The shooting of a black man named Jacob Blake by a white police officer in Kenosha, Wisconsin sounds like the kind of story we’ve heard so many times before: woman calls police concerning a “domestic” incident—this time her “boyfriend” is on the property when he is not supposed to be. Multiple police show-up. The woman, though apparently not touched, is assumed to be the “victim.” Though the suspect is unarmed, an officer pulls out his gun to be more “persuasive.” Suspect does not feel he has done anything wrong, and does not respond to commands. He offers that there is a knife in his car; not very smart. Disobeying commands to stop, he heads to the driver’s side door, opens it as the officer with gun drawn follows close behind. Suspect leans forward as if he is looking for something on the floor. Officer shoots him the back at point blank range multiple times. Knife found in driver’s side floorboard. Not known if he was intending to grab for it, but not a very smart idea to even appear that he was.
There are multiple poor moves made by those involved here, first by the woman who called the police, then police responding as if this was a “domestic violence” incident, the suspect not “cooperating” with police commands, and then a police officer overreacting before an actual threat was identified. While Blake did not die, it is believed that his injuries will leave him paralyzed from the waist down. Once more, a police officer failed to learn the lesson of previous shooting incidents: you never use lethal force against a black person unless there is clear evidence that your own life is in danger. Pick your targets carefully; Hispanics and whites don’t make as much “noise” when members of their own group are shot by police, even under clearly questionable circumstances.
I am not trying to be cynical about this, but there are multiple levels of “truth” to be gleaned here. Mixed signals are everywhere; the Republican Barnum & Bailey Circus and Freak Show going on right now has swung from cringe-inducing claims of promoting “racial healing” and being seemingly clueless about how this administration’s actions—and inactions—have created an atmosphere of racial animus and animosity that can only get worse the longer Trump remains in office. Trump keeps telling police that he has their back no matter what they do, and continuously calls protestors “terrorists” and little more than violent criminals, showing no understanding whatever for how he himself is to a great extent responsible for the upsurge of unrest.
Yet on the other hand, there is the danger that what whites sitting on the fence see on their television screens causes them to muse to themselves, “if this man had done this” or “had this man not done that” when confronted by police who in the first place did have justification for detaining the suspect-turned-victim. There is the danger that some white voters will wonder to what point must the enforcement of the law become subservient to a suspect’s “right” to refuse to “cooperate” in order to avoid the potential of lethal action. We don’t want police running amok and behaving like this is the Wild, Wild West—but we also do not want a country where some people think they have a “right” to disregard laws, because those laws were created merely to “oppress” them.
In the end, it will all come down to the question of who is more responsible for the lack of “racial harmony” in this country. If black people do not trust the white community—and let’s be frank about this, it is just a game for white protesters who can always go back to their comfortable lives, leaving behind carnage for minorities to take sole blame for—there is a reason for this. Thomas Edsall in his recent op-ed in the New York Times writes that “The most important issue driving Trump’s ascendancy, however, has not been the economy, but race. Republican political strategy is to cloak or veil frank racism.” He quotes Robert P. Jones of Public Religion Research Institute, who states that whites are insulated from the problems of minority communities, most do not have a close relationship with a minority person, and “there are virtually no American institutions positioned to resolve these problems”—doubly true for the Trump administration.
While Trump is trying to scare white “suburban housewives” with Joe Biden’s plan for affordable housing, Rep. Matt Gaetz, who endorsed the QAnon-crazed Laura Loomer, claims that “It’s a horror film, really. They’ll disarm you, empty the prisons, lock you in your home and MS-13 to live next door” (yeah, they were telling us that all through the Obama administration; remember any of that happening?). Harvard’s Joshua Greene likened Trump to a gang member himself; His incendiary commentary is “like gang tattoos. And in Trump’s case, it’s tattoos all over his neck and face.”
Trump’s “gang”
apparently includes 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse, who Kenosha police literally
allowed to walk the streets carrying around an assault rifle shooting people
(killing two) without once stopping him, and he literally returned to Illinois
unmolested before news of his activities led to his arrest on murder charges. Fox News' Tucker Carlson defended his killing spree: "How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with rifles decided they had to maintain order when no one else would?” Well maybe his viewers who are fed a daily dose of his incendiary fabrications are not "surprised," but Rittenhouse doesn't live in Kenosha, but the next state over; it was probably a safer place for him to work out his violent fantasies than, say, Chicago.
The choices we have to make are not easy, but ultimately it is a question of what constitutes the greater danger: Trump’s “gang” actively promoting racial disharmony, or Biden’s promise to show more empathy for those who feel threatened by the turn toward white nationalism. One thing is for certain: whatever it is that Trump is doing, it certainly isn’t “working” to make this a better place for all of us to live in peace.
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