It is starting to feel like a domestic war is brewing. People are taking sides, dividing up into camps. Facebook has become a platform for digital conflict. The tensions among Americans and worldwide, actually are palpable. I recently witnessed an exchange on social media about social justice and how it was a copout. Nuance is clearly a bridge too far for many engaged in a my side/your side battle and convincing the angry and scared that love is the answer is like convincing a starving person to not eat a poptart because of nutrition.
The frustration is causing violence which is being responded to with violence and preemptive violence. Cops are killing people and nowadays, this becomes quickly and broadly shared on social media. People have, thusly, become afraid of cops. Because people are afraid of cops, they respond to cops with fear, which makes them seem suspicious. Then, cops treat people like suspects. This is an understandable, if unfortunate cycle, but it is unacceptable and must be examined with honesty.
Unfortunately, efforts to bring attention to this cycle are being spun in various directions in order to rationalize this unacceptable behavior. What it ends up doing is creating hatred towards those who have been victimized. Additionally, people are trying to co-opt movements which is not helping the situation. For example, Black Lives Matter began as an attempt to show that black people were being killed by cops in high numbers with little consequence to their assailants, creating the perception that black lives don’t matter in the eyes of the law.
The movement was created to attract attention to this injustice so that it could be corrected. When the All Lives Matter was presented as a substitution for Black Lives Matter and subsequently so was Blue Lives Matter, it moved the conversation away from the overreaching injustice that has reached critical mass. People began creating memes and movements to support the new narratives. The problem with that is that it maintains the tone deaf reality that black people get killed with impunity.
People are deliberately changing the subject from the fact that we are moving towards a police state with militarized police. By doing this, we legitimize the institutional use of force, even unnecessary force to control people. Ironically, it is often those who ostensibly fear tyranny who feel comfortable legitimizing the advancement of an impending Martial Law.
The University of Cincinnati found that minorities are more likely to be pulled over. Some of the data indicates that racial profiling and economic factors put minorities at higher risk of becoming suspects. Additionally, once pulled over, they have a higher risk of search. Critics of these statistics say it wasn’t racially motivated searches, but concerns over drug trafficking, which pretty much proves the point. They are stereotypes that lead to increased risk of being a citizen.
A real issue with changing the narrative away from Black Lives Matter to all lives or Blue Lives Matter is that it not only washes over the tragedies that we have seen with unjustified homicides that go unadjudicated, but we give license for police oppression and tyranny. When the narratives of government overreach become accepted, through rationalizations like Blue Lives Matter, then they are propped up on a platform that accepts their overreaches. Unchecked authority and wanton aggression by law enforcement is what tyranny looks like and making excuses for brutality is a starting point.
So it’s really disheartening to see the escalated levels of justified violence against citizens. Especially because the dividing up into teams has been creating blind spots. In these blind spots we often ignore issues if those issues tend to be ‘other’ people’s issues. We must understand, though, that any of us could become a target and if we push to allow unchecked aggression without consequence, we will regret it when we are in the cross hairs. These blind spots are exactly why we must all demand equal treatment under the law even if we are privileged. When we rationalize exceptions we pave the way for abuse.
As this conversation unfolds I do hope it opens up the larger discussion of how economic inequality leads to injustice and social unrest. So far it appears that the discussion centers around a distrust for the police or blacks. Both sides have understandable positions when considering their roles.
But the police must understand that they are trained and responsible for keeping the peace in a community, not the opposite. And they must not simply operate as tools of the elite and therefore soldiers of the social divide. If they function in this manner, it is no wonder there is civil unrest. The citizens of the community are treated as subjugates instead of valuable members.
Ultimately, until we all adopt the mindset that violence is unacceptable, it will continue. But we must try and root out the underlying causes of the tensions, fear and hatred. Until everyone feels safe in their communities, it will be difficult to expect peace.
