Sometimes I wish humans could be more like animals. Sometimes I wish we humans did not have a mind at all. It seems to me a lot of our troubles would vanish if that were so. This thought occurred to me last night after the news relayed the shooting of a dozen officers in Dallas, Texas . . . a place already seared into the historical consciousness of many Americans who can never forget the violent assassination of President John F. Kennedy in that city.
This latest mass shooting followed the deaths of two more black men at the hands of the police, one in the far south and the other in the far north of the country:
- Philando Castile, 32, was with a woman and child when killed in Falcon Heights, a suburb of St. Paul, Minnesota. The car was stopped for a broken tail-light.
- Alton Sterling, 37, was selling movies and music on discs outside of a convenience store in Baton Rouge when the fatal confrontation with police occurred.
These two shootings of unarmed black men extend a growing list of such incidents that have flashed across media screens all across the nation. It is hard to listen to such stories; they make a person wince with pain and anger, frustration and despair. Such raw violence against Black people has been going on forever but the advent of cell phone video has changed everything in people’s perception.
No more the cunning cover-up, the wily whitewash, the ludicrous lies routinely paraded around to “explain away” how the victim caused his own death. The “blue wall of silence” stood at attention while officers knowing the truth kept quiet, but no more!
Now people can see with their own eyes how often the police use of force against Black men and women appears to be extraordinarily excessive. All such claims that the man killed was to blame, was out of control, had a weapon, was “resisting arrest”—all those poor crippled lies are now exposed as the most heinous distortions of truth imaginable!
Based on these hand-held cell phone videos, the mood in the country is slowly but surely changing. Instead of blindly believing whatever story the miscreant police officers cook up, people are taking a closer look—they want the truth. The historical pendulum is moving in a new direction; policemen are even being charged with crimes—although convictions remain as rare as ever.
The day is not far off when a policeman will be convicted—perhaps then, and only then, will the message be sent to other policemen to stop their secret, subtle, and sinister genocide of young Black men.
We speak here of the “bad apples” and not all policemen—not those who do their jobs honestly with courageous good judgment. No, not the good officers but these others, whose prejudices run so deep, they fail to recognize their own hidden hatreds and fears.
We speak of men in blue whose tempers spark instantaneously out of control, so rapidly that they scarce seem to know themselves what came over them—and yet another man lies died before them.
If they can’t handle their fears, their prejudices, their hatred, their temper—they need to resign before someone else dies another needless death.
Across the nation, it feels as though a corner is finally being turned, with each new senseless incident causing a wave of renewed anguish and growing demand for change.
The acquisition of body cameras for police to wear is part of that movement to see something different happen going forward. Police departments are working on racial sensitivity and implementing re-training strategies to prevent more such incidents from escalating into a fatal confrontation.
Television news stations in the Bay Area proudly reported recently that San Francisco police patiently out-waited a man under circumstances that might have otherwise have led to his death—they were praised for their tempered restraint and ultimate success. It’s a small step in the right direction.
Meanwhile, the anger builds:
- Protest marches are occurring in the troubled shooting-plagued towns and in other major cities.
- In Oakland, demonstrators shut down freeway 880 in both directions for several hours.
- There is a growing movement called Black Lives Matter. The name speaks for itself.
- Elected officials are calling for more to be done; police departments are under the microscope.
- Media no longer assume the first version of events offered by police will prove truthful.
- Cell phone video is showing everyone a new reality.
- Ordinary people are wondering when the violence between police and Black people will end?
Over the last few months, a new foreboding began hanging heavy in the air—how long would it be before someone attacked a police officer? The events in Dallas last night answered that question: the foreboding period came to an abrupt end. Four officers were killed outright and eleven wounded by sniper fire—a fifth officer died from his wounds this morning.
That’s why I can’t help comparing humans in “civilized society” with animals in their natural world, when night after night these stories keep happening. I can’t help thinking about how animals behave in their natural state.
This thought was much in my mind when this latest edition of violent confrontations between white police officers and black men hit the air waves: black men unlucky enough to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Even when they are suspected of breaking the law, the alleged infractions always seem so small: selling music and movies on disc (Alton Sterling) or selling “loose cigarettes” (Eric Gardner, NYC); stolen cigars and jaywalking (Michael Brown); broken tail-light or some other minor traffic infraction (Sandra Bland, Philando Castile); the list goes on–selling what you can to stay alive.
These types of acts are merely petty street hustles to make a buck, often to support a family. They are committed by Black men growing up in impoverished areas where the playing field is not level—indeed, where there is no playing field at all, at least none with a visible sign announcing “American Dream, enter here”.
There are no magical doorways in these men’s lives through which they can quickly leave behind the devastating legacy of racism and poverty; there’s no airplane ticket where they can fly to a rich new land overflowing with opportunities for education, for work, for equality, for basic human dignity.
Most of these unarmed black men were not mixed up in gangs, drugs, violent crimes—they were hustling to make a few extra dollars because in the barrios and ghettos, a little extra money can make the difference between food and hunger, between light and darkness, between heat and cold.
I’m not trying to make heroes of them; if any of them were bad apples, then whatever they’ve done is part of the larger story and they need to be held accountable.
Still, there’s a big difference between being cited for a traffic violation and becoming a fatality. There’s a big difference between being arrested for a possible misdemeanor criminal offense and ending up dead. There’s a big difference between “being held accountable” and dying while in police custody.
The pattern seems abundantly clear:
Black men who are not engaging in anti-social behavior are in just as much danger of being killed by police as those who commit major crimes and violently resist arrest. In the latter instance, such a confrontation, when it escalates, is understandable.
That is not the story of these men–often unarmed—being stopped for petty hustling and minor traffic infractions. Suspected of such, mind you—not yet charged or convicted.
No policeman has the right to act as judge, jury, and executioner. That’s not how our system of justice is supposed to work!
Sure, I know it sounds silly for me to say that I wish we humans could be mindless. It’s just that us humans, we’re so freaking proud of our evolutionary leap to the top of the food chain because of our ability to think. Pair our mental prowess with the dexterity of our hands and there’s no other animal that comes close to achieving so much: a complex society with a rich history of arts and literature. But at what cost to our natural instincts for right and wrong?
I know, too, that in the animal world much violence occurs—there are predators that hunt for a living. It is their speed, power, and lethal weapons of tooth and claw that provide nourishment for themselves and their young. Still, it seems as though animals only hunt when they are hungry; they only kill to satisfy this hunger. What about us humans: when and where and why do we kill?
Think of all the wars! In small conflicts, centuries ago, perhaps only a few men were killed. It didn’t take long, though, for humans to begin inventing new ways of killing. In the blink of a historical eye, the collective human ability to kill rose from a few individuals to a few dozen, and then hundreds–until thousands of people killed in a single war became commonplace.
During the American Civil War, the numbers rose sharply again: tens of thousands of soldiers were killed in a single battle. By the time of the early twentieth century, it’s no longer “thousands” or even “tens of thousands”—no, World War I sees the term millions introduced into the death count. With such huge numbers, it is understandable historians and journalists have a hard time keeping up with any statistical exactitude. Estimates necessarily creep into the picture—the phrase “ten million dead” from World War I is frequently found quite suitable.
By the time of World War II, tens of millions became the new order of numerical magnitude. The mind boggles and reels at such incomprehensible numbers! For the Second World War as a whole–counting casualties on both sides, soldiers and civilians alike—the number often used is 50 million dead.
Bombs are dropped from the air that explode with such ferocious intensity that they kill a couple of hundred thousand Japanese people in just two apocalyptic blasts, while another 10-12 million persons perish in concentration camps.
Is it any wonder to imagine if humans were mindless like the animals, far fewer might die? Choose the most ferocious deadly killer you can think of from the animal kingdom and ask yourself, where do we find any creature that kills to such an extreme?
The most deadly hunter among the big cats (lions, cheetahs) cannot do it; fast-diving hawks and eagles of the air cannot begin to equal such mass slaughter; sharks of the sea cannot kill on such a vast and senseless scale. Only “thinking” human beings create such mass carnage! And, of course, on a far smaller scale, only human beings repeatedly tempt fate with confrontations between police and Black men that end in needless death and tragedy. Family bereavement spreads like a plague all across the country.
That’s why as I was turning in my bed last night and laying my weary bones down to rest, a strange thought flitted across the inside of my eyelids before I stumbled off to a drowsy dream world where I could visit a beautiful peaceful land and where I could escape the horrors of these endless violent stories, at least for a little while . . . the last conscious thought I remember mumbling to myself, before sleep overtook me, was wishing people could be more like animals, without mind . . . .
Strangely enough, the same exact thought was waiting to greet me when I woke this morning.
