Baltimore, like Ferguson last summer, erupted and took to the streets to show its displeasure at what has become an all too familiar display of excessive force by several of members of the city’s police force. Last week, Baltimore city state attorney Marilyn Mosby announced criminal charges against six police officers involved in the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray in their custody, his life snuffed out as the result of a severed spinal cord.
What is equally troubling is the fact that Gray was arrested by police officers for making eye contact with them and then fleeing. The officers claimed that after apprehending Gray they found a switchblade on him. Mosby said that the knife Gray had was not a switchblade and was lawful and that the police “failed to establish probable cause for an arrest.”
Incredulously, initial reports leaked to the media attempted to make the argument that Gray was responsible for his own injuries. We were supposed to believe that Gray snapped his own neck, crushing his own vocal cords and severing his own spinal cord. Please! I will give the police commission credit for having unmitigated gall and unalloyed arrogance.
It was enough to make my blood boil. I still am having trouble comprehending such a senseless act of barbarity by law enforcement. God only knows that I hope justice will be served in this case.
One would have to be deviously and pathetically dishonest to argue that race had “nothing” to do with the death of Gray, although that has been the perverse narrative echoed in many conservative circles on the political and cultural right.
A few Democrats who want to dispel the notion that they are soft on crime have adopted a tough-talking posture on the issues as well. Such a high level of intellectual dishonesty is downright obscene, although it should not be all that surprising. For quite some time now, many individuals on the political right and racists in general have been in deep and vehement denial about the fact that systematic and structural racism is indeed a pressing factor in our society.
What is more ironic and quite frankly, insulting, is the fact that those on the right who do acknowledge racial conflict exist tend to direct the cause to “Black pathology” or supposed deficiencies associated with minority neighborhoods while often denying or obscuring similar vices of deviance and dysfunction in their own communities.
