Take a good look at the memes here that are making their rounds on FB as we speak...and don't be tricked into thinking they are any less bigoted than the water hoses that tried to stop a movement for dignity and freedom in Alabama and across the south. I know it seems "reasonable" to say that Dr. King led a movement that didn't result in riots like what we are seeing in #Ferguson. The line of reasoning, almost always from white friends and neighbors, goes on to suggest that Ferguson isn't about racial justice, but just another group of thugs and looters doing harm. The line of reasoning is shortsighted, myopic, and false.
Never forget that respectability politics didn't keep #MLK from being targeted by the national state police (the FBI) as a communist collaborator. His phones were tapped. He, and the entire civil rights movement, was reported to the (white) public as being an arm of communist Russia. Eventually, he was assassinated. He did everything properly...the "right" way to protest injustice. He did nothing illegal. And he was killed. After his assassination, there WERE riots. And I'm sure unsavory types within the communities where those riots took advantage of the social situation and looted stores and vandalized property. But it is a matter of public record that prior to those events, unsavory types within the highest levels of government and power in the United States had already looted and vandalized the souls and entire lives of an entire segment of our citizenry. AND they all said it wasn't about the color of skin either--it was always something else...the looting, the red scare, the communist undertones, the violent rhetoric etc. And, we too quickly forget, Dr. King told us what riots are--"The language of the unheard." So when we respond to people who aren't being heard with "shut up, you're doing this wrong," we are doing violence to people, not just to property.
So the next time someone might be tempted to say that what is happening in Ferguson isn't respectable like Martin Luther King Jr.'s movement, which we "OF COURSE" respect...perhaps you might remind them that it's been 36 years since someone shot a black man on a motel balcony in Memphis Tennesee, 4 months since a white police officer shot Michael Brown, and only minutes since a black mother or father wondered if their own son, no matter how law abiding, would be next...shot down because they didn't stop quickly enough, reached for their pocket a little too fast, or misunderstood what the nice cop said. Privilege is a NASTY thing...it numbs the people who possess it and it steals dignity and life from those who don't.
Yes, what happened in Ferguson is about race...of course it is. But that isn't all that it's about. It's about police in this country who are armed as well as any soldier. It's about more than the color of Darren Wilson. It's about the fact that Americans (of all races, but disproportionately minorities) are more likely to be shot by the people they pay to protect them. It's about police with guns, and abuse of power. And it's about the fact that when anyone suggests that racism isn't over in this country, there's always some privileged white person on FB who thinks that the only reason it isn't over is because black people won't quit talking about it.
Privilege is NASTY. It keeps the white people who hold it from ever having enough f'ing empathy to see that our black and brown neighbors who don't possess it are the ones who have to keep reminding people that it exists...and then get shamed for bringing it up again. End the shame.#BlackLivesMatter and as long as someone's child is being killed, those whose lives are most impacted by it will keep talking about this. Keep calm, and listen.
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