A friend of mine characterized himself as “conflicted” over the
Baltimore riots. Another, a Baltimore
native, described himself as “DISGUSTED!”
The all caps were his. And yet
another who reads my blog, added, “I’m looking forward to your take on the
events today in Baltimore.” All three
made their remarks Monday, long before I decided what I would write about in
today’s post. Ultimately, the sequence
of events made the choice for me. To
that end, let’s do this.
Ta Nehisi Coates, a son of Baltimore, himself, who wrote a nearly 16,000
word, 10 Chapter essay on “The Case for Reparations,” featured in the June 2014
issue of The Atlantic, has weighed in with, as you might expect, a
nontraditional view of the matter. Mr.
Coates essay was a powerful instrument for initiating, and in some cases,
provoking, discussion about a subject Americans often find difficult to
broach. In an effort to leverage the
national discussion that ensued, I blogged about the topic myself in my June 4,
2014 post, entitled, “Why Reparations?”
For your convenience, both Mr. Coates essay and my blog post are
included in separate links below.
All that taken aside, my reference to Mr. Coates relates not to his
views on reparations, but to his reaction to Monday’s Baltimore Riots. On Monday, Mr. Coates penned another piece
that appeared in The Atlantic, this one entitled “Nonviolence as
Compliance.” In this piece, Mr. Coates
opines, “Officials calling for calm can
offer no rational justification for Gray's death, and so they appeal for
order.”
While he said much more than that, those words right
there; one sentence, eighteen simple words synthesize and crystallize the
catalyst for why Baltimore was at least temporarily beset by rioting. You could reduce Coates’ articulate phrasing
to a shorter, but perhaps more powerful, and much more familiar meme: “No
justice, no peace.”
Let me say straight away, there is no simple secret
sauce coding that explains what unfolded in B’more on Monday. Yes, there was rioting, looting, threats, and
rumors of all that and more. Numerous
individuals engaged in criminal behavior; much of it captured on video. These acts included violence, and a
substantial amount of property damage, some to vehicles, but most to businesses
that served the community in which the riots occurred, and in which many of the
rioters live.
Those operatives who call for peace in instances such
as this are often called collaborators, and are considered to have betrayed the
cause and/or the community. Conversely,
individuals who fan the flames of dissent, often leading to progressively
escalating confrontational behavior are frequently referred to as instigators,
and are frequently considered to be intent on fomenting violence and disorder.
In most instances, by the time a situation devolves
and deteriorates to one in which there is this level and degree of yin-yang,
the balance has tipped and events such as those occurring Monday evening are
all but inevitable. By the time crowd
members had attacked police officers by hurling rocks and debris, and surely by
the time business were looted or burned, Freddie Gray was long since no longer
the issue.
These were acts of anger, spiked by a longstanding
seething over past slights and sins against African Americans. It is easy enough to submit that two wrongs
do not make a right. That is not just
easy to say, but also a fact. However,
another fact that too often gets lost in the high intensity media frenzied
translation that accompanies occurrences such as this in the digital
age/24-hour news cycle, is Freddie Gray’s demise was not the first, or the
twenty-first, of the fifty-first of it’s kind.
It was just the next…in a long and tragic litany of black lives lost to
violence perpetrated by law enforcement officialdom.
Given the myriad of dynamics, moving parts, related
to just the actions in Baltimore this week, I can appreciate why one of my
friends would feel “conflicted.” His
sense of personal resentment, no doubt fueled by the recognition that, as the
Baltimore Sun reported results from a study conducted by the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU):
·
At
least 109 people have died after encounters with police in Maryland between
2010 and 2014
·
Nearly
70 percent of those who died were black, and more than 40 percent of the people
were unarmed
· Blacks
make up 29 percent of Maryland’s population
· Of
the 109 cases studied, less than 2 percent of the officers involved in the
deaths were criminally charged
There is a deep level of food for
thought integrated in those findings; at least, there should be.
I can also understand the sentiment of
the friend and Baltimore native, whom declared himself “DISGUSTED,” by the
events of Monday evening. His mother
still lives on the Westside of Baltimore, less than 10 minutes away form where
much of the action went down. In his
words, it “Makes ABSOLUTELY ZERO SENSE to tear up/burn up your own stuff…the
few businesses that are bold enough to come to and stay in your community. I’m DISGUSTED tonight!!!”
Moreover, I can see very well why a
third friend would say, “I’m looking forward to your
take on the events today in Baltimore.”
At this point, it is imperative to emphasize, the issues on the ground
in Baltimore are complex and historically entrenched. However, they are also not just present in
Baltimore, Maryland. As I have noted in
other posts, they are evident in locales as far afield as:
1. Stanford Florida (I know Zimmerman was not a police officer, but as
a neighborhood watch captain, he took the law into his own hands),
2. Staten Island, New York,
3. Ferguson, Missouri,
4. Cleveland, Ohio,
5. Beavercreek, Ohio,
6. North Charleston, South Carolina,
7. Charlotte, North Carolina (my hometown)
I have written about troubling and related events in each and every
one of the communities listed above.
Back to B’more, as I’ve have already stated, the looting, burning,
and violence that took hold in parts of Baltimore is criminal. Authorities there are justified in calling it
such, and in seeking to bring offenders to justice.
But let us not pretend it is fair, courageous, or even minimally
acceptable to suggest that an individual who was apparently healthy during the
police’s pursuit of him, in great pain and discomfort as he was arrested
(captured on audio/video), and dead from a nearly severed spine 2 hours later,
was taken into custody “without excess force.”
It is this unfathomable narrative that ultimately served as the fuel for
the rioting. The Mayor, the Police
Commissioner, and any other official who has in effect chosen to say “That’s my
story and I’m sticking to it,” bears a considerable share of the onus for the
ugly events we now contemplate and review.
I pray for the Baltimore community.
I sincerely hope that state/local officials and disaffected citizens
resolve their issues without addition mayhem.
If there is a lesson to be learned from this community dysfunction, it
is that the days of grin, bear it, and suffer in silence are behind us. We are barely a month into spring, but,
frankly, this blowup foretells a long, hot American summer, if police officers
continue to flagrantly African Americans, unabated. There you have it; my take on “Baltimore:Dissecting the Riotous Behavior!”
I’m done; holla back!
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