The Illipsis: on Ferguson, riots and human limits

In this second installment of The Illipsis, Jay Smooth looks back at the week's events in Ferguson and asks how we can truly apply Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's advice that "riots are the language of the unheard."

So I wanna talk for a minute
about human beings and about riots.

This past Monday night
while we were all sitting there

waiting for that blow that we all knew was coming,

and hoping that we might be wrong
just this one time,

I said on Twitter that the fundamental danger
of a non-indictment is not more riots,

it is more Darren Wilsons.

And that thought struck a chord with a lot of people.

It was linked to more than any tweet I've ever made.

But later on that night,
we saw some things happen in Ferguson.

We saw some unrest,
we saw things that you could call riots;

and when that happened,

a bunch of other people on Twitter
were delighted by the idea

that that heartache and grief and rage
gave them a social media gotcha moment.

"So who's the real danger now,
mister social justice warrior?"

"Ya see all those thugs out there?
You see how you people act?"

"What do you have to say now??"

Well, here's what I think now:

I believe what I said,
now more than ever.

And if you think what happened on Monday
disproves what I said,

you didn't understand what I was talking about.

I wasn't happy at all about what
happened Monday night.

I hate to see people pushed that far.

I hate to see people's community
family businesses destroyed.

I hated seeing that.

But I'm also clear that if you ask me
to weigh one against the other,

we are weighing the destruction of property
against the loss of a life.

And if you value some people's property
more than the life of a black child,

we're not on the same team.

And regardless of that, for us to even
discuss caring about one or the other

is presenting a false choice because
they're not in opposition to each other.

One is a byproduct of the other.

That unrest we saw Monday night was a byproduct
of the injustice that preceded it.

This is not a choice,
this is a cause-and-effect relationship.

If you're worried about the effects,
you need to be thinking about the cause.

Riots are a thing that human beings do
because human beings have limits.

We don't all have the same limits.

For some of us our human limit is when
our favorite team loses the game.

For some of us it's when
our favorite team wins a game.

The people Ferguson had a different limit than that.

For the people of Ferguson a lifetime of neglect
and facto segregation and incompetence

and mistreatment
by every level of government

was not their limit.

When that malign neglect set the stage

for one of their children to be shot down
and left in the street like a piece of trash,

that was not their limit.

For the people of Ferguson spending 100 days
almost entirely peacefully protesting

for some measure of justice for that child,

and having their desire for justice
treated like a joke by every local authority,

was not their limit.

And then after those 100 days,

when the so-called prosecutor
waited until the dead of night

to come out and twist that knife one last time,

when he came out and confirmed once and for all
that Michael Brown's life didn't matter,

only then did the people of Ferguson reach their limit.

So when you look at what happened Monday night
the question you should be asking is

how did these human beings last that long
before they reached their human limit?

How do black people in America
retain such a deep well of humanity

that they can be pushed so far again and again
without reaching their human limit?

How do we keep going through this same cycle?

Because that's the thing: it's not just these 100 days.

It's the 100 times this cycle played out
before Michael Brown.

The thing about that tweet I sent out Monday night?
That tweet wasn't really from Monday night.

I made the exact same tweet
a year and a half ago about Trayvon Martin

The exact same tweet word-for-word.
All I did was switch out the name.

And that's how sick,

that's how predictable and sick this white
supremacy Groundhog's Day is that we live in.

You can literally word-for-word have
the exact same conversation year after year,

and just switch out the name
of the black child we lost.

There is nothing more exhausting
or more inhumane

than black america's eternal cycle
of being shocked but not surprised.

When you have to go through your whole life
with all your muscles tensed,

waiting for the same blow
to come again and again,

knowing it will hurt a bit more each time
precisely because you always know it's coming.

And then you have to teach your children
how to go through the same cycle,

that's the definition of torture.

Those are not fit living conditions
for a human being.

So when I see President Obama say he
has no sympathy for people who destroy a car,

I'm sorry but I do have sympathy for them.

I'm not happy to see them doing it
but human beings have limits.

When I watched that footage of Michael Brown's
mother out there crushed and heartbroken,

and I see her family talk about
burning this thing down,

I'm not happy to see that,

but I don't think we should be
making excuses for that.

I don't think we should be explaining that away.

I don't think there's anything to be ashamed of.

That is real life.

That is what happens when you
treat human beings this way.

So if you hated what you saw on Monday night,

if you hated seeing those human beings
pushed past their limit,

you need to do something

about the government and the justice system
and the institutions of policing

that do not treat them like human beings.

If you watch the news Monday night
and didn't like the effects,

you need to do something about the cause.

You, I, we need to go out there
and make this country into a place

where black lives matter.