Do black lives matter?

Of course they do. No morally legitimate value system says otherwise. To a genuine Christian, a black person is created in the image of God and is a brother or a sister. To an true American citizen, a black neighbor is a fellow citizen with the same rights and entitlements as any other. To any fundamentally decent person, a black person is a human being deserving dignity and respect and honor.

Does singling out “Black Lives” slight others?

Not at all. It is a simple, direct declarative sentence. Saying the sky is blue doesn’t imply that the sky is the only blue thing there is. Saying “Black Lives Matter” doesn’t imply that “Only Black Lives Matter.” In the current national emergency, saying “Black Lives Matter” draws attention to the disproportionate use of violence against black people.

Aren’t most of the people involved in these police shootings guilty of something?

Not one of them deserved to be shot or killed.

Michael Brown may have robbed a Ferguson, Missouri convenience store moments before he was killed. That’s a serious crime. He should have been arrested and tried. If he was found guilty, he should have gone to prison. But he should not have been shot to death in the street. Eric Garner was selling cigarettes on the sidewalk of New York City. That’s a minor crime, and he should have paid a small fine. Instead, he died face-down on the pavement, gasping for breath. Walter Scott was driving with a faulty brake light. That is a moving violation. He should have gotten a traffic ticket. He was shot 5-8 times in the back. Breonnna Taylor and Botham Jean were at home — she was sleeping; he was eating ice cream — when the police barged into their apartments and killed them. Charles Kinsey was doing his job as a caregiver to an autistic patient when the police yelled at him to get on the ground. He lay on the ground and identified himself as a caregiver. He told them he was unarmed. He stretched his arms out and splayed his fingers to show he wasn’t holding anything. They shot him anyway.

Isn’t there more to the story?

Sure. There’s always more. Walter Scott ran. If he hadn’t run the officer probably would have handed him the ticket and he could have walked away. But running is not a crime. The Louisville police didn’t start shooting until Breonna Taylor’s boyfriend shot at them. But they had just beat the door down and barged into the apartment in the middle of the night. Kentucky law allows a person to defend their home from invasion and that’s what the boyfriend was doing. But Louisville police policies allow a police officer to act in self defense, which they did when the boyfriend started defending himself.

It is easy to find “more” in any story. But the truth remains that none of the victims of excessive police violence deserved summary execution.

Aren’t the officers who shoot black people almost always exonerated? Doesn’t that prove nothing wrong happened?

Yes, and No. Yes, the police departments review each shooting and they usually decide that the officer who pulled the trigger acted as he or she was trained to act. But that does not mean nothing was wrong. The training and the policies are the problem.

Consider one of the most outrageous cases in recent history: the killing of Botham Jean in his own apartment by former officer Amber Guyger in Texas. The following detail emerged from court testimony at Guyger’s trial.

Guyger said “Let me see your hands!” is one of the main commands she was trained in at the academy. “If you can’t see them,” she testified in hypothetical reference to a suspect’s hands, “they’re usually reaching for a weapon that can be used against us.”

See? Police officers in some departments are trained to assume that anytime they can’t see a person’s hands, they should assume that person “is usually reaching for a weapon.” That is nonsense. Try it yourself. Go through a day trying to convince yourself that every time you can’t see a person’s hand, that person is reaching for a gun. Absurd!

Police training and police policies encourage confrontation and excessive force. Officers are taught to dominate. Situations get out of hands and become crises because police officers choose to escalate them. A person who was standing still and speaking calmly can find himself sudden being manhandled, which leads to a “What are you doing to me?” reaction which the police interpret as resisting arrest and use to justify still more aggressive action. (I have never been arrested. But I believe that my reaction to being grabbed, pushed to the ground and manhandled would be to resist.)

Most people don’t recognize that the officers who shoot people aren’t always racist or ultra-violent. Often they are scared. And that, too is a result of training. This Atlantic article documents how fear is instilled in police officers. They are trained to be scared and they are trained not to back away. So they go straight to the gun.

Probably most of the information and skills and principles that are taught in police academies across America are good. But in no cases are police procedures the result of a democratic process. The Constitution does not justify police procedures. Nowhere are police policies voted on and approved by citizens. Those procedures are simply what the police departments of America have chosen for themselves. It’s the cops telling the cops how the cops think the cops should act, with the rest of the citizenry left out.

That system could work. It is possible for a profession to regulate itself making outside supervision unnecessary. The movie industry does this. The movie rating system doesn’t prevent bad movies or smutty or vulgar movies. But it does label them honestly so viewers know what to expect. The medical professions, too, regulate themselves more or less effectively. The police could keep themselves 100% in line. But they aren’t doing it.

Aren’t most police officers decent people?

Yes. Everyday in America, police and citizens interact hundreds of thousands of times. Most of those encounters are pleasant. The share of police officers who are racist, or eager to kill, or too afraid and twitchy to be trusted with a gun, or too badly trained to respond properly to a situation is small. It needs to be zero.

But the lived experience of different citizens varies. A lot. A 60-year-old white man living in a rural midwestern community might think the cops are fine. The facts might be very different for a young black man in a large city.

Setting aside the questions about police shootings, there are also questions about the on-going destructive and violent demonstrations.

Isn’t the destruction of property always wrong? Isn’t it an invalid form of protest?

That’s not an opinion that Americans would agree with.  The Boston Tea Party was a criminal act of destruction of property. Americans celebrate it as an heroic act of patriotism. The destruction of the Berlin Wall was also destruction of public property, and Americans see it as a laudable outburst of freedom and human rights. And not just liberals. Conservatives, beginning with Ronald Reagan, were delighted when the Berlin Wall came down and not at all bothered by the fact that German citizens were smashing the wall with sledgehammers.

These two cases show that Americans do not believe destroying property as a form of protest is always wrong. It may be wrong is some case, but it is not always wrong.

Compared to the Boston Tea Party, the vigorous protests of the summer of 2020 are far more justified. The Boston Tea Party expressed objection to a small tax on a luxury good. Anyone who didn’t want to pay the tax could avoid it by not buying tea. No one was going to die if they paid the tax or if they didn’t. But hundreds have already died, and more die almost every day from excessive police violence.

What about Antifa?

“Antifa” is short for Anti-fascist. That doesn’t make them communist. It doesn’t make them criminal. It doesn’t make them a dangerous organization. It doesn’t make them an organization at all. The only thing we know for sure about Antifa members is that they oppose fascism. And fascism is bad.

But . . . some of them are really violent.

The crime and death in early September 2020 of Michael Forest Reinoehl near Portland, Oregon confirms this. Some on the left are violent, just as some (many more, actually) on the right are. Some are willing to throw rocks to get attention to their cause. And some are willing to do even more. Worse, sometimes really bad people who don’t even care about the social issue get involved as an excuse for looting and other crimes.

This is not a new problem. In Shakespeare’s Henry V, the king insists that he can’t control the hearts of his soldiers. He hopes his war is just, but he is relying on sinners to win it:

Besides, there is no king, be his cause never so spotless, if it come to the arbitrament of swords, can try it out with all unspotted soldiers. Some, peradventure, have on them the guilt of premeditated and contrived murder; some, of beguiling virgins with the broken seals of perjury; some, making the wars their bulwark, that have before gored the gentle bosom of peace with pillage and robbery.

So, if bad people get involved in social action, they are guilty of their crimes. But the guilt of one doesn’t make the rest guilty. It doesn’t make the protest illegitimate or the complaint unreasonable. Never forget how much MORE violent and unconscionable is the death of an unarmed, guiltless citizen than the breaking of a bit of glass.

Smashing stuff is never good. The 7th Circle in Dante’s Inferno has a place for people who destroy material things wantonly. But smashing a window can never be as bad as killing an innocent citizen. A share of the guilt lies with the Congress and the state legislatures and the mayors and city councils who fail to solve serious problems in proper ways

“Defund the Police.” Doesn’t that go too far?

If it means eliminating law enforcement altogether, then yes, that would be going too far. American communities certainly need law enforcement.

Police shouldn’t be expected to do more than their budgets and staffing enable them to do. Under Trump, this is happening. He talks tough but neglects the funding needed by local police agencies to do the work. Trump is defunding the police in the worst way.

Better people than Trump use the phrase “Defund the Police” to describe something reasonable and desirable.

Most of what police officers do all day isn’t police work. Police are called to deal with all kinds of issues that aren’t their specialty. When a psychotic goes off their meds, the police get called. When two neighbors argue about a property line, the police get called. The police get called about a racoon in someone’s back yard, and when a slow-moving funeral procession needs a traffic escort.

None of those circumstances require a person trained and equipped as a police officer. None of them require a gun. The racoon just needs someone to go “Shoo!” The funeral procession just needs someone with a flashing light on an ordinary car. The psychotic needs someone with mental health training, but not a gun. The arguing neighbors need a wise, old, no-nonsense aunt to “Talk some damn sense into their stupid heads.”

“Defund the police” should mean to shift away from the police a portion of their budget sufficient to fund alternative service providers who can deal with the things the police don’t want to deal with anyway. This could be very cost effective. The funeral escort work could be done just as well in a standard car as with a tricked-out police vehicle costing $100,000 or more. The mental health cases could be dealt with by mental health specialists. (And, yes, if the mental health confrontation become violent and intractable, an officer with a gun may need to be called. If he isn’t busy escorting a funeral or shooing away a racoon, he’ll be available.)

A shift of resources is what needs to happen, and that’s what “Defund the Police” ought to mean. It could actually result in better funded police agencies. If 20% of their budget were reallocated and 30% of their duties shifted away, police would benefit financially.

The tragedy of militant action is that nuanced meaning doesn’t come through clearly. Rocks, tear gas and bullets flying through the air gets a reaction. But they don’t very well express the nuances of new policy concepts. The mayors and police chiefs and state legislatures all across America should have reformed police practices long ago, before the rocks started flying.

Haven’t the protests run their course? Isn’t it time to stop?

No. Political and social action is not measured by popularity or TV ratings. They are measured by reform. The Women’s Suffrage Movement in America agitated from 1848 until 1920 and was unpopular the whole time. The American Revolution dragged on for a decade, and many people were no doubt bored with it long before it succeeded. But the loyal patriots of 1776 stuck with it until they got the results they wanted.

Shouldn’t black people and those who stand with them be patient?  

Sure. patience is a virtue. Good things take time. But how long should they have to wait for reform of violent persecution?

• If you say five years, then start the clock in 2014, when Eric Garner was choked to death on the streets of New York City.

• If you say eight years, then it has been that long since Trayvon Martin was shot by Florida rent-a-cop George Zimmerman.

•  If you say 30 years, then it has been nearly that long since Los Angeles policemen beat Rodney King.

• If you think justice should take 65 years, then harken back to the murder of Emmett Till.

• If you say 80 years, then its been that long since Amadee Ardoin was murdered for the crime of receiving kindness from a white woman.

By any reasonable measure, aggressive violence against black people has been going on too long. By any reasonable measure, justice is due.

For years now I have heard the word "Wait!" It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing familiarity. This "Wait" has almost always meant "Never." We must come to see, with one of our distinguished jurists, that "justice too long delayed is justice denied."

I have just received a letter from a white brother in Texas. He writes: "All Christians know that the colored people will receive equal rights eventually, but it is possible that you are in too great a religious hurry. It has taken Christianity almost two thousand years to accomplish what it has. The teachings of Christ take time to come to earth." Such an attitude stems from a tragic misconception of time, from the strangely irrational notion that there is something in the very flow of time that will inevitably cure all ills.

Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to be co workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation.

 That was written by Martin Luther King Jr 57 years ago, and if his patience was exhausted in 1963, why should there be any patience in 2020?