This is not just an “I told you so” follow-up post, as much as I wish it could be. I wish that last Wednesday’s write up on the rhetoric surrounding Ferguson had been vindicated in every detail and that I could make this my victory lap here on Social Matter, bona fides as a modern day Jeremiah established. But I suppose it wasn’t meant to be. We soldier on.
My overall prediction about the media coverage (as well as the Twitter buzz, the water cooler gossip, etc.) of Michael Brown and the riots following his death was that it would traffic in a sort of hagiography of the victim himself and of the community that he hailed from. It certainly has so far. In fact, the part of my divination that I got wrong was the part where I underestimated how sensationalized the account of Brown’s encounter with the officer would be. I said they’d make their stand on the following narrative:
Michael Brown was a gentle soul who was needlessly accosted by a racist police officer. In the ensuing fight, no doubt instigated by the racist hostility of the officer, Brown was mercilessly executed.
But thus far, at least, that hasn’t been the case. Thus far, there’s been very little analysis of the flashpoint event at all. And when it is touched upon, it’s not referred to as a fight. They skip that part entirely and go right to the “execution” in “cold blood” or “broad daylight.” As if Michael Brown was a passive, helpless victim. As if it could have been any young black man walking down the (middle of) the street, minding his own business.
You can’t win them all, especially if you bank on our current crop of pundits exhibiting at least some barest modicum of realism or integrity in their reportage. Rookie mistake.
The more details that emerge about the Brown shooting, the less plausible the “execution” scenario becomes. We know that Brown wasn’t a “teen” so much as he was a towering, 290-pound man. We know that he, at least in his self-photography and rap tracks, comes off less as a “gentle giant” who “wouldn’t hurt a soul” and more as yet another hostile young black man who glorifies drugs, weapons, money, and crime. We know that he was involved in the strong-armed robbery of a gas station just minutes before he was stopped by the police and that he and his companion had the stolen goods on them, which the officer may or may not have known about but would have certainly been a point of anxiety for the two of them. Perhaps most damningly of all, a candid (accidentally recorded, in fact) eyewitness account stated just moments after the shooting says that Brown not only fought the cop at his cruiser before trying to run away but was actually charging back at the patrol car when he was finished off.
I don’t care to descend here into the nitty gritty of deadly-force apologia. And there’s no need to. I just want to point out the mendacity that underlies all of this: the protests, the looting, the handwringing over tanks on mainstreet, the social justice hysterics, all of this. The fundamental lie is that Brown was an innocent victim of white racism, in no way responsible for or complicit in his own demise. The fundamental lie is that he occupies that high ground of moral superiority reserved for innocent victims.
And, again, this mendacity replicates itself at the level of the Ferguson community, which is in turn a metonym for all of black America. Again, we’re asked to conceive of an increasingly thuggish black culture as noble and blameless, when in fact it’s highly complicit in its own ongoing troubles. We’re asked to look at a generation of Browns, raised in broken homes, socialized into a community that celebrates criminals and vilifies authority, inculcated with a resentment of “the man” and represented in the public sphere by a gaggle shakedown artists who look everywhere but the mirror for the source of their people’s woes—we’re asked to look at that generation and pass no judgment thereon. Keep voting for the welfare dependence that has destroyed your families: racism made you do it. Keep falling into lockstep with the Sharptons, the Jacksons, the Crumps of the world: racism made you do it. Keep reveling in the gangster lifestyle: racism made you do it. Keep up the looting, the arson, the tantrums: racism made you do it.
It’s a sorry scene all the way around, but no one will be able to meaningfully address it within the progressive frame, which attempts to explain the whole kit and caboodle as further proof of America’s abiding hatred of melanin-rich skin. Remember that frame as the 24/7 news outrage cycle chugs along.
Also remember to note who operates within that frame. They’re not your ally, no matter how big the American flag pin on the lapel of their suit is or how immaculately it’s been polished for the cameras at Fox. Look for people offering alternative frames, ones in which race relations is not merely a morality play with a cast of two characters: Bigotry and Tolerance.
I think great numbers of normal Americans are ready to resist what they’re hearing from the TV. All they lack is a vocabulary de résistance.
