report connected to Brown’s shooting.
In this way, Brown was put on trial for his own death—Wilson supporters argued that Michael was a thief and an aggressor, while Brown’s community and family reminded the public that he was friendly, non-threatening, and college-bound to justify his right to life.
Though these traits and accomplishments have nothing to do with Brown’s humanity and his right to live, because he was a black man they seemed necessary for others to empathize with him as a victim. No person should have to rationalize his or her own right to live—whether rich or poor, white or black, college-bound or dropout.
Recognizing this, a few days after Michael Brown’s death, black Twitter users created the hashtag #IfTheyGunnedMeDown. Along with the hashtag, users typically uploaded two photos of themselves—one in which they appeared respectable, usually flaunting a ceremonial graduation robe or dressed for a professional occasion, and another in which they came across as what some would deem as thuggish or unclassy.
This Twitter campaign raised serious questions about how the media chooses to portray black victims, and particularly how they chose to portray Mike Brown following his death. The trend of dehumanizing and striking black victims of their innocence was evident in the media’s coverage of Trayvon Martin’s death just two years ago.
Because of this pattern, black youth question how the public measures their humanity. “What if I didn’t have a respectable photo to effectively cancel out my thug-esque photo, and which would the media use if I was gunned down in the streets?” “Do I need evidence of my success to justify my right to live?”
Unfortunately, based on recent cases, it appears that this evidence is a necessity. That there is a need for black people to display a degree of success before being deemed fully human in America is insulting and indicative of an extreme lack of progress.
However, even when this evidence of success is present, to some, black youth will never be deserving of sympathy or grief. Since Michael’s death, a “Support for Officer Wilson” Facebook page was created and supporters have rallied and gathered on Wilson’s behalf. The creators of the Facebook page also set up a GoFundMe account for Wilson, raising over $200,000. Donations for Wilson have surpassed donations for Brown’s family. These donations were often accompanied with racist and offensive remarks. One user wrote, “Thanks for taking out the trash”, with his $15 donation. Another person noted they would have donated more if Wilson had also shot the friend who was walking with Brown before Wilson killed him.
While a family and community are mourning the death of a young man, others sympathize with the killer and laud the death of the slain.
Unfortunately, this situation is not unfamiliar. The refusal to fully acknowledge black victimization is ever-present in our sociopolitical discourse. Consistently, black people are blamed for and told to take responsibility for their own poverty, poor education, and general oppression in the United States, an argument that altogether ignores the reality that there were never adequate programs and provisions to put blacks on equal footing as whites after slavery and Jim Crow.
Moreover, the continued refusal to criminalize white people for black death continues to suggest to black people that there will never be any justice for them in the United States. Officer Wilson will likely be absolved of wrongdoing, and substantive policy changes to prevent further shooting deaths of black youth will fall to the wayside.
Some detractors who speak out against protesters of the police’s handling of the Michael Brown case say that we should wait for the investigations (one by a grand jury and the other a federal civil case) to be completed.
In the United States, local law enforcement kills approximately 400 people per year. The majority of individuals targeted and killed in these altercations are minorities, and police are rarely indicted or convicted in the following investigations. Despite this pervasive use of deadly force in the line of duty, little has been done. Darren Wilson will likely walk free, and attempts to prevent future cases of deadly force will continue to be ineffective.
This denial of white criminality and black victimization, unless the black person displays some tint of exceptionalism, places black people in a double bind—they are told that they have to be successful in order to be deemed fully human but often aren’t given the resources they need to accomplish this success.
You can’t pull yourself up by your bootstraps if you never had shoes to begin with.
*****
Temitope Agabalogun ’15 is a human evolutionary biology concentrator in Dunster House. Amanda D. Bradley ’15 is a joint sociology and government concentrator in Dunster House. Jasmine S. Burnett ’16 is a government concentrator in Lowell House.
Author forgot to mention he was a suspect in another murder beforehand.... And the musical lyrics....
I was going to check out the comments, but they use Disqus, and Ghostery blocks it.
I'll sometimes let it through, but an previous poster said Disqus appears to be having troubles like FB.
I'm going to have to try any way, just to make sure there is at least one person at Harvard that isn't kowtowing to pro-thug racist mindset of the authors.
Correction, he was walking away from ROBBING a convenience store (i.e. strong armed robbery, A&B).
Not the nice little gentle 300 lb. Baby Huey, he be.
Temitope Agabalogun, Amanda D. Bradley and Jasmine S. Burnett
Affirmative Action admits to Harvard. Wannabe journalists.
Too bad they never checked the veracity of half the stuff they wrote. Harvard’s motto is, after all, Veritas.
this and other statements within this article, 3 weeks after the fact, are so untrue I don't even know where to start other than tossing this article into the circular file as yet another example of poorly researched race mongering by the author - right down to the title.
“He was able to hold up a convenience store without a gun?”
And these Harvard 40 IQ apes proved that they can’t hold up a logical conversation.
I think it’s been changed to illicitum est veritas in luctus.
ditto
Subtitled: “More than Three-Fifths Thug”
There ya’ go, using White math again.
I must be more charitable than some. I would guess that being Harvard men, they fully understand the whole 3/5ths thing. They hope that you, the reader don't. It IS an incendiary concept without the context of history, after all.
The choice comes down to either ignorance or fraud. I vote for fraud.
so does the 3/5 thing make Obama 4/5th of a regular person..
Maybe I missed it in all the hype...but what "achievements" did Mike Brown accomplish ?
Unless strong arming someone half your size and stealing blunts is considered as "achievements"
What planet does this dipsh*t live on...?
The media darn near made Trayvon into a saint...
“None of those shots appear to have been taken at close range.”
LOLOLOLOL.......Mike Brown’s charge at Officer Wilson ended 3 ft from where Wilson was standing.....
Obummer and Mooch graduated from Harvard don’tcha know. Both had to surrender their license to practice law. By the way, saw Obummer on TV today...he’s wasting away.
There is an increasing percentage of students at Harvard who are enrolled because of affirmative action and very generous financial aid. Many are quite good. Some are less prepared and have a hard time competing with very bright fellow students.
Re the 3/5 thing. You are assuming that real history is being taught in high schools. Even the best secondary schools probably are not covering history accurately.
BULL !!!
ANY 6’-4” 300# gorilla that had fists the size of Big Mikey carries “deadly weapons” on the end of each arm. He knew how to use them and did, look at officer Wilson’s face.
A “good shooting”
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