At times like these, I feel at a loss over what to write in this space. It’s an uncomfortable feeling for a person whose job description requires forming strong opinions.
I am supposed to be able to reflect on the news of the day, come to some conclusion about it, then share that opinion in a way that is reasonable, enlightening and hopefully useful.
But what’s there to say that’s useful about a week of awful events in this country? Two black men are killed in what appears to be the excessive use of force by white police officers. In a crazed retaliation hundreds of miles away from either one of those two shootings, five police officers are assassinated and seven others are wounded by a gunman who told police he wanted to kill white cops. Then three more officers are wounded in what might have been copycat crimes.
Senseless isn’t a strong enough word for any of this bloodshed. And the slogans that have become the mantra for both sides of these types of tragedies — Black Lives Matter or Blue Lives Matter — seem only to polarize rather than bring any sense of understanding.
It’s understanding — the simply stated but difficult-to-accomplish act of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes — that is most needed to calm this upheaval. Whites in general, and white police in particular, need to better understand why blacks in America distrust the police; and blacks and other police critics need to better understand why the police feel unfairly under siege.
The problem with trying to forge that understanding is that too often the issue is posed as an either/or proposition. Either you agree that blacks, particularly black males, are treated unfairly in this country by the criminal justice system, or you believe that’s a fiction used by the guilty to shirk responsibility for their bad choices.
If you sympathize with the Black Lives Matter movement, you are perceived as anti-cop. If you back the police, you’re seen as anti-black.
Isn’t it possible, though, to see that both sides have a legitimate point?
The distrust of blacks for law enforcement didn’t start with the shooting almost two years ago of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. Brown’s death just exploded the anger — made more visceral through the reach and immediacy of the Internet — that has been brewing for decades.
Blacks in this country have plenty of historical reason for being leery of law enforcement. Though the eventual integration of law enforcement agencies helped heal some of these wounds, it’s never completely removed the belief that there exist two standards in the American criminal justice system, and the one for blacks is more punitive, more harsh and more violent.
When Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton said last week, after Philando Castile was fatally shot by a police officer during what began as a routine traffic stop, that he doubted whether the shooting would have happened if Castile had been white, it was an accurate, if uncomfortable, observation. Something put that white officer who pulled his trigger on edge, and it’s almost certain that part of that edginess was he was looking at a person whose skin color was not the same as his. Color blindness is the ideal, but it’s not reality in most of the interactions between people of different races, particularly when there’s a conflict or it borders on one.
There is, though, no moral equivalence between confrontations that turn violent without premeditation between white cops and black men, and a black man’s calculated murder of innocent white officers.
Those policemen in Dallas had nothing to do with what occurred near St. Paul, Minnesota, or Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in the days prior. They were out on the streets to make sure a peaceful protest stayed peaceful, not just for the city’s sake but for those engaged in the protest themselves. They weren’t killed “because” of the Black Lives Matter movement. They were killed safeguarding its right to express itself.
It’s no wonder some cops are edgy. They make modest wages, take on great personal risks and are frequently criticized. They labor unjustly under the suspicions created by small percentage of bad actors. And now they feel like they are open season for any crackpot with a gun.
The events of the past week may further widen the gulf between black men and white cops, but it doesn’t have to. If they think about it long enough, they will understand they have something disturbing in common. Both are the victims of profiling.
