Ferguson.
That’s all I have to say. The mere appearance of the word on this page conjures every thought and image necessary for the reader to know exactly what I’m talking about.
What’s more, we are all in agreement that what we are talking about is a terrible thing, a glaring example of the American Experiment gone awry, an unwelcome measurement of the distance our divided nation has yet to travel along the road to racial understanding. Where we assuredly do not agree is in our respective assessments of what Ferguson means — of whether justice has been served.
As I write this, it is the day after the St. Louis grand jury’s decision not to bring charges in the death of Michael Brown. As I watched the announcement of the decision last night, saw and read reports of its aftermath, and perused the comments — some reasoned, some abhorrent, some bewildered, some frankly heartbroken — made on social media, I wondered whether I should write anything at all about it. I know how I feel about it, but I’m also keenly aware that, as a middle-aged white man, anything I might have to say is tinged with my irremediable ignorance of what it means to be black in America.
Early this morning, still pondering, I read a column on the website of The Washington Post that touched me in a way that nothing else had. The column, by Carol Anderson, a professor at Atlanta’s Emory University, put Ferguson in the historical context of the American black experience, from Emancipation to the present day. Admittedly, the title — “Ferguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against progress.” — was provocative, perhaps a bit too much so. But I found that virtually everything in it rang true, and that it was well written to boot — so much so that I posted it on my personal Facebook page, along with the comment, “I wish I had written this.”
As might be expected, the post drew quite a few comments from all sides of the ideological spectrum, some of them rather heated. As the discussion thread grew, and as I had posted the piece less as a precise expression of my personal feelings than as a point of view that needed to be heard, I hesitated to weigh in further — somewhat uncharacteristic of me, but also, it seemed, somehow appropriate.
And then, Bill Singleton stepped in. A onetime reporter who spent a combined 26 years at The Birmingham Post-Herald and The Birmingham News, Bill also did some writing for Weld before taking on his current gig in the corporate world.
I am obliged, for purposes of this column, to mention here that Bill is a black man, and the father of two teenaged sons. I do not know him well, but we have been acquainted for more than a decade, and my impression has always been that he is a deep thinker and a highly spiritual person. For all of these reasons, when he weighed into the discussion of Ferguson on my Facebook page this morning, he had my attention. And he kept it.
As with the column in the Post, I agree with nearly everything Bill said. But more important to me is the way that he said it, a way that speaks to the best and worst in each of us, and in our nation — which is why the remainder of this column consists of excerpts from his posts today.
The beauty of the Civil Rights Movement, Bill wrote, is that its leaders understood the power of non-violent protest. Its leaders understood the culture and the language of their day and spoke to it a way that made people not only stand and notice, but in a way that engendered sympathy and produced converts. The leaders of the Civil Rights Movement were largely Christians who shamed other Christians who believed in racial segregation by acting more like Jesus than they did. And because they did, they converted a nation. …
These violent displays are not going to win anyone. They are simple displays of lawlessness, and they harden those who were already inclined to dismiss the concerns of those wanting to see this case taken to trial. Systems of power and people in power are ALWAYS going to protect themselves in a way to maintain that power. The way to speak to power is not necessarily with power, and especially not with violence, but with a coordinated strategy that diffuses violence and engenders the sympathy of those willing to join you in your cause because they see it as righteous. Unfortunately, the systems that brought us together are now being discarded, so we resort to our base nature by rioting and encouraging those who don’t like us anyway to be even more fearful and more entrenched in their thinking that we’re nothing but animals who prefer to live outside the boundaries of acceptable society.
In reply to another commenter’s reaction, which itself was a well-reasoned expression of understanding why some view violence as an acceptable response to the perceived miscarriage of justice in Ferguson, Bill wrote:
[W]hen you respond to violence with violence, you only encourage those with more power to exercise their power in a way they’re accustomed to using it. And isn’t that what people are saying this Ferguson police officer did? You are right that history has taught us that when you marginalize voices, violence occurs. But history has also taught us that if you resort to violence and you don’t uplift the worthiness of your cause, violence will be used against you and in greater force. History has also taught us in the form of Jesus, Gandhi, MLK Jr. and Fred Shuttlesworth that non-violent approaches do work. I’m glad that History is an equal opportunity teacher.
And, finally, in the manner of a benediction, this:
…We all have to do our parts to maintain civility in this great system we live in. We must teach our young black boys to respect authority, just as we need to teach authority to respect our young black boys. … If we’re teaching our young men through cultural messaging that police are the enemy, then they’re going to buck back when police give them simple commands to obey the law. And if we continue to perpetuate and support films, music and images that paint black men as thugs, that’s the image police have when they venture into our communities. But that’s not a message we want to address or talk about because it gets to the heart of pleasure and entertainment, and we love our pleasure and entertainment. … We are a fat, lazy arrogant and indulgent culture — blacks and whites. And we both refuse to take the necessary steps within our own communities to effect the type of change that is lasting. So we keep perpetuating these vicious cycles.
With that, I close with the same response I made on my Facebook thread this morning: Amen, Bill. And thanks.