In the wake of the killing of Jordan Neely, several people reminded me of this old post from 2012.
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people → remind → 2012
I wrote it for Radley Balko’s great and regrettably departed web site The Agitator.
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I → write → site
I had to fish it out of the Internet Archive.
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I → have → Archive
Fortunately Radley’s tearing it up doing great work at his new site The Watch, which you should read.
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you → tear → which
I wrote this eleven years ago about the death of Rodney King and about the rhetoric we use to justify or condemn how the police treat people, but I think it holds up today, and increasingly applies to how citizens use violence against each other.
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citizens → write → other
It’s been edited for my general illiteracy and to remove dead links.
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It → edit → links
It grieves me how little has changed, despite a temporary surge of concern for police violence.
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little → grieve → violence
Some people reacted to Jordan Neely’s killing by being mad at Jordan Neely; they remind me at the people who were incensed at Rodney King’s funeral 11 years ago.
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who → react → funeral
They buried Rodney King this weekend.
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They → bury → King
They came to praise the man they buried, not to condemn the criminal justice system illuminated by his videotaped beating.
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they → come → beating
For the most part, speakers respected the family’s wish that the service be about remembering the man, not the politics.
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service → respect → man
Indeed, speakers praised King’s capacity for forgiveness, an attribute that once exposed him to ridicule.
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that → praise → ridicule
“People should not be judged by the mistakes that they make, but by how they rise above them,” said eulogist Al Sharpton, a man with reason to hope fervently that proposition is true.
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proposition → judge → reason
But while King — the man — inspired words about family and love and forgiveness at his funeral, King — the man and the symbol — still inspires raw hatred and outrage.
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King → inspire → hatred
As usual this ass bag sharpton has to get his time in the spot light….and lets not forget king ran because he was on probation…..high as a damn kite….speeding…..once they got him stopped he continued violent behaviour.
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he → have → behaviour
Ohhhh and after he got his money he was once again arrested and jailed for doing the same thing…..violating his probation….. the content of his “character” and his continued nefarious behaviour spoke volumes about him.
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content → get → him
He made the decisions that drove his life…and death.
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that → make → life
Or check out the comments at National Review Online, which are fairly representative of some political blogs.
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which → check → blogs
Rodney King committed numerous crimes in his life.
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King → commit → life
He went to jail for robbing a grocery, he drove dangerously under the influence serially, he struck his wife with his car.
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he → go → car
Whatever his capacity for forgiveness and for rising above such things, he led a troubled life filled with significant bad behavior.
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he → rise → behavior
But such people die every day, and nobody gets too exercised when folks say nice things at their funerals.
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folks → die → funerals
I think it comes down to this: being beaten by the police doesn’t make you either a good person or a bad person, but some people would like to believe that it does.
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it → think → police
Some people have portrayed Rodney King as a hero.
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people → portray → hero
Perhaps there was something heroic about asking “can’t we all get along?” during the riots — certainly it subjected King to years of scorn in some circles.
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it → be → circles
There’s nothing inherently heroic about getting the shit kicked out of you by a crowd of cops.
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shit → ’ → cops
It can happen to good people; it can happen to bad people; it can happen to most of us who are in between.
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who → happen → between
Just as some have portrayed King as a hero for being beaten, some have portrayed him as a villain for the same reason, and done so well out of proportion to his crimes.
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some → portray → crimes
That may be because he ushered in an era in which citizens increasingly record the police — a trend welcomed by critics of police, but controversial in circles accustomed to deference to police.
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citizens → usher → police
It may be because the Rodney King criminal and civil trials were the most visible attempt of the 20th Century to hold police liable for excessive force against civilians — an event that is not welcome among those who have internalized more than sixty years of thin-blue-line law-and-order political rhetoric.
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who → hold → rhetoric
It may be because King was black and many of the officers who beat him were white and some are infuriated at the suggestion that race still plays a part in how people are treated in America.
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people → beat → America
But portraying Rodney King as a hero, or as a villain, plays into the central narrative of our criminal justice system, one that offers the ultimate excuse for cutting corners, giving police the benefit of the doubt, looking the other way at constitutional violations, putting our thumbs on the state’s end of the scales of justice.
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that → portray → justice
He got what he deserved — that’s what one side says, cutting through facts and law and reasoned analysis to pure us vs. them.
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side → get → them
He didn’t deserve that, says the other side, unwittingly lending support to the implicit argument that there are some who do.
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who → deserve → argument
Heroism and villainy have nothing to do with it.
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Heroism → have → it
We have to demand that everyone be treated justly, whether our viscera tell us that they do not deserve the rule of law at all.
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they → have → law
Rodney King should have been spared excessive force not because he’d earned respite, but because we extend it to everyone.
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we → spar → everyone
We do so as a measure of grace, and because it’s so foolish and perilous to let the state (or the mob) decide who deserves rights and who doesn’t.
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who → do → rights
Neither the state, nor the mob, will ever conclude that you deserve justice if it sets its eye upon you.
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it → conclude → you
As in Rodney King’s case, police said that Kelly Thomas deserved it because he was “combative.”
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he → say → it
…and 10 more, not listed.
