Beaten, Black and Blue

PREFACE

Since the last Canadian election, when the politics of unity and  hope won out over those of division and fear, I have been taking what for me counts as a news and politics sabbatical.

I still pay a little attention to what's going on in the world, because I live here. And Donald Trump is so ratshit insane that you can't help paying attention to him: at any point he's prone to the verbal equivalent of playing with piranhas in his bathtub while masturbating, farting Yankee Doodle and biting at the bubbles,   and I defy you not to look at that, much as you hate to even think of it.  

But for the most part I've been disinclined to engage the world on its time and terms, preferring instead to concentrate on deepening old personal connections and forging new ones. 

Sometimes the world drags you back. And when it does, it never seems to be because goodness and light have broken out. 

Halfway through lunch on Friday -- for those of you who don't know my stupid work schedule, that translates to 3:15 a.m. -- somebody asked me if I knew what was going in on Dallas.  Dallas being emphatically part of "the world", I did not. Out came my phone.

I bring a book to work -- Guy Gavriel Kay's Children of Earth and Sky currently -- in the naive hope that I'll resist the urge to look at my phone. As I recall, I'd actually managed to read a few pages before the words "what happened in Dallas" filtered through.

I read the headline and my stomach lurched. Then for good measure I read the linked stories about Philando Castile and Alton  Sterling, two names which, I shamefacedly admit, hadn't registered  before that moment. Kay and his excellent-as-always novel were forgotten.  So, far that matter, was work: it's a good thing my job requires absolutely no brain power whatsoever, because I didn't have any to spare. Between trying to process the hatred I had just read, and the physical effects of that hatred on my own body, it was a struggle to get through my shift. And to sleep once I got home.

I feel a malignant echo of the pain of others in my gut. As far back as I can remember, watching or reading about pain or something likely to cause it has provoked some level of gastrointestinal distress. If it's someone I love, the pain can be all but debilitating. The emotional pain of millions of strangers has much the same effect.  

On Facebook, I posted the following:

I just want to retreat from the world. It's terrible out there, it's getting worse, and I feel like there's not one FUCKING thing I can do about it.

Many people sympathized. I think we all feel the same way at times like this: helpless and hope. Some friends advised I step back and recharge, some that I sally forth and engage, and more than one suggested that my words would be welcome at times like this.

Thank you, all of you. And for what little my words are worth...here they be.

______________________

Imagine facing each day knowing there are people out there who would just as soon kill you as look at you. Imagine that the course of your daily life brings you distressingly close to such people, and that further, the courses of their daily lives seem to bring them into proximity with you.

This is called being a police officer in the United States of America. In the same country, it's also called being black.

I come from a family of police officers. My dad went his entire career without firing his weapon and received a commendation for that. My uncle died on duty; my cousin is a forensic detective; even my mom was an auxiliary police woman with Metro Toronto in the seventies.

I have no black relatives and exactly one black friend.

Given these not-so-bona fides, you'd expect me to side with the gang in blue in any given controversy. And until Robert Dziekanski was tasered to death in Vancouver in 2007 for the unimaginable crime of being Polish, that was, indeed, my reflex. But since then, and especially  since Sammy Yatim, I've been forced to contend that in some cases in Canada and a disturbingly larger number of cases in the United States, the cops are in fact the bad guys, well, let's just say that privilege gently rubbed into one's face can be both an exfoliant and an eye-opener.

It's out of control in the U.S.. It really is. The police are killing people EVERY SINGLE DAY in the United States, often two or three a day. As of this writing, it's 610 people killed by police since January 1. Black people make up a disproportionately high number of those shot and killed.

Usually the victims are unarmed, but every once in a while you'll get one who is exercising his democratic right to bear arms. I have grave issues with that right, but it exists). According to reports, Philando Castile acted exactly as someone carrying a concealed weapon is supposed to when pulled over by police: he immediately informed the officer that he had a gun. He was then told not to move and to give the officer his license and registration.

Doing either of those things while not moving is quite the trick. I'd like to see somebody pull it off.

Of course, there's the little matter of why Castile was pulled over in the first place. He supposedly resembled an armed robbery suspect...that's what conservative websites are reporting, at any rate, and somehow conflating that into "was wanted for armed robbery".
It was that "wide-set nose" that clinched it for the officer. That officer, as far as I'm concerned, may as well have informed his dispatcher that "all these n*ggers look the same"....

So I've pulled over a man because -- let's acknowledge it -- he's black. He's told me he has a gun, exactly as a citizen with a concealed carry permit shoud, and it's something I would have verified (or should have) before I left my cruiser.

His girlfriend and a four year old child are in the car with him.

THERE ARE TWO OTHER PEOPLE, ONE OF THEM A FOUR YEAR OLD CHILD, IN THE CAR.

Blogger doesn't avail me the option of putting that sentence in 128-point flaming type, but I would if I could. It's where I hit a brick wall. In discussing this case, you can babble on all you want about wide-set noses and whatever other scraps of tissue paper you can cobble together to defend the actions of the police and I'm just going to keep repeating THERE ARE TWO OTHER PEOPLE, ONE OF THEM A FOUR YEAR OLD CHILD, IN THE CAR. 

No. Don't even try to press the case here.

______________



Alton Sterling. His case is much more problematic, in that he had a fairly lengthy (though dated) criminal record, and he probably was reaching for a gun when he was shot. That gun seems to be both the reason the police attended the scene and the reason they used deadly force.  This may have been a case the police got right. But even here:

The officers' body cameras (plural) "fell off" during the incident. Plural. Cameras. Fell off. So, so convenient.

Case after case, some of them suspects and many of them simply black men, and officers who seem to think "suspects" and "black men" are one and the same.  Can you at least begin to acknowledge there is a vast, inchoate anger about this, seeking expression?

But the crime rate --

Yes, the crime rate. The crime rate in black neighbourhoods is higher than it is in white neighbourhoods. (You're welcome to wade through this muddle if you wish: suffice it to say the methodologies are open to (mis)interpretation and distortion, but the statement that black crime is higher remains relatively consistently verifiable.

There are a myriad of systemic reasons for this. One of the biggest I discovered the last time I wrote on white privilege: the average family wealth of a white family in the United States is MORE THAN TWELVE TIMES that of the average black family (Hispanics don't fare much better than blacks, incidentally). Certainly poverty doesn't make you a criminal...but it does tend to make you desperate. And when your community feels utterly hopeless, you gravitate to what cohesive forces you can find, such as...gangs. And so it goes.

Black Lives Matter. It does my heart a world of good to see the memes proliferating around Facebook lately (I have seen at least six),  all stating variations on the same theme): "BLACK LIVES MATTER" does not imply that WHITE LIVES DON'T MATTER any more than saying THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH BEING GAY somehow means THERE'S SOMETHING WRONG WITH BEING STRAIGHT.

Both/and, not either/or. It should be noted that black people (among other marginalized people) have not felt part of "both/and" for...for pretty much ever. Which is just one reason why "either/or", "us/them" thinking is so prevalent in those communities.

And it leads to things like Dallas...as understandable and inevitable as it was UNEQUIVOCALLY INEXCUSABLE.

Dallas, Texas, is a city with a history: we all know it. The Kennedy shooting didn't bubble up there for no reason: hatred for Kennedy and his causes (one of which was civil rights) was endemic in Texas (34 credible Texan threats on JFK's life before Dealey Plaza, and flyers denouncing Kennedy's "un-American", "communist" ways were circulated all over downtown just days before the assassination.

That said, by all accounts the Dallas PD has become a paragon of transparency and community policing. Not that any department deserves to suffer the way this one is, of course, but it's decidedly odd that of all the places this sniper attack might have happened (Ferguson, MO, anyone?), it happened in Dallas.

It's worth repeating that most police officers, even in the U.S, are NOT racist rogues drunk with power. Just like most black people are not criminals. While we're at it, can we extend our "both/and" paradigm to state that one can, should, must mourn BOTH the slain  officers and their families AND all the people whom police have killed? You can be BOTH pro-police AND insist they they are held to the highest standard of accountability. You can be BOTH pro-Black Lives Matter AND  grateful for the men and women in law enforcement charged with protecting and serving.

In these days -- which, I fear, are going to get a lot worse before they get better -- such an inclusive attitude is pretty much mandatory. Because every day people are being marked for death. Undeservedly.