"Lord, how long will I call for help and you not listen? I cry out to you, 'Violence!' but you don't deliver us. Why do you show me injustice and look at anguish so that devastation and violence are before me? There is strife, and conflict abounds. The Instruction is ineffective. Justice does not endure because the wicked surround the righteous. Justice becomes warped." - Habakkuk 1:2-4Last night the verdict was read in the case against Darren Wilson, the white Ferguson police officer who shot and killed an unarmed 18 year old black youth named Michael Brown.
That verdict was the product and the result of hundreds of years of racial oppression, subjugation and segregation that underlines, scores and marks the fabric our nation, our communities and our relationships to this day.
This day, Today.
Today is a painful reminder of just how long the moral arc of the universe really is.
Today many brothers and sisters of color have woken up from the hope of justice and returned to the bleak reality of systemic racism that puts a price on their life and a millstone around their neck.
Today many continue to remark that #blacklivesmatter. However, making the proclamation more often than not feels like shouting into the void.
Yes, #blacklivesmatter.
Yes, #blacklivesmatter. They matter to black people, they matter to me, they even matter to other white people even in the face of the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.
This is perhaps the most difficult aspect of that proclamation. That even while I proclaim #blacklivesmatter I know that the devaluation of those lives is a very real, persistent, and present threat.
As a nation we need our "come to Jesus" moment. We idle in the sin of racial injustice, too many made comfortable by its false promises. For most white folks, today we wake up and it is business as usual. No assumptions have been challenged, no hearts convicted. We continue to idle in sin while our brothers and sisters cry out, and many of us have the audacity to discount their cries, as if their pain is the true violence which shakes us.
So warped has sin made us that the reality of trials such as this one is that it is in fact the dead who are put on trial. Those who cannot respond for themselves are assessed of their innocence or guilt. Those who cannot give testimony to their version of events are expected to have their full perspective represented by the one who killed them. The result, more often than not, is that the dead are found guilty. The dead deserved to die. Michael Brown needed to die. He was dangerous, though he was unarmed, he was a threat to white lives, and he had to die. What other conclusion can be drawn from a refusal to indict?
By affirming Darren Wilson's decision to kill Michael Brown, the Grand Jury asserted two very powerful messages: Michael's death was justified; #blacklivesdon'tmatter
What other lesson is there for young people, white and black alike, looking in to discern how they should best relate to one another?
That's what hurts the most. Black lives are devalued every time this happens. Black lives are proven to be less valuable than those of their white neighbors, and thus the cycle of violence, systemic violence, marches on.
Indeed, Justice does not endure because the wicked surround the righteous. Justice becomes warped.
Today justice has been warped, delayed, subverted, denied.
Today we again wait for the moral arc of the universe to bend toward justice.
But now it's not for Michael Brown, not for Eric Garner, or Trayvon Martin, Ezell Ford, Orlando Barlow, Oscar Grant, Renisha McBride, Dante Parker, Jordan Davis, John Crawford, Alonzo Ashley, Kimani Gray, Danta Price, Steven Eugene Washington, Victor Steen, Sean Bell, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Wendell Allen, Aaron Campbell, Kendrec McDade, Bo Morrison, Timothy Stansbury Jr., Timothy Russell, Jerean Blake, Jonathan Ferrell, Amandou Diallo, Ervin Jefferson, Angelo Clark, Steven Rodriguez, Johnnie Kamahi Warren, Nehemiah Dillard, Stephen Watts, Michael Lembhard, Tendai Nhekairo, Manuel Loggins Jr., Rekia Boyd, Melvin Lawhorn, Marquez Smart, Patrick Dorismond, James Brissette, Jersey Green, Ousmane Zongo, Duane Brown, Justin Sipp, Christopher Kissane, Raymond Allen, Travares McGill, or Sheron Jackson,
Now we wait for Tamir Rice, a twelve year old black child killed by police.
How long O Lord?
