The eCrozier

At the beginning of Advent, Jesus says to us in Mark’s Gospel: “What I say to you I say to all: Keep awake.” He’s assuming that we’re already awake, so he admonishes to remain so. We need to be wide awake if we’re to pay attention to what God is up to in the world. But we’re not awake. We’re asleep. And it’s time to wake up. Things are being done in our name while we’re drowsing. People working for us are causing the deaths of young black men for crimes hardly deserving death.

There’s a pattern here and it can’t be comfortable for us to acknowledge. Young black men are at a far greater risk of being killed by police than young white men in similar circumstances: 21 times greater! This is according to ProPublica’s analysis of federally collected data on fatal police encounters. There were 1,217 deadly police encounters from 2010 to 2012 collected in the federal database. The data show that black young men, age 15 to 19, were killed by law enforcement officers at a rate of 31.17 per million, while just 1.47 per million white young men in that age group faced the same fate.

I’m not interested in arguing anyone’s guilt or innocence. I assume that in nearly all of these cases, white and black, the young men were guilty of some infraction of the law, or at least they were reasonably suspected of it when their death occurred. So let’s take that off the table for consideration. Michael Brown, who was shot dead in Ferguson, Missouri, was no saint. He apparently robbed a convenience store of some cigars prior to being shot by Officer Wilson. But cigar robbery is hardly a capital crime.

And Eric Garner, who died this past July by being choked to death by a police officer, was apparently guilty of selling cigarettes illegally. Again, hardly a capital crime. Yet both he and Michael Brown are dead. And there are many more. The data clearly shows that if you’re a young black man you’re 21 times more likely to end up dead through an encounter with police than if you’re a white young man. That’s a statistical Sanctus Bell. We need to wake up.

What does it say about us as a people when a grand jury this past Wednesday failed to find anyone indictable in Eric Garner’s death? When confronted by police for allegedly selling cigarettes illegally, this unarmed young man was put in a chokehold against the police’s own policy standards. All of this was captured on video. He’s heard saying his last words: “I can’t breathe.” The coroner, an official of the state, legally ruled Mr. Garner’s death as a homicide. So a homicide occurred, but no one is indicted? No one is accountable? Are we still asleep?

Let me be clear: I don’t blame the police. They have a very difficult and dangerous vocation. They’re all formed and shaped by the ethos and culture in which they were raised and by the training they receive as police officers. They’re not the problem, per se. We’re the problem. I blame all of us: Me, you, everyone. No finger-pointing elsewhere. This is our problem to solve and solve it we must for the good of our own souls and for our well-being as a people. We’ve been asleep. It’s time to wake up.

+Scott