Jones: Seeking justice in a world where it's hard to come by
AS POLICE-RELATED violence spiraled out of control last week, I was anguished. Not because the toxic mix of anger and grief was a new experience, but because it was not.
AS POLICE-RELATED violence spiraled out of control last week, I was anguished. Not because the toxic mix of anger and grief was a new experience, but because it was not.
Since April, I have felt the pain of a family that has lost one of its own to an unjustified police shooting. I have seen the media firestorm that follows the killing of a police officer at a protest. I have bemoaned society's reluctance to acknowledge the role of racism.
I wrote the story of last week's violence even before it happened.
In a fit of hope, I named the resultant radio drama for something I haven't seen. Justice.
Then, last week, after Baton Rouge, La., police killed Alton Sterling, after Minnesota police killed Philando Castile, after a lone gunman killed five policemen following a peaceful Dallas protest, I fell into my chair, took a deep breath, and listened to the haunting similarities between my story and reality.
A fatal car stop, a peaceful protest, a dead policeman, and families left behind to search for what cruelly eludes them.
Justice.
Now more than ever, I see the irony in the name I attached to the drama, because, in reality, our system of justice is anything but just, and the disparities begin with police.
Blacks are more likely than whites to be pushed, pepper-sprayed, handcuffed or hit with batons, according to a recently released Harvard study. And according to separate data compiled by the Washington Post, we are 2.5 times more likely than whites to be shot and killed by police.
Still, it's one thing to know that while blacks compose 13 percent of the population, but nearly a quarter of those shot and killed by police. It's quite another thing to watch those numbers roar into focus in the videotaped deaths of black men such as Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.
We have, after all, seen such videos before. Twelve-year-old Tamir Rice was killed two seconds after police arrived and saw him playing with a toy gun. John Crawford III was killed while holding a BB gun in a Wal-Mart. Eric Garner was choked to death on a Staten Island street.
Despite videotaped evidence in these cases, there were no convictions. There was only rage.
That's why I began writing Justice. I wanted to explore what it means to live in a world where justice is neither expected nor delivered. I wanted to bring humanity to the social-media memes and hashtags that too often define this struggle.
Twenty people have joined me to tell this story. They are black and white, young and old, and they have helped me to give voice to those on both sides of the divide.
Like me, they have watched the events of the past week, and they have reflected.
Jamon Watson, who plays Margaret Butler, a mother who lost a son to a police shooting, says police must deal with the biases they sometimes bring to their work.
"I understand you have to look out for each other, because you are on the front lines where bad things can happen," she said of police. "But that's what you signed up for. So you have to . . . get to the point where you don't put your own bias on a situation where no threat exists."
Greg Frost, a novelist who plays two roles in the drama, says the past week has put things in perspective for him.
"In some ways, with the two characters I play in the radio drama, I feel a lot of empathy toward Dallas Police Chief David Brown," Frost told me this week. "To me, he personifies the fragmentation and complexities of just how insane we've become as a nation, because he's now getting death threats.
"So, you know, I'm portraying a cop who kills and a lawyer who believes his client's been framed by cops for a murder. Two white characters operating on two sides of the chasm of violence, killing and racism. And then there's the real-life Dallas police chief, David Brown, a black man trapped smack in the crossfire. Same chasm, but he's stuck straddling it."
In reality, we are all straddling that chasm. It's my hope we'll soon bridge the divide.
It's the only way we'll get justice.
Solomon Jones is the author of 10 books. Listen to him mornings from 7 to 10 on WURD (900-AM).
@solomonjones1