Ahmaud Arbery
Today I learned about the death of Ahmaud Arbery. I am overcome with grief for him and his family. I am also feeling despair over the state of our nation. Issues around racism and privilege continue to plague our country.
Ahmaud was out on a run in the middle of the day in a “middle-class” neighborhood when two men who did not know him and fancied themselves local heroes chased after him and killed him. Stories like this are the reason people feel unsafe in America. How shameful is that? Land of the free? It certainly doesn’t feel that way. Not for everyone.
What hits home for me is that Amaud was just getting some exercise when he died. I run, usually in the evenings as the sun is going down and the day cools. As a man of mixed ethnicity but who looks white, I don’t have much fear of where and when I am alone in public. I can only attempt to imagine what it must feel like to be perceived as a threat based on the color of my skin. Why do we place this shame on others?
As an exercise in empathy, try to feel the fear of being pulled over and not knowing how this traffic stop is going to go because maybe the cop behind you assumes false things about you based on racist thinking. Now imagine it’s not a cop, but a hothead neighbor who feels no compunctions about chasing down an innocent man while wielding a gun. This is so wrong.
One of the things I don’t understand about this case is that the initial police report classified the killing as homicide. Why then, were the two men allowed to go free? I don’t know the “official” rationale, but it defies reason. The benefit of the doubt is extended quickly and easily to some, even if there is no reasonable justification. This is just one of the privileges of being white and male in America.
Another thing I hate about this story is that these men felt empowered by our inane laws and the example of America’s history to literally chase down another man and confront him with deadly weapons. Citizen arrest laws are not a free license to harass people on the basis of one’s thin suspicions. This was not a citizen’s arrest; it looks more like an overly enthusiastic hunt.
I can already hear detractors saying, “They thought he was a burglar and attempted to make a citizen’s arrest.” What? No. That is NOT a justification. They didn’t have to pursue Ahmaud the way they did. It was not these men’s sense of justice that drove them to hunt him down. It was self-righteousness and the confidence they have in their privilege as white men that allowed them to think it was OK for them to do what they did.
Furthermore, our gun laws are ridiculous. What these men did should immediately be grounds for arrest. They were the aggressors. The 2nd Amendment reserves for citizens the right to bear arms, but qualifies this right in relation to the necessity of “a well regulated Militia.” What the McMichaels did is not militia activity. The 2nd Amendment should not be interpreted to give self-righteous, trigger-happy buffoons the latitude to take the law into their own hands, accost an innocent man (innocent until proven guilty), execute their perverted view of “justice,” and then get away scot-free by claiming “self-defense,” all thanks to warped views on citizen arrest laws.
Finally, to suggest that the chase was justifiable because Ahmaud may have committed a crime smacks of ignorance and reveals a compulsion we have to dehumanize so as to limit the wretched emotional impact of the story. If he did commit a crime, that’s for the police and the courts to handle, not self-appointed vigilantes (not even former cops). And if he did commit burglary, death should never have been the penalty.
The last thing I’ll say is this: America is not “great.” That is too simplistic. America is not one-dimensional. There are great things about America, no one can deny (the freedom to disagree with elected officials, generally good infrastructure, health codes that mean food is regulated and safe, the list goes on). But there are many, many things that are woefully deficient in our society. The story of Ahmaud Arbery’s murder illustrates a few of these deficiencies. (And because we are living in the time of COVID-19, I will add here that the unfair treatment of Indigenous people in our broken healthcare system is another example of the persistent injustice in America.)
I bring this up because the MAGA and Keep America Great movements are at odds with the Black Lives Matter and #ThisIsAmerica. The former empower and embolden (mostly) white Americans to feel a misplaced sense of indignation that pits them against people of color and to view “the other” as somehow unworthy.
When we say, #ThisIsAmerica, these are the things that we are pointing to, the ugly face of America that the dominant narrative benefits from and hates to acknowledge. It sucks that so many of the worst aspects of our country disproportionately burden fellow Americans who happen to be people of color.
Visit www.runwithmaud.com for more information.
