WASHINGTON — In the wake of a grand jury’s decision Monday not to indict white Ferguson, Missouri, police officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, and the unrest that ensued, President Obama says that “there’s never an excuse for violence.” But “there are still problems” in race relations in the United States, “and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up,” he adds.
Tim Wise, an anti-racism educator and author of six books on racism and white privilege, feels similarly. He tells WTOP that the anger many black people feel toward the police is based on real history.
“Overwhelmingly, the black community has not experienced policing and law enforcement the way the white community has. There is a long history of not only brutality and corruption, but outright police involvement in the killing of, and the covering up of the killing of, black people. … It’s really important, if we’re going to heal from this point, in terms of race in this country, those of us who are white are gonna have to understand the heavy burden of that history.”
In the Brown case, as well as the recent case of the shooting death of unarmed Florida teen Trayvon Martin, Wise says, “There is a very quick racial division, where white folks line up to defend the shooting. And I think that has to do with the fact that we have been encouraged, those of us who are white, to fear black men, to see danger as black.” So in situations such as the Brown and Martin cases, “we jump to the conclusion, ‘Well, they must have been justified.'”
Wise acknowledges that police officers often have to make split-second decisions under dangerous conditions.
But he pointed out a case in another St. Louis suburb five days after Brown’s death, in which a white man allegedly committed an armed robbery and ran into a house. When cornered by the police, he smashed a door on their hands. “And they did not shoot him, and they did not rough him up,” Wise says, “they took him in without incident, as well they should have.”
In another case in New Orleans in April, Wise says, a white man wanted for armed robbery and assault pointed his gun at three city police officers. When the police said, “Drop your weapon,” Wise says, the man’s response was “No, you drop your [expletive] weapon.”
“And they still didn’t shoot him,” Wise says. “And that is what you ought to do; that is what cops are trained to do.”
He contrasted these cases not only with the Brown case, but the death of John Crawford, who was shot in a Wal-Mart because he was holding what turned out to be a fake gun.
“I do feel bad for cops who face real danger,” Wise says, “but I also find it interesting that they seem to be able to differentiate between real danger and not-real danger when the guy with the gun is white, and a real hard time … when the guy with the gun is black.”
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