RIP, Michael Brown... Don't Rest, Pink Skins

Three stories:

1. First story: Every day, I hire people to do my dirty work. Police officers take risks I would not take. Every traffic stop. Every domestic violence call. Every mentally ill person they meet is a possible threat. Every year, thousands of law enforcement officers are assaulted with fists, sticks, knives, and guns. The pressures they face at work are carried home to their families. In order to deal with this world of threats, police ask for tools—weapons, helmets and body armor, and the ability to use force when they have to. It’s hard what we ask them to do for us. It’s hard for us to understand exactly what they see and what they feel in these moments, but we should try.
2. Second story: I have learned that it is hard to live in this country when you are born with brown skin. It’s hard to live in a culture where your skin carries all manner of unconscious negative associations: dumb, lazy, criminal. It’s hard to have people walk out of elevators instead of riding with you alone. It’s hard to be passed over for jobs and promotions. It’s hard to be fetishized as athletes, dancers, sexual objects, then loathed and feared as friends or lovers. It’s hard to be singled out by the police every time. It is hard to live in a culture that has never dealt with the fact that your great-grandparents were people who were owned by other people; a culture that has never addressed or apologized for the fact that your grandparents and parents lived in fear of being lynched; a culture that has never seriously considered redistributing the wealth the state stole from you, through slavery and segregation. It’s hard to live in a country that sits and watches as your schools fail, your neighborhoods deteriorate, and instead of creating opportunity, the state builds prison cells. It is hard when the culture that is your home treats you as less than fully human.
3. Third story, from a powerful essay this week in the St. Louis American—the African-American newspaper in St. Louis—that describes how what’s happening in Ferguson, MO is both about a police officer and a teenager and also about much more. It's a detailed historical narrative about how decades of conscious and unconscious decisions created the structural racism that exists today:

North St. Louis has suffered decades of economic disinvestment, loss of manufacturing jobs and disruption by highway construction. Those who chose to stay in these communities, or who had no other options, had to live – or die – with the consequences.

White flight hit the school districts, then the tax base. Remaining homeowners are heavily taxed in areas with struggling schools, little industry and dwindling businesses and services. The mortgage bubble burst in these areas, with rampant home foreclosures. Large retail areas have been abandoned. Small businesses face high prices for retail space and insurance costs. Those who stay charge more, and those who buy from them pay more.

For those who lack reliable transportation (let alone job skills and education), there are few opportunities to eke out a livelihood locally. There is little escape.

Disillusionment, resentment and tension set in where economic opportunities, recreation and thriving businesses once flourished. The slogans boasted by chambers of commerce say nothing about those who have been treated as invisible or dispensable.

As for our youth, many of them may not be properly educated, but they are not stupid, and it is not difficult for them to hear what they are being told in the cold language of unaccredited districts and transfer students. Michael Brown graduated in the Normandy School District, an unaccredited school district that expired not long before he was killed. He and his peers – specifically, those strivers willing to transfer to a better school district – were told they were not wanted by many other districts in the region, once those districts were no longer required to accept them.

It may take a village to raise a child, but many administrators and parents in better-resourced parts of our region had no problem saying quite publicly that Michael Brown and his brothers and sisters did not belong in their village.

So it is not difficult to understand the frustration and anger of the sons and daughters of these disinvested ring suburbs.

***

95% of people I've spoken to this week understand that the police response in Ferguson from beginning to end was unjust and very likely criminal. We have every right to demand that local police should be de-militarized; police are helpers, not soldiers. Officers are best hired from within a community—so they look and sound like the community they serve, but also so that they are advocates for the community, not adversaries of the community. It’s a philosophy called community policing and it works. Police, as hard as they work, work for the people of the community they serve.

One practical thing you can to do this week is join the local citizens group that oversees the work of the police--or start one. I looked at DeKalb County’s website and could not tell if such a group exists or if there is only internal affairs. It is worth opening the conversation with the chief. Decatur has a group of volunteers working right now to create a citizen review board that will evaluate the racial profile of people the police stop so that there is public accountability for egregious examples of racial profiling. I’ve heard that the Decatur police department does not want this community board. I do. Perhaps you do, too. Join it. The police need our support and one way you can support them is by letting them know that we are watching what they do and they are accountable.

The murder in Ferguson is about police and force; it’s about race and power. But the protests that are following are about the hope and struggle for life of entire communities--theirs, and ours. There is not a thing mentioned in the article from the St. Louis American about Ferguson that’s not also true about the place where I live, in DeKalb County, GA--and probably true about communities near you. There is a clear-cut guide in the narrative about historical, structural racism that tells us exactly what pink and brown citizens can to to "help" and "make a difference" in our communities:

• There is a need for business leadership to direct and stimulate economic investment that will support the tax base and make long-term investments in the community, with the express goal of nurturing black-owned businesses.
• Good Growth Dekalb is asking questions about what businesses come into a local shopping center, Suburban Plaza, and also about the DeKalb County Zoning Code--these are questions about whether residents of a community have any power in shaping the direction of business development--or whether residents are subjected to the vicissitudes of crony capitalism.
• In DeKalb, we’re debating cityhood questions, which are essentially questions about whether it should be possible for wealthier pink areas of the county to keep their taxes for themselves instead of having to pay for the poor people on the other side of the county. Get involved and advocate for good government and shared wealth among all citizens... what affects some affects us all.
• There is a profound relationship between schools, accreditation, real estate values, and race and that should land close to home for all of us. As DeKalb schools teeter on the brink of losing their accreditation, it’s a problem that involves everyone, not just kids and parents. Where do our kids go to schools and how does that choice shape communities by race and income? I know Decatur has great schools, but the great schools have created surging property values, which has radically altered the racial demographics of Decatur—Decatur has lost 50% of its brown population in 20 years. A lot of that is pink folks like me who are scared away from the brown public schools and the shifting property values in Atlanta and Dekalb and concentrate together. We need to stop and think about the impacts of our decisions and begin to reverse them.

It’s not the role of pink people in majority white communities to "save" communities like Ferguson, or DeKalb. But we cannot act like these communities do somehow not belong to us, that they are not part of us. The people who live there are our neighbors. We all have a role in creating those communities, and by that I mean they are the product of our racist decisions, both private and public. We have created places where violence and crime are rational means to survive—we have created communities that pink folks don’t even want to drive through, let alone live in. We’ve abandoned these places and our neighbors who live there. We send police to clean up our mess. But police can’t make a community safe—caring makes a community safe; investment makes a community safe; loving your neighbors, like they belong to you, like they are part of your own body, is what makes a community safe.

Those who believe in justice cannot rest. I have been asking: how am I involved in Michael Brown's death? How am I implicated? How, can I be a vessel of mercy, a steward of justice, and a bearer of the peace of Christ?