Opinion

The value of seeing for yourself

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I drove to Ferguson, Mo. 12 days after the grand jury’s decision not to indict officer Darren Wilson sparked protests and worse. I’d grown frustrated with the scenes of the worst of it replaying on the news, and the misinformed and ad hoc arguments playing out on social media. The larger debate seemed to be exposing everyone’s biases. I wanted to see what was going on in this place with my own eyes and listen to people there to get past the sound bites.

As I watch politicians, media personalities, schools and others mark Black History Month with ceremonies, art exhibits and other celebrations, I wonder how it all relates to recent events and the debates that raged after the deaths of Michael Brown, in Ferguson, and Eric Garner, on Staten Island. When February was federally recognized as Black History Month in 1976, President Gerald Ford called it an occasion to “seize the opportunity to honor the too-often neglected accomplishments of black Americans in every area of endeavor throughout our history.” Perhaps this year we might take the opportunity to consider what recent events mean about those accomplishments and the reality we’re all living.

In the wake of the deaths of Garner and Brown last year, and the non-indictments of the officers who killed them, the country saw a familiar and uncomfortable debate erupt as thousands took to the streets. For many, images of SWAT-style police units with military vehicles facing off against unarmed and often peaceful protesters evoked memories of another era.

At times, it seemed like the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s celebrated message of non-violence had been forgotten, by authorities and protesters alike. I went to Ferguson to see if I could understand why, and to learn whether there were important details getting lost in the fray.

I met a 35-year-old woman named Jennifer Williams who said she’d been to a number of the protests and had been tear-gassed the night of the grand jury announcement. She said she was still experiencing some upper-respiratory issues, as were others who had taken part in the demonstrations. I told her what I knew based on news reports and what some of the views of the situation were back home, and asked her how it all matched up with what locals were seeing.

She and her friends told me about the shift in demographics in the last 40 years, how white flight had occurred in the ’70s and how segregated the communities around St. Louis still are. They described persistent racism in the form of coded language and unfair policing. They said they do their best to avoid driving in the north counties, where Ferguson is, and where police are known to pull drivers over for little or nothing, often claiming they smell marijuana so they can search vehicles, and regularly issuing fines for infractions like screws missing from license plates. This seemed to confirm what I’d read about in an article by Radley Balko in the Washington Post last September concerning the lucrative fine enforcement that has been “filling up city coffers” in that area for years, often at the expense of residents living below the poverty line.

Williams said locals were incensed that Michael Brown’s body was left uncovered in the street for more than four hours, in view of his neighbors and family. There was the feeling, she said, that, at worst, it was intentional and something of a warning from a white police force in a black neighborhood about getting out of line, and, at best, callous and indifferent.

Williams acknowledged the rampant destruction of property, but she made a strong distinction between the many concerned residents taking to the streets to protest and opportunistic individuals using the unrest as a cover to run wild.

I drove back to New York through the night. I made a stop on Staten Island to visit the spot where Eric Garner died. The sidewalk was cold and deserted, like the feeling I had when I watched the video of NYPD officer Daniel Pantaleo pressing Garner’s head into the sidewalk while Garner gasped that he couldn’t breathe.

In conversation, on TV and especially on social media, I felt like I was listening to people shove selected facts through their particular sausage-makers of personal bias, turning complex circumstances into simple, predetermined shapes. The reactions said more about the state of things in America than these two tragedies did.

So, during this Black History Month, as we seize the opportunity to honor the accomplishments of black Americans, we might consider honoring the spirit of some of the greatest of those accomplishments: bucking the status quo, taking risks and envisioning a different reality. A remedy might be found in the message of rapper and activist Killer Mike, who was interviewed in December by CNN:

“First of all, we can get out of our comfortable norms, meaning you can go to a different church with a friend on Sunday and have a different experience. You can engage in a different social climate than you’re accustomed to. You can make a friend that doesn’t look like you, and you can find someone who’s not like you to converse with and be open and honest with. You know, we have to start pushing ourselves past the barriers of comfort we hold. I grew up in a black household, grew up in a very Democratic-friendly household, grew up in a household where pretty much whatever the Democratic party said reigned supreme. And with that said, many of my friends are conservative. Many of my friends are Republicans and Libertarians, which allows me to engage in discourse and conversation that forces me to grow, that stretches me ... I have to understand that the world is just not my perspective, so I seek out relationships with people who don’t look like me, who are not where I’m from, who are gonna challenge me on my current perspectives.”

When we look in places we’re not used to looking, we might find an unexpected beauty. We should take any occasion — or no occasion at all — to do it.