On Ferguson

As someone who knows folks married to or friends with cops, it’s frustrating to see the defensiveness about speaking about Ferguson. If you know a good cop, THAT IS AWESOME. There are TONS of them. That does not mean that what is happening in Black America is not real, or that racism is dead.

It is OK to hate the system that makes black people more likely to be shot by cops while appreciating the good things that so many of our police do every day to keep people safe. Most cops are doing good work, and the failure of the system in Ferguson is an insult to THEM.

Railing against police brutality is not an indictment against all police officers, just as railing against sexism is not an indictment of all men. I’d like to think we’re all just trying to do good, and right by our families, friends, and fellow humans, and we should all be trying to break down the system that causes us to unconsciously treat others differently.

I’m a white suburban man, I’m (as John Scalzi says) running the game of life on the “easy setting”, and that’s why I feel it’s even more important for people like me to speak out and say we stand against failures like this.

Darren Wilson was not on trial. The grand jury’s only job was to determine if it was worth having a trial, and the conflicting reports make it pretty damn obvious there should have been one. I don’t know if Darren Wilson did everything right or everything wrong. I don’t know if Mike Brown was a perfect human being or a “thug.” Neither does any of us. The decision last night means that the evidence won’t even be evaluated in a proper trial, and the release of the complete transcripts means the evidence has been exposed and has tainted almost anything that could be done about it in the future.

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November 25, 2014 Tags: Ferguson, indictment, Missouri, police brutality, racism Posted in: Editorial, Personal