Reflections on Ferguson, Missouri 2014

What’s a White Woman To Do?

My high school friend Annie P. posted on Facebook that she was reading the transcript of the Ferguson, Missouri, grand jury proceedings. My first reaction was – don’t waste your time. But I didn’t knee-jerk and post that. I took a breath and then scrolled through the Comments. One said he had read parts of the transcript and was surprised by the conflicting eyewitness testimony. I couldn’t hold back, “Welcome to the world of criminal law,” I quipped. As a criminal defense attorney, I know that there is no such thing as reliable eyewitness testimony.[1] I closed out Facebook. But I couldn’t let go of Annie’s post. I had something to say to her but I knew that any short Facebook-y response would not be helpful. In fact, it may be hurtful. She was mining for answers in that hefty, 4,799-page transcript.

My thoughts on Ferguson stirred me early on a Saturday morning. A Facebook post to Annie was composing itself. I popped my eyes open and while the water was heating for coffee, I set my fingers to the keyboard. Yes. Annie and I shared the same emotions but were searching for understanding in different places. Annie, feeling helpless by the outcome of the grand jury proceedings, was hopeful that the testimony would reveal why the grand jury chose not to indict a police officer who shot and killed an unarmed black youth who by some sworn accounts had his hands up in surrender. I share her frustration but taking hours to read the transcript and posting updates on Facebook won’t save the next unarmed black man confronted by police. In fact, an indictment of Officer Wilson wouldn’t have had that effect either. His indictment most likely would not have led to a criminal conviction; the evidence presented was not sufficient to support a verdict of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Only a criminal conviction and lengthy prison term might make an officer think twice before firing at an unarmed black youth.

So what will save the next unarmed black youth’s life?

This is the key question, isn’t it? Every protester in the streets, every confused citizen pouring over the transcript, everyone sharing “Black Lives Matter” on Facebook and Twitter, is asking this question.

My answer? (And yes, I am willing to offend.)

The whites in this country, including me, a white, upper-middle class, 50-something, woman who now lives in Bozeman, Montana, close their eyes to the racism that we have allowed to exist since slavery. I know no white person wants to hear this. “Please, we have moved so far beyond that.” I can’t say it better than Chris Rock in his December interview in New York Magazine, “We treat racism in this country like it’s a style that America went through,” he says, “Like flared legs and lava lamps. Oh, that crazy thing we did. We were hanging black people. We treat it like a fad instead of a disease that eradicates millions of people. You’ve got to see its origins.” [2] [3]

I see its origins and as a white American, I have a responsibility to do something to save black lives. Because Black Lives Matter. I grew up in Cincinnati during the race riots of the 1960’s. Every Sunday we drove to my grandparents’ house through riot-torn black neighborhoods. Fires smoldering. The streets deserted early on church day. My mother gesturing with her hand to my brother and me to keep our heads down. I’m not sure if this was because she feared danger or because she didn’t want us to witness the violence of white on black on white. My mother never talked about the riots. She kept her eyes to the road, the radio blaring. I don’t remember the riots really ending. Violence in Cincinnati’s black neighborhoods seemed ongoing. But I was a little girl, six or seven, and I knew that I loved our black help. Rita came everyday. She was there at breakfast and there when I got home from school. She was from British Honduras – sounded so exotic. And she looked exotic. Coffee-colored skin that never aged, wavy black hair. She was family to me, a second mother.

When I was a teen we moved from our white neighborhood to an inner-city neighborhood, integrated by class and race. I stood at the bus stop on Clifton Avenue catching the bus downtown to connect to the bus out to my high school with blacks and whites, kids going to school, parents going to work. I wasn’t afraid. I felt proud we had made this move, that we weren’t following the whites out of the City.

My privileged, white life went on — college, graduate school, law school, living in my myopic and isolated world unaware of race relations in America. But when I graduated from law school at the University of San Francisco in 1992 and became a criminal defense lawyer, the familiar inner-city scenes of my youth came right back to me. Race relations had changed little since the Sixties when I rode in the Chevrolet station wagon. My clients ran the gamut from small-time pot sellers to murderers. All but one were black and they were all men. Often I drove into the projects to interview their friends, families, possible witnesses. I sat in cells inside the jails to hear my clients’ side of the story. I witnessed the heaviness of poverty, of hopelessness, of violence, for black children and adults.

America is still this place. In America today 33% of black families live in poverty.[4] Sixty-seven percent of black children live in single-parent families.[5] More likely than not, if your skin is black you will be born into poverty-stricken neighborhoods that lack – lack for pre-schools, lack for shiny facilities offering state-of-the-art Chromebooks and Macs, lack for teachers eager and excited to come to school everyday. In this neighborhood, the entrée into drug dealing is the lure of quick income. It is more appealing than suffering through a day in the local school that won’t provide after graduation a job with a living wage. I know this because I saw it. These kids and their friends had dropped out of school, spent days on the streets making deals, avoiding cops. Yes, I did my white thing – encouraged them to go back to school. Seriously? Most of my clients were barely literate. These kids needed to eat, feed siblings and escape the bleakness of poverty. And who was I to give them advice? An out-of-touch white woman trying to get them out of jail so they could go home to their families.

Tragically, I learned first hand, that along with the drug trade comes very, very easy access (and I use these overused adjectives intentionally) to guns. I represented a 14-year old black boy who was being tried as an adult for murder. He shot a prostitute who had been hounding him to sell drugs for her. He was small for his age. He was scared of her. He bought a cheap .22 on the street and the next time she approached him, he shot her. She is dead. He is spending the rest of his life in prison. Tying this back to Ferguson, why wouldn’t police officers suspect that every young black man walking the streets is armed? Even the cheapest and smallest .22 can kill.

And we continue to let this percolate and seethe and fester until it explodes. Then, we march, we Facebook, we Twitter. But what will affect change? It’s half a century since we passed the Civil Rights Act. (Yes, fifty years is a long time and stop saying that it’s not.) What do we do? What we’ve been taught but then don’t do out of fear of offending? Calling out friends and family on racist speech? Connecting their racist words with the racist undertones that perpetuate a fear of black men? Asking our elected officials what they intend to do to end racism? This seems futile. They can’t pass a living wage for whites. What would motivate them to investigate inner-city neighborhoods, explore increased funding for black schools or meeting face-to-face black children who are raising their siblings because of absent or drug-involved parents?

Think of every single piece of social legislation – living wage, gun laws, preschool education, food stamps and other means to help the hungry, health care, immigration laws that support the dignity of the human being. We, all of us, argue over every one of these issues until we are simply tired and we give up. We stop speaking up. Some of us stop caring. And still, the poor stay poor and hungry. The blacks stay segregated and looked upon as lesser than whites, lesser than Latinos, lesser than Asians, lesser than all the other non-whites in our country.

I don’t have an answer. Maybe I should just wait for the next “guy.” The next MLK or Malcolm X. I go to movies like 12 Years a Slave, The Butler, Lincoln and 42 and reflect. I teach my children and hope that racism is generational although almost two generations have come along since the Civil Rights Act.

What feels real and tangible to do at this moment?

1. Support President Obama’s call to put 50,000 body cameras on police officers. Some say that didn’t work for Eric Garner but the video footage has certainly given the public a greater platform for debate.
2. Call for the recusal of prosecutors from proceedings involving their own police officers. The relationship between District Attorneys and their police departments has been called incestuous by police officers themselves. Objectivity is clearly a problem.[6]
3. Actually get into the mix and volunteer with social programs that help children born into poverty. Changing one life is better than changing none.
4. And, yes MARCH! This week at MLK marches across the country. Why? Because selfishly it feels good to put yourself out there, to be heard. But also, numbers matter. Numbers made the difference in the Sixties for the women’s movement and the gay rights movement. If nothing else, speak with your feet. It’s the least a white woman can do.

[1] See http://www.simplypsychology.org/loftus-palmer.html

[2] New York Magazine, December 1, 2014, interview with Chris Rock by Frank Rich.

[3] For a different take but just as supportive of the slavery origin of the black social structure, read Malcolm Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/08/11/crooked-ladder.

[4] U.S. Census Bureau 2012 ACS Report

[5] Kids Count 2011, Annie E. Casey Foundation

[6] Interview with Noel Leader, NYPD, December 4, 2014. http://wlrn.org/post/training-not-problem-strained-community-police-relations