Sunday Morning Post (V.2, #21) - Can We Agree on Justice?
In another
lifetime, or so it seems, I was living with friends outside of Washington and
would have the opportunity to drive through the Northeast Quadrant via Benning
Road and the H Street Corridor. I was a
bit taken aback by the typical upscale DC vistas I would see on one side of an
overpass crossing over the railroad tracks from Union Station only to see stark
desolation of the other side going towards Benning Road. There were a lot of empty storefronts,
neglect seen in abandoned properties with high weeds and garbage piles, some
burned out properties and overall a sense of hopelessness. I later learned that this all happened in the
1968 riots when Dr. Martin Luther King was assassinated.
I had seen
scenes like this before in my native Philadelphia, but I was seeing this urban
destruction for this first time in 1988!
Twenty years after the riots!
Twenty years of too many people shrugging their shoulders and
high-tailing it for the suburbs! Twenty years when most people preferred to
look away from the deteriorating neighborhood that was once so vibrant. A rot borne of hatred and anger.
I only bring
this up now because there are more expressions of hatred and anger happening
this weekend in America. It’s like the
riots that happened once upon a time in DC have been franchised, not for the
purpose of economic prosperity, but to destroy in anger and frustration just
for the sake of destruction.
Once again,
the spark for this latest round was the senseless murder of a black man at the
hands of an urban law enforcement officer.
This latest
round of protests started in the city where the racial incident occurred,
Minneapolis, but the protests quickly turned from peaceful demonstrations that
enough is enough to violent, burn-baby-burn demonstrations in other cities from
Atlanta to Los Angeles. For the black
community the scene of George Floyd begging to breathe while the stereo typical
cop crushed his wind pipe is all too familiar.
For many people in the white community it will be another moment to roll
our eyes while we sigh, “Oh no, not again!”
Yes,
again. The elephant in the room which
has dogged our country since before its founding in 1776 has been awakened
again. Once again one of us allowed our
baser instincts to get the better of us and kill another human being, which
prompted many others to let their baser instincts to go wild.
The
protestors, at least the peaceful ones, insist now as before that there will be
no peace without justice. Fine, I couldn’t agree more. This seems like a sensible expectation of the
society at large. Now if we can only
agree on justice that is suitable punishment for the crime.
First, we
should recognize that American justice has always been problematic for the
black community. We’ve long known that
there was double standard in play between punishments meted out for white perps
and black perps. Activists for years
have pointed to the disparity between the percentage of imprisoned black men and
the percentage of black men in America as a whole. This is the same justice
system who will process the case of the now ex-Minneapolis police officer. So
right away we have a trust issue.
Second,
there always seems to be some sort of dissatisfaction with what the eventual
punishment turns out to be. In this case
the officer has been charged with third degree murder and manslaughter. This case hasn’t even gone to trial and
people are complaining about the severity (or lack thereof) of the charge. I’m not familiar with the nuances of first,
second, and third degrees under Minnesota law, but I believe there is always
the chance that the charges can be upgraded at a later date.
Third, do we
really believe that those violent protestors who have burned down buildings in
Minneapolis and chucked cinder blocks through the windows at CNN in Atlanta,
just want justice? Or are they looking
for revenge? Yes, I think this is a fair
question.
Would these
people be content with a public execution like a hanging or beheading? I don’t think I’m being ridiculous in making
this suggestion. I really don’t know what is going on in the protestor’s heads,
even as I deal with my own outrage at the incident.
Many of us
can understand the anger and frustration of the protestors, but many of us
realize that destruction of public and private property is counter-
productive. Just look at recent
history. Did racism disappear after the
1968 riots? How about the Rodney King verdict?
Or how about the riots a few years ago in Ferguson, Missouri? Sadly, the answer is no. The systemic racism continued without so much
as a pause to common decency.
The
situation would be helped greatly if we had competent leadership at the top,
but President Throwing-Gasoline-On-The-Fire seems more inclined to incite
violence against the protestors. Typical,
all too typical.
We should
also consider that George Floyd’s death was just a spark to issues totally
unrelated to racism and injustice.
People are still frustrated that the country is trying to open up and/or
close again due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Many of the protestors may also be wrestling with unemployment and
economic uncertainty for the immediate future.
America has a lot on its plate this summer.
In the end,
any available resources will be used not to combat hatred and racism, but to
rebuild the infrastructure that was destroyed in the riots. Even then, that may not happen for
decades. Work to rebuild the H Street
Corridor did not even begin until 2002. Judging
from photos I found on line this area of DC is once again a vibrant place to
live and prosper.
So, how many
other cities will have their own H Street Corridor disaster zones to deal with
in the coming years? Too many to
distract us from dealing with the root cause of it all.
(Thank you
for reading. By all means raise your
voice to injustice, but let’s be peaceful out there.)