Deadly force. The justifiable taking of a life by officer of the law while in the line of duty.
How is it justified when a person is unarmed? And why aren’t all Americans equally appalled and outraged when such an incident occurs? Do we not all live under the same Constitution that guarantees certain inalienable rights, one of which is that of life? Why is deadly force an acceptable action even without a threat? These are some of the questions that the Black Lives Matter Movement asks. Are the actions of individual police officers who shoot unarmed persons a personal sin on their part? If we look at the sum total of unarmed persons killed by police, will it indicate a larger, social sin that we may or may not be aware of? Michael Brown’s death sparked the Black Lives Matter Movement. Since his death, many more unarmed Black men have died at the hands of police. To what can we attribute these nationwide atrocities and abuses of power? And why is “All lives matter” the response to the Black Lives Matter Movement? And what do these things say about us as a society? Is this a social sin of American society? I believe it is. First, shooting unarmed men of any color by any police officer is a serious matter, though only a scant few have been charged with crimes. Of those charge, even fewer are found guilty by a jury of their peers. In order to understand this as a social sin we must understand it in terms of sufficient reflection and full consent of the will. Gula states that to meet the requirement for sufficient reflection, one must reach that state of knowledge that is evaluative; that is, it must be known in the heart. What does this mean for society? Is there a heart of society and can it reach the evaluative knowledge? Most certainly it can. We need look no further than our own history to see the truth of this. In the case of Black Lives Matter, American society, at its heart, has been set against Black people since its founding. Thomas Jefferson did not believe his own words of the Declaration of Independence applied to Black people (see letter from Jefferson to Benjamin Banneker http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part2/2h72t.html). For political purposes, Blacks were counted as three fifths of a person giving slave states a population advantage thus increasing their representation in Congress (even though Blacks were barred from voting). During slavery, a man named Dread Scott bought his case for freedom to the Supreme Court. The Court ruled against him saying a Black man has no rights that a white man must respect (Scott v. Sandford, 60 U.S. 19 How. 393 393 (1856)). The case has never been overturned. After slavery ended, former slave states took advantage of the Thirteenth Amendment clause which allows slavery and involuntary servitude if one is convicted of a crime. Along with Jim Crow segregation laws, former slave states passed laws that criminalized Black life (Blackmon, D. Slavery By Another Name. 2008). For some eighty years, Blacks were arrested for the most minor offenses (vagrancy being among the most popular) and set to labor on the former slave plantations. Blacks fought in both world wars and in Vietnam, yet could not get lunch at the local diner, nor could they vote. Then came the Civil Rights Movement. This changed everything. The status quo was no longer being accepted. Black people had had enough. Laws changed. Hearts did not. Because the law could not change hearts, those unchanged hearts decided to re-write American history and chose to exclude Blacks. Black history in America is as old as America and yet few know the true history of Blacks in America. This truly is a sin of the heart of society. When Blacks come together in solidarity to say “We will NOT stand for this anymore,” we are labeled as rebels. During the 60s, Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X were both assassinated. But did you know that the FBI organized a Counter Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO) whose sole purpose was to seek out, suppress and take down anything or anyone who could bring about Black solidarity? Names on their list included King and X, but also targeted were leaders and members of the Black Panther Party. Fred Hampton was one such leader in Chicago. On December 4, 1969, Fred Hampton, at the age of 21, was assassinated in his bed by the Chicago Police Department with the aid of the FBI (Haas, J., The Assassination of Fred Hampton, 2010). And we cannot forget the terrorism of the Ku Klux Klan. They lynched thousands of blacks. Crowds gathered for the lynchings. Postcards were made picturing some lynchings. Yes postcards. Keepsakes of a person lynched (http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11232007/profile2.html). This is the heart of society in America. Keeping this history in mind, for we cannot see today clearly without it, an unarmed man is shot by a police officer and Black people are outraged. Society has most certainly reached that stage of evaluative knowledge required for sufficient reflection, but has society acted with full consent of the will? That is, has society acted with moral freedom? For this we must turn to the fundamental option theory. What is the fundamental option of American society? That is, what choices do we as a society make that have the capacity to direct the moral character of the people? Relying on Bernard Häring’s Free and Faithful in Christ, Gula tells us that theory of fundamental option “finds biblical roots…in the notions of covenant and heart” (p. 78), and that a fundamental stance “expresses the sort of person (or society in this case) we have chosen to be” (p.79). Taking a look at history again and with the opposition to the Black Lives Matter Movement, we can clearly see a social fundamental stance. The opposition mounted against slavery’s end culminated in a war between the states. Many people died in that war, each side fighting for what it believed in. At the war’s end, there was no form of reconciliation; however, the Black vote was granted; Blacks were elected to public office locally and federally; Blacks entered contracted, negotiated business deals, purchased land, produced goods, began schools, and educated themselves. All in an effort to participate in American society (see Reconstruction era history). Unfortunately the heart of society saw this as a threat and began passing laws that came to be known as Jim Crow. Segregation, by Supreme Court rule, became the law of the land. The Black vote ceased. This fundamental stance directed society for more than 100 years. This fundamental stance perpetuated the belief in the inferiority of the Black race. Then the Civil Rights movement happened. The status quo was no longer accepted. Black people had had enough. Laws changed. Hearts did not. That is, the fundamental stance of society did not change. Now keeping this history in mind, for we cannot see today without it, an unarmed man is shot by a police officer. Black people are outraged. And what is the fundamental stance of society today? All lives matter. It is not outrage at the fact that police officers across the nation are vigilante. It is not an abuse of power that an officer can shoot a man eight times in the back. It’s not an abuse of power when officers shoot 137 bullets into a car while one officer mounts the hood of the car and unloads 34 shots pointblank into the windshield. It is not an abuse of power, nor vigilantism for an officer to assess as a threat a 12 year old with a toy gun at a playground. It is this fundamental stance of society that has acted with sufficient reflection and full consent of the will that makes this a serious matter where we MUST stand and say to all who will hear and listen: BLACK LIVES MATTER. |
AuthorJust being me. Archives
December 2016
Categories
All
|