Across the Wide Missouri, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

November 29, 2014 Martha Thomases 12 Comments

This is going to sound horrible, and I apologize in advance, but on this Thanksgiving holiday, I’m very grateful to be a gray-haired old white lady living in an apartment in Manhattan.  If I was a young black man living in Ferguson, I would feel like I have a target on my back.

I wasn’t on the grand jury, and I haven’t gone through all the evidence, but by not indicting Darren Wilson for the killing of Michael Brown, the justice system has shown itself to be at least indifferent to the killing of unarmed African-American youth.  This is not the way grand juries usually work, so it makes a person question why this case is so different from the 99.9 percent of other cases that make it that far in the legal system.

At best, some of the testimony presented was questionable.  At worst, according to some conspiracy theorists, the prosecutor didn’t put his best working the case.

Please don’t misunderstand me.  I feel a certain amount of empathy and compassion for Officer Wilson.  If I was in his situation, I, too, might have panicked and fired my weapon (if I had one, which I don’t, unless you count my inner bitch).  But here’s the thing.  Police officers are supposed to be trained.  They are not supposed to panic when an unarmed man looks at them, even if he looks at them really, really menacingly.  Even if he walks towards them.  They are only supposed to fire a gun if there is no other choice.

Michael Brown outweighed Officer Wilson, but that isn’t enough to explain Wilson’s reaction. By his own words, Wilson demonstrated that he say Brown as something other than human.

As I write this, a few news media point out that there are some people rioting, and a much larger number of people protesting.  The violent rioters get the screen time, because fire and shooting make more dynamic television than marches and chanting.

The whole situation breaks my heart.  We shoot down black kids like dogs in the street, because we think of them as dogs in the street.  If you read around the Internets a bit, you’ll see all kinds of people insisting that Brown deserved to get shot because he stole a box of cigars.

Funny, I don’t remember the armed guards firing at Winona Ryder when she was caught stealing much more expensive items.

It’s a tragedy for a parent to have to bury a child.  It’s a horror show for our children to feel that they are being hunted for sport.  It’s an invitation to anarchy (and not the fun kind) to have the police act as if they and the public are rival gangs fighting over territory.

Because I cling to the belief that there is always at least a bit of a bright side (because I love the Glad Game in Pollyanna, one of the world’s grimmest movies), I was relieved to find this. Usually, in these situations, one reads that a frightened public has run out and bought every gun in the state.  Maybe they did that, but they also gave money to the local library, so the kids would have a safe place to go.  And maybe read.

Martha Thomases, Media Goddess, wonders if the lack of indictment was announced on Monday so the news crews wouldn’t confuse rioters with Black Friday shoppers.