Michael Brown and Ferguson

Even those of us with sympathy, we act like the bullet started its journey to that young man when the trigger was pulled and the charge ignited.

We act like what drove it on its journey to his soft, undefended body was the rifling in the barrel and the explosive charge that was put behind it.

But that bullet was on its way to Michael Brown when it was in the factory.

That bullet was on its way to Michael Brown when it was still a lump of unprocessed metal.

That bullet, that bullet was on its way to that young man when we didn’t integrate our society. That bullet was on its way to that young man when we devalued young black men in our media, in our culture, and to our police officers.

Yes, the white finger on the trigger was there and it was a damned racist finger, but there were racist fingers that fashioned the trigger and racist fingers that signed the papers that ordered it for a racist police force based on fear of racial violence.

It was racist fingers that made that young man a trope in media, not someone to be understood, but someone to be feared.

Those fingers were all on the trigger too. They all pushed that bullet down that barrel.

Because the sad fact is, for all our outrage, for all the yelling and screaming we might do, we’re all complicit. We created “the struggle.”

We nudged that bullet down the barrel, a barrel it had traveled down for 18 years. Every little one of our fingers that we didn’t lift gave that bullet a little push.

And you thought it was the gun powder. You thought you weren’t a part of it.

Well, you were. And you are.

Right now there is another Michael Brown, and another bullet is on its way to him. Are you going to help it get there again?