Will grace, restraint be our course?

Dear Readers, Maybe, this Thanksgiving season will be different than past ones.

Maybe each of us can stop a moment to truly both seek forgiveness and acknowledge what we have.

In an unusual confluence of circumstances, gut-wrenching legal landmarks are upon us this holiday, illustrating how divided we remain. Twin deaths of young African-American men expose the inequities of a criminal justice system that far too often debases the lives of African-Americans.

At the time of this writing, the outcome of Ferguson, Mo.’s Grand Jury investigation into Officer Darren Wilson’s killing of Michael Brown remains in doubt. A community erupted upon news of Brown’s death in this city ruled by a white government and almost lily-white police force.

We await a determination of whether or not an officer doing his job, albeit with a ready reliance on deadly force, should be forced to run the criminal justice gauntlet.

Tragically, this past Thursday, Akai Gurley, a 28-year-old African-American male, was shot and killed in Brooklyn’s Louis H. Pink Houses by a raw, white police officer patrolling the darkened stairways of a New York housing project. Gurley was unarmed, caused no type of disturbance, and was just on his way for a night out with his girlfriend.

His death was a tragic mistake in the dangerous and tense closed quarters of a crime-infested New York housing project.

These two unfortunate deaths are twinned. In both cases, a law enforcement officer probably over-reached while just doing his job.

Regardless of whether or not Wilson should have shot Brown, there is not a hint of racist intent behind his actions. What we can probably know for sure, though, is that if Brown had been white and Wilson black, Michael Brown would still be alive today.

Attitudes would be different if the racial dynamics were inverted. In the case of Gurley, housing projects are soul-crushing towers of African-Americans living in squalor and fear. This is what happens in such a community.

The point of this juxtaposition is to remember and feel how race twists and permeates the fates of these two young men. White people live in squalor too, just not shoved into such close quarters with criminal elements; white people also commit crimes and/or show “attitude” to law enforcement officers. They just don’t almost routinely die from doing so.

We should not ignore how race overlays these two deaths, even if without the specter of overt racism.

The point is that vestiges of slavery/Jim Crow racism live today in the still racially-segregated way we live out our lives. White America needs to be sensitive to how the sins of our past still infect our present. It is not an illusion that our black sisters and brothers still feel the sting of legally being cast as second-class citizens and are reminded of this with each untimely death of a black youth gunned down by a white man, particularly, an officer. We must not close our eyes.

Yet, African-Americans must stop shoving White America’s noses in the dung of racism. Peaceful marches in silent protest of the death of Michael Brown, as opposed to violence and vandalism, show respect for the fact that overt racism is mostly relegated to the past.

While it may be true the gulf between how our communities live, like those in Ferguson imbued with the racial sensitivity of a doorknob, not every African-American victim dies at the hand of a racist.

We should all ask for forgiveness and to forgive. White America needs to seek forgiveness for a legal policy of “separate but equal,” which cordoned off minorities into pockets of poverty, crumbling infrastructures and horrid schools.

These wrongs still permeate today’s society and need to be fixed. Black America has a right to ask for forgiveness for these lingering effects of racism as well as clunky echoes of the past like voter ID laws.

But, it needs to understand past sins were committed by past generations and ask forgiveness for using past racism as an excuse.

This week, we can expect to learn if Wilson will be charged with a crime. This will be an opportunity to show some grace and restraint.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Local attorney Jim Rockefeller owns the Rockefeller Law Center and is a former Houston County Chief Assistant District Attorney, and a former Miami Prosecutor. Visit www.rockefellerlawcenter.com to submit confidential legal questions, and to review former articles and Frequently Asked Questions.

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