“I didn’t want to talk to anyone. I just wanted to know where my son was because I didn’t want him to die alone.”
Those are the haunting words of Philando Castile’s mother on Wednesday, July 6, 2016, when she rushed to the scene of her son’s shooting. But she didn’t reach her son in time to say goodbye or hold her baby one last time as he died; and 24 hours or more after his death, she hadn’t even been granted the human decency of being allowed to see her son’s body.
Only one day earlier, 1200 miles away, Alton Sterling’s family received the same devastating news: your son/father/love of your life has been shot and killed by police.
Black mothers live in fear of having their sons shot down in cold blood. All parents these days live in fear for their own lives and the lives of their children, but white mothers do not have the same fear for their sons that black mothers do; and anyone who says they do is either lying or grossly uninformed or just doesn’t care.
Sterling was the 558th person to be killed by police in the U.S. this year, according to The Guardian’s database, The Counted. Not all of them were black men, but the majority were. So what do we tell black mothers terrified for their sons’ safety? Should we tell them to give us a little more time to work all these things out? In his “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther quoted William E. Gladstone: “Justice too long delayed is justice denied.” So if we’re honest, we’ll say, “Sorry, grieving mother, protecting your son’s life just isn’t important enough to be moved to the top of the to-do list.”
King goes on in his own words: “We have waited for more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights. . . . Perhaps it is easy for those who have never felt the stinging darts of segregation to say, ‘Wait.’ But when you have seen vicious mobs lynch your mothers and fathers . . . when you see the vast majority of your twenty million Negro brothers smothering in an airtight cage of poverty in the midst of an affluent society . . . when you are humiliated day in and day out . . . when your first name becomes ‘nigger’. . . when you are harried by day and haunted by night by the fact that you are a Negro, living constantly at tiptoe stance, never quite knowing what to expect next, and are plagued with inner fears and outer resentments; when you are forever fighting a degenerating sense of ‘nobodiness’–then you will understand why we find it difficult to wait. There comes a time when the cup of endurance runs over, and men are no longer willing to be plunged into the abyss of despair. I hope, sirs, you can understand our legitimate and unavoidable impatience.” King wrote those words in 1963, and a half century later, his brothers and sisters are still waiting. And I can only imagine what the impatience level is by now after 393 years of waiting.
Alton Sterling was pinned to the ground and then shot at a range of only a few inches. Why was it necessary to pull the trigger on someone who was already pinned to the ground? Shooting should be the last resort, not the first. They supposedly thought he had a gun, but they didn’t see a gun, his hand was not touching a gun, and as the gun-rights folks love to remind us, “The gun can’t shoot itself.” So exactly how were these officers’ lives in danger? And why was some less extreme action not tried first? Something like, oh, holding Mr. Sterling’s arms above his head if they were so worried that he might pull a weapon out of his pocket? He was already pinned down. Would it have been so difficult to further restrain him? How about snapping on a set of handcuffs? Was that man’s life so expendable, so devoid of value that it was easier and more convenient just to shoot him, like squashing a bug? I think we know what his family’s answer to that question would be.
Philando Castile was driving a car with his girlfriend in the passenger’s seat and her four-year-old child in the back seat when a policeman pulled them over for a broken tail light. Mr. Castile informed the officer he had a gun and a concealed carry permit, but when he reached for his wallet in compliance with the law for traffic stops, the officer shot him in the arm and then proceeded to fire three more shots. I understand police officers’ fears; they get killed, too; and blue lives matter, too. But why is shooting so often the first thing they do instead of the last resort? While both of Mr. Castile’s hands were still visible and free of weapons, couldn’t the officer have given him more clear instructions about how to retrieve his license and registration?
And why, in both cases, was it necessary to fire multiple shots? Both men were shot at close range. IF any shots had to be fired, wouldn’t it have been enough just to temporarily disable them? Did they have to die? Were their lives not worth a little extra caution?
On May 31, 2016, Cincinnati Zoo officials made the call to kill a rare gorilla to save the life of a three-year-old boy who had fallen into the gorilla’s cage. On July 1, 2015, an American dentist shot and killed Cecil the Lion who lived in Zimbabwe, a trophy kill. After both of these incidents, social media lit up with outrage over the senseless murders of these beautiful animals. And I admit I, too, felt some of that outrage. For days on end, the diatribes continued, including death threats against Dr. Walter Palmer.
When Alton Sterling died, the first thing I saw on social media was a post by a repugnant bigot who expressed relief that tax payers of Baton Rouge will now have one less person to support. The next thing I saw was a meme suggesting that black guys would be a lot safer if they’d just wear belts to hold their pants up around their waists and graduate from high school. And then there was the meme showing some unsavory and irrelevant information about Mr. Sterling’s history.
So when a lion or a gorilla is shot to death, the weeping and outrage are heard all over the Internet; but when a 32-year-old or 37-year-old black man is shot and killed, the first responses blame the victim for not listening to the police, for dressing in a way distasteful to some, for dropping out of high school, for unrelated alleged crimes. Stereotypes drive public opinion and feed the fires of hatred and prejudice. Can someone please explain to me the difference between these two incidents and the scene in the current movie The Free State of Jones in which Newt Knight (Matthew McConaughey) finds the beaten and castrated body of “freed” slave Moses Washington (Mahershala Ali) hanging from a tree? The only crime any of these three was guilty of was being a black man.
To the mothers of Alton Sterling and Philando Castile, I’m so sorry for your loss. My heart aches for you and for everyone who loved and cherished your sons. You and your families are in my thoughts and prayers. I’m the mom of a 42-year-old and a 40-year-old son, and although I have my worries and concerns, lying awake at night fearing a phone call informing me my son has been shot to death by police officers is not one of them. I’m ashamed that it is one of yours. You carried and gave birth to your sons just as I did mine; you held them in your arms as I held mine; you loved them and gave them your best just as I loved mine and did the best I could to raise them to be responsible men who can achieve their dreams. You should not have had to live in fear for their lives, you should not have been “plunged into the abyss of despair” by their early deaths, and you should not experience the indignity of victim blaming and the anticipation that justice will once again be denied. And I’m truly sorry, Valerie Castile, that your son had to die without you. I understand your impatience for justice, and I will use my voice as long as I can to speak for real liberty and justice for ALL.
Update: Since I wrote this article, we’ve seen an outpouring of anger and grief all over the country, by people of all ages and races. I woke this morning to read the news that five police officers were shot and killed and six more injured in Dallas. Blue lives matter, too! Violence does not solve violence! Killing people who had nothing to do with killing Alton Sterling and Philando Castile compounds the crime. But let us not forget, the vengeful action of one angry person does not absolve the officers who shot Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. It only leaves five more families to grieve and more people angry. We have to STOP killing each other!
4 replies on “All Lives Matter, Except When They Don’t”
Beautifully written! These killings have hit me hard. I just don’t understand why they feel the need to kill black men. I do know that at it’s core it’s fear. They fear black people for whatever reason and that fear fuels their hate.
I also hate that those police officers were injured and killed. Them being killed will not bring back any of the lives that were taken unjustly. What it will do is make officers more scared and even quicker to draw their weapons.
Excellent points, T! Thanks for reading and thanks for your input!
Has anyone ever looked at all of this from the police officers’ point of view? Does anyone even realize the kind of life they lead every single day, facing nothing but stressful situations throughout their entire shift, during which they have to react very quickly–they do not have time to sit there and think about how to handle a certain situation–they have to react instantly, to the best of their ability, under very high pressure. Of course it’s easy for everybody to say, “oh, he should have done this or he shouldn’t have done that,” and in reality, when the officer looks back on it, he would probably agree. But in these tense situations, when you have to react within a split second, you do what you think is best at that moment, and try to protect your own life. Are police officers targeting black people? Of course not. Statistics say that there are more black people arrested and/or in prison, well, has anyone thought that this is because there are more black people committing crimes, which can probably be explained because there are more black people in poverty, who turn to crime as a way to support themselves. This whole thing doesn’t make sense–police officers should be able to do their jobs without fear, and be able to take care of people behaving like criminals (whether black or white or whoever), instead of having to worry that the whole nation is going to be angry at them because they are doing their jobs.
You’ve made some good points and asked some pertinent questions. I have the highest respect for the people who serve in harm’s way every day, and I know their job is difficult and stressful. I’ve also seen the heart and love they put into their job. When my daughter was in a car accident at age 15, the 16-year-old boy driving the car died because he was pinned into the driver’s seat. The first responder on the scene was a policeman who talked to the boy and did his best to calm him while he tried desperately to extricate him from the burning car. A week or two later, he visited my home to check on my daughter who was seriously injured. After visiting with her for a few minutes, he talked to me on the front porch about the agony he’d gone through thinking about watching that boy die; he had taken a whole week off work to deal with his grief. As we talked, he wept like a baby right there on my front porch. I’ll never forget that incident because it reminds me of the caring hearts of the people who risk their lives every day to protect us.
But good people make bad judgments and have bad days. Saying the officers who killed these two men made bad judgments does not mean all police officers are bad or that we can’t respect and support them. Everyone’s had a bad day at work. Good surgeons sometimes make serious mistakes in the operating room. Good teachers sometimes make bad calls, unfairly discipline, and give unjust grades. Good hairstylists sometimes give bad haircuts. Good chefs sometimes serve lousy food. The problem is bad haircuts grow out and one lousy meal won’t ruin my whole life. But a mistake in the operating room or in a police confrontation can have permanent consequences. If I decided to change a grade, I could fill out a form and it was done; if a police officer uses unnecessary force and kills someone, that’s final. It’s a heavy weight of responsibility, and I respect those willing to carry that weight; but I don’t think that means we have to overlook tragic misjudgments.
Thanks for reading and commenting.