Don Samuels: City must seek accountability and healing Published October 16, 2003
Recent allegations that two members of the Minneapolis Police were involved in a felony assault at a north Minneapolis apartment have shocked us all. The event is made more challenging because of its racial overtones. On the one hand we are tempted to act as if we are totally unaware of this racial factor and hope it goes away. On the other hand, our reaction might become so emotional that we are unable to make constructive contribution to the ensuing dialog. Both extremes are avoidable. It is possible to approach this dilemma in such a way that accountability is justly pursued and healing is initiated. The African-American community has been, historically, at the lowest end of America's racial hierarchy. Long centuries and decades of this abuse should not be covered up in the cause of peace. When this willful denial happens, hate inevitably erupts, inconveniently and often violently. Instead we should examine how this alleged incident has become the eventuality of America's continuum and then change course toward a better future. The violence of black gangs and the genocidal repercussions of the drug trade testify to the fact that the externally inflicted lynchings of the Jim Crow era have now been replaced by internally inflicted homicide. Young black men in gangs might not have learned much in school, but they have learned well the diminished value of their lives and the lives of their people. >From these lessons in inferiority, they have emerged as master scholars. They know now, more than anyone else, the "true insignificance" of their worth. In turn they treat each other accordingly. They occupy residential communities where their women, mothers and children live at great risk. They fight turf battles, destroying the lives they hate and putting at risk the depreciated lives they share. They train disposable recruits in their fatal trade like crops for the grim reaper. That is why we must try our best to send them new messages of their full humanity and provide opportunities, for those who are open, to learn new ways to survive and thrive. And that is why we must, with even swifter urgency, dispatch the incorrigible among them to institutions of constraint, where they are no danger to those of us whose lives they so despise. On the other hand, the genocidal violence and humiliating actions of renegade police also testify to the lingering strains of virulent racism. Men armed with lethal weaponry, official sanction and racial hate will degrade and destroy life, sully community relationships and debase the profile of our city's authority. Their hate of black bodies becomes "justifiably" expressed in the vile humiliation of the "deserving" inferior. There is this class of men, who have found in the city's sanction of their use of force a perverse opportunity to violently express their rabid disregard for the human dignity of people born brown. That is why we must mandate effective training in racial sensibility for all our officers. That is why we must actively screen officers for racist and abusive tendencies and that is why, when racial crimes are perpetrated, we must also put away the offenders. And so, these two faces of the one coin continue to flicker in a society that continues to bet its future on the na�ve notion that things are different now. What we must do instead is commit ourselves to strident intolerance of all forms of racial hate, whether it is expressed intraracially or interracially. We must unwaveringly face the reality that the wanton disregard for human life is possible from all quarters. It exists in denser concentrations in the smoldering cauldron of race. As a society, we must act swiftly to address the dehumanizing of people of color and especially black people. We must name it when it appears in the form of community defilement by gang terrorism. And we must identify it even when it erupts in the guise of justice, inflicting degradation on the very perpetrators of intraracial hate to which they were dispatched. We must recognize the hate of brown bodies in any form. We must call it hate in every guise and we must address it with a sure and even hand. In this case, should the allegations against the alleged community perpetrators be true, then let us act according to the remedies prescribed by law. And should the charges against the alleged official perpetrators be true, then we must act with even swifter, impartial justice. After all, they are the face of our justice. In either case our deep wound gouged by history and exacerbated by this incident will begin to heal. Our diverse community will begin to recognize our common enemies. And we will realize that the common values of human dignity and peace make siblings of us all. Don Samuels represents the Third Ward in the Minneapolis City Council. Joseph Barisonzi Willard-Hay Man will occasionally stumble over the truth, but most times he will pick himself up and carry on. - Winston Churchill REMINDERS: 1. Think a member has violated the rules? Email the list manager at [EMAIL PROTECTED] before continuing it on the list. 2. Don't feed the troll! Ignore obvious flame-bait. ________________________________ Minneapolis Issues Forum - A City-focused Civic Discussion - Mn E-Democracy Post messages to: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Subscribe, Un-subscribe, etc. at: http://e-democracy.org/mpls
