“If you aren’t outraged, then you just aren’t paying attention.” –Lisa Borden, The Alphabet of Avoidance
Hello friend,
This week I watched the newly-released police videos of the murder of Philando Castile and its immediate aftermath. I watched as Castile’s girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds, sat handcuffed and distraught in the backseat of a police cruiser with her four-year-old daughter. The little girl pleaded with her to stop screaming because she didn’t want her mother to “get shooted” too. At the end of the heartbreaking video, she cries to her mother, “I wish this town was safer. I don’t want it to be like this anymore.” I swallowed hard and wiped the tear from my eye. Then I got angry. Really angry. I wanted to scream, but felt like I couldn’t produce one loud enough to represent the extremes of my outrage.
After last Friday’s not guilty verdict for the officer who fired seven bullets into Castile as he sat seat-belted in his car next to his girlfriend and her daughter, I was devastated. Just after my wife told me the news, I had to pick up my kids from camp and explain to them why Mommy would be crying when we got home. We had to have another difficult discussion about race and injustice in America, including our own city, where the murder took place. It is depressing to be forced to have these conversations over and over with a six-year-old and an eight-year-old.
I had been thinking since the verdict about this sad fact of racial injustice in American life and how it pains me that my kids need to know this stuff so young. But seeing this new video of that poor little four-year-old child not only witnessing a murder of a loved one by a police officer but also being cognizant of how little it would take for them to kill her black mother, too, well, that just takes it to a whole other level. As I said, it broke me into tears watching it.
But my heartbreak morphed quickly into its natural successor: outrage.
I was really, really mad. Mad that Castile’s murderer got off. Mad that this woman had to sit in handcuffs when she had just witnessed her boyfriend murdered and she wasn’t charged with or suspected of any crimes. Mad that this innocent little child had to witness both Castile’s murder and her mother’s humiliation. And so damn mad that we live in a world where that kind of scene—from the phony, racially-profiled traffic stop all the way to the Not Guilty verdict—is commonplace for people of color, just a regular part of what it means to be black in America. It is such a damn shame on us.
But what makes me more outraged as I simmer down from all that other stuff is that this whole thing—which was actually quite famous due to Reynolds’ Facebook Live video capturing Castile bleeding out while his murderer’s gun was still pointed at him—doesn’t seem to even cause an eyebrow to be raised for most people outside of the black community. Nothing!
We cry about it at my house and have long talks with my children, and then I write and share about it on Facebook to both educate and grieve communally. As I scroll through my Newsfeed, though, there is barely a mention of it.
Some of my black friends and a couple of my white friends—literally a couple—that live in the city of the killing share their sadness and disgust. Otherwise, crickets. Silence.
That silence, of course, chaps my hide even more. When I shared on Facebook the video of the handcuffed Diamond Reynolds and her weeping daughter in the back of the police car, along with a call to action, I got a grand total of five acknowledgements in the next 24 hours. Not comments—none of those—but Likes or Sad Face or Angry Face. Five! I bet I could get on social media right now and type “I love chocolate ice cream!” and get twice that number of responses in an hour. Apathy.
I am outraged by the lack of outrage!!!
No wonder most black people in America feel like they can’t trust white people: we do nothing but let them down over and over again. And not just by killing them and getting away with it, but mostly by our absolute apathy about such injustice. It’s not the killers that are so hurtful; it’s the vast silent mass of passive condoners of the killing who act as a rubber stamp of its approval. Our collective silence does more damage than that officer’s bullets.
I just don’t get why everyone is not more upset by this.
Why do you have to be black or have black loved ones to feel outraged by injustice toward black people? Or disabled people. Or poor people. Or LGBTQ people. Or whatever! What makes us so unfeeling, so uncaring about stuff that doesn’t happen in our own house?
And I am not saying that we all have to share exactly the same sensibilities and all have to be upset by the same things. I am outraged by what is happening in Washington, DC almost every single day, too, but I know people who are perfectly content with it. Fine.
But there is so much obvious injustice in our world and so many things that would seem to bind us together in our collective outrage. Alas, I just don’t sense it out there. Not from the crowd I am listening to. My family. My friends. My social media contacts. My world. It breaks my heart how silent and unmoved you are by things that matter so much to me (and that I want to believe would matter to you).
It is this deep sadness, this disappointment, that always remains when the fire of outrage quiets. I am more often sad than mad about stuff. I think that is part of my disposition. But I am feeling—deeply, passionately, painfully—and if nothing else, that reminds me that I care. I just don’t know about anybody else.
I am looking for it, desperately wanting to feel that flame from others the way a captain lost in the storm wants to see the lighthouse. I long for some sign, some indication that it’s not just me, that I am not alone in my pain and indignation at injustice. I want to know that the collective response to everything isn’t just a shrug, a “Whatever”. I want to know that there exists some degree of indecency, immorality, illegality, or injustice that will cause a critical mass of us to not simply raise our eyebrows but also our hearts and voices.
I feel myself both inside the world and outside, knocking on the door and wondering if we are still in here, if we will answer it or if we will turn down the lights and hide in the basement until the knocking goes away. I need to feel some reassurance that we are going to answer, because right now, I am getting nothing. That silence makes me want to scream.
How about you? Is there any rage coming out of you from the way our world is working? Open up your journal and consider what, if anything, raises you to the level where something has to be said or done about it. Is there anything? When was the last time you felt truly outraged about something? What was it? How did you vent your frustration and anger? A group protest? A Facebook rant? A vent session with a loved one who empathizes with you? Or did you just stuff it all down inside you to keep stewing? What type of thing usually draws your ire? Social justice issues? The ineptitude and acrimonious dealings of our elected officials in Washington? Environmental issues? Concerns of unfairness in your workplace? Income inequality and the dominance of the wealthy few over the many? Mistreatment in individual relationships? Why does expressing our outrage over blatant societal injustice have to be polarizing and scare us into not expressing ourselves? Is it actually controversial to say that Philando Castile was dealt an injustice or that his family was dealt another one with the verdict? I think it takes a fairly high degree of denial to survive and remain sane in this society, because there are so many causes for outrage around us. Do you find that to be the case, and how do you filter the many triggers? Do you ever worry that you have taken that filtering and denial too far, to the point that nothing outrages you anymore? I feel like most people have gotten that way about the mess in Washington. Do you think some outrage is healthy, though, as a sort of proof that you are alive and engaged with the world? I like the H.L. Mencken quote, “Every normal man must be tempted, at times, to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.” How often should you allow this outrage to surface in order to remain happy and balanced? How can you apply your outrage to activism for positive change? On a scale of one to ten, with one being always silent, passive, and even-keeled, and ten being outraged, vocal, and actively engaged in protest, where do you generally fall on the spectrum of outrage regarding societal injustice? Does that feel like a healthy spot for you, or is it time to make some changes? What aspect of your world needs your outrage and your voice? Are you ready to give it? Leave me a reply and let me know: Where is your outrage?
Speak and act your Truth,
William
P.S. If this resonated with you, please share it. I would also love to hear from you, either in the comments or on Facebook, especially about which of the many injustices in the world rile you most. Thank you for energy.
The reason these police keep getting off for killing innocent black men, even the very young, is because the same question is given to all juries involving police shootings, regardless of race, and that is “did the officer fear for his life.” That’s the measure of legal vs. illegal action, even if it was a miserable mistake. That’s the problem. And, with the heightened racial tensions, especially after the officers were gunned down in Dallas during the Black Lives Matter march, and picked off elsewhere in response to the police shootings, all officers are hypervigilant. It’s how the law is written. According to deadly force laws all over the country, the issue isn’t if it was a mistake, poor judgment on the officers part, but if they followed protocol and if they made a mistake under duress of fear for their life. So, they could change the law and prosecute officers for making a mistake but who would want to do the job if there was a chance you could go to prison for making a mistake. The only way to possibly prevent it is to outlaw carrying handguns by citizens. Perhaps. But then you have 12 yr old boys playing with toy guns and they get shot. It’s infuriating, so very sad, and frustrating because it keeps happening over and over. Out culture has become so broken and nobody, on all sides, want it to be this way. I thought after Sandy Hook, surely it would be a turning point for this country, not just with sensible gun control, but with rebuilding a sense of community, the belief in an American Dream, and restoration of our just and moral core values. I feel your pain. Literally. Most Americans do, I think. What I am certain of, is that the only way to return to some lost greatness (if we’ve, indeed, lost it) is to love our neighbor and love our enemy.
Thank you, Sandy, for your thoughtful comments and for your outrage. I agree that the letter of the law makes for a difficult prosecution and true accountability in these cases, and I agree that love is a wonderful answer. I would push back a bit on the idea of the culture having recently become broken and that there was ever a sense of true community among all people. I think folks like me, who grew up white and middle class in a very white and middle class community, were essentially blissfully ignorant of the world outside, believing in the sense of community and a common “American way”. My sense is that police behavior has likely never been better than it is now, even with the many visible and deplorable examples of our present-day police abusing the rights of people of color as a normal part of their day. The idea that this is an improvement–and that we are now simply more aware of it because there are more cameras and more ways to tell your story–is sad commentary on our long history. It is also my sense that the people on the wrong end of segregated communities–and unfairly policed communities–have never in our history felt that sense of community you speak of. I guess my point is that maybe instead of thinking we need to “REbuild” our sense of community and “REstore” our just and moral core values–maybe this is my knee-jerk repulsion to “Make America Great Again”–that we actually need to BUILD these values and FORM this true sense of community from scratch, from the IDEALS that we would all like to believe in but that, in practice, we have collectively failed at creating or nurturing since Europeans arrived on this land. We could build it with everyone’s benefit in mind this time, and hold each other accountable to that commitment every step of the way. We are all familiar with the values and the sense that we want–maybe that’s why we want to believe we used to practice them–so our guiding light should not be difficult to follow. It requires our conviction, though, and our commitment to justice and the inherent value of all people. I believe it is possible. Your world needs you and your voice. Keep sharing it. Thanks again for your thoughts. Be well.