Re: Ferguson Riots (ganked from FB)
I told my friend Marcus Patrick Ellsworth that this occurred to me at about 5:25 yesterday morning, and that I hadn't yet had the opportunity to write it out. Well, the opportunity presented itself in a comment thread on a friend's wall, and I've copied and pasted it here.
Have you ever been in a position where you could have killed a person? And I don't mean, "If my car had slid on the ice, I would have squashed that pedestrian,"; I mean, "If I squeeze this trigger (or close my hand), this person dies."
I have. I'll spare you the long story, but it would have been justified. The cops would have showed up, looked at the situation, and said, "Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Kilgore. We'll clean this right up for you."
Prior to that night, I had said "Well if X ever happens to me/someone I love, I'd (kill them in some manner represented by) Y!!" That, and other variations of the same them, spouted God only knows how many times.
Then, I was in a position to kill a man. I didn't, thank God. But I could have. It was then that I realized that there are so many situations in life where we can say whatever we want ahead of time, but really, we have no friggin' clue what we'll do, how we'll react, and how we'll feel during and afterwards until it *actually* happens.
Let me tell you that it didn't feel anything like I ever imagined it would, either during the incident, or in the years that have come after.
So having established that you (probably, and hopefully) have never been in a position to have killed someone, imagine just how little clue you and I, two privileged white dudes, have about how it feels to belong to a group of people who in a very real sense are still struggling to be recognized as human beings who are equal to you and I; who deal with the very real and demonstrable effects of a system of racism and oppression; who have tried to protest peacefully, to petition the powers that be, with woefully inadequate results.
Nobody is saying that a riot is a good thing. Nobody. All I (and others) are saying is that the rioting is not the real problem, it's a symptom, and by focusing on the rioting rather than the root causes, people (knowingly or unknowingly) exacerbate the problem, playing into the hands of the people who are in control, and who do not want things to change.
Have you ever been in a position where you could have killed a person? And I don't mean, "If my car had slid on the ice, I would have squashed that pedestrian,"; I mean, "If I squeeze this trigger (or close my hand), this person dies."
I have. I'll spare you the long story, but it would have been justified. The cops would have showed up, looked at the situation, and said, "Sorry for the inconvenience, Mr. Kilgore. We'll clean this right up for you."
Prior to that night, I had said "Well if X ever happens to me/someone I love, I'd (kill them in some manner represented by) Y!!" That, and other variations of the same them, spouted God only knows how many times.
Then, I was in a position to kill a man. I didn't, thank God. But I could have. It was then that I realized that there are so many situations in life where we can say whatever we want ahead of time, but really, we have no friggin' clue what we'll do, how we'll react, and how we'll feel during and afterwards until it *actually* happens.
Let me tell you that it didn't feel anything like I ever imagined it would, either during the incident, or in the years that have come after.
So having established that you (probably, and hopefully) have never been in a position to have killed someone, imagine just how little clue you and I, two privileged white dudes, have about how it feels to belong to a group of people who in a very real sense are still struggling to be recognized as human beings who are equal to you and I; who deal with the very real and demonstrable effects of a system of racism and oppression; who have tried to protest peacefully, to petition the powers that be, with woefully inadequate results.
Nobody is saying that a riot is a good thing. Nobody. All I (and others) are saying is that the rioting is not the real problem, it's a symptom, and by focusing on the rioting rather than the root causes, people (knowingly or unknowingly) exacerbate the problem, playing into the hands of the people who are in control, and who do not want things to change.