Just before my first year of college, my biggest concern was that my classes would be too early in the morning. Aug. 9, 2014 — exactly one week before I left for school — I can’t recall what I was doing because it didn’t matter. I was in no immediate danger, had no target on my back and had nothing to fear.
That was not the case for Michael Brown, just three months older than I — one week away from his first year of college, just like me — the day he was shot and killed in his hometown of Ferguson, Missouri.
His father described the scene to me and over 400 other students in heartbreaking detail this past Wednesday when Pitt Program Council presented “A Father’s Perspective.” Michael Brown Sr. spoke about his son, his beliefs and his community outreach foundation, Chosen for Change.
I sat and watched a father recount his son’s story to a crowd of strangers — his personality, his interests and his death. As a nameless face among many, I was what Michael Brown will never get to be again.
“There is a difference. That’s the part that hurts. I think [black people] should be given the same rights,” Michael Brown Sr. disclosed to us. “We are being targeted. We are under attack.”
Oscar Grant, Tyrone Harris Jr., Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Matthew Ajibade, Korryn Gaines and, most recently, Terence Crutcher and Keith Scott have all been victims of the attack Brown Sr. described.
I am a white girl from Connecticut. It is not my place to speak about injustice as though I have suffered it, just as it is not my place to tell you what to think or how to act. But it is my responsibility to demand that we recognize our own accountability in fostering a culture that allows racial and political polarization to dichotomize us. Michael Brown’s death is on all of us, and we need to accept that.
To point fingers solely at Darren Wilson or the police force as a single entity is to negate the fact that our country cultivates an environment of exclusivity that each one of us propagates in one way or another.
“Everyone is trying to point the finger … I don’t hate the police, I hate the decisions [some of them] make … We have to respect them and what they do to serve and protect,” Michael Brown Sr. said. “It’s hard to know who’s for you and who’s not, but they’re not all bad.”
Michael Brown wanted to be a rapper, his father told us, and they had argued about whether or not he would go to college. His favorite musical artist was Kendrick Lamar. On April Fools’ Day, the year he was killed, he called his parents and told them he had gotten someone pregnant. His dad threatened to beat him with a broom as he hung up, laughing.
Michael Brown Sr. told us his son had been in run-ins with Wilson prior to his death — the two were not on good terms. His father never thought it would come to this.
“Ignorance doesn’t have a color,” he said, pleading with the crowd to love and respect one another. He told us that he “put all his anger towards doing good things to keep [his] mind in a safe place, so [he would not] do something that would embarrass [his] son.”
Michael Brown was 18 years old — three months older than I was. Yet, somehow, if I were gunned down by a police officer under questionable circumstances, I have no doubt in my mind that the jury convened to convict my killer would have found sufficient probable cause for indictment. My own fault in the matter would not have been considered — or if it was, plastered across cable news as though I were a defeated villain who had it coming.
Michael Brown was not simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. The 102 unarmed black men and women killed by police officers in 2015, alone, were not instances of bad luck.
Only 10 of the 102 cases in 2015 resulted in officers being charged with their crime, and only two ended with conviction. One of the two officers received jail time for the death of Ajibade — he was sentenced to one year and permitted to serve his time on weekends.
These inequities are not casualties of a system that otherwise works — they are evidence of a system that has institutionalized racism and marginalized nearly every facet of its population that is not a middle-aged, heterosexual white man.
If you have ever withheld your vote in an election, excused yourself from jury duty, made a joke in poor taste or taken an opportunity for granted, then you have wasted a privilege. At some point, no matter our race or nationality, we have all been guilty of abusing the rights that have been afforded to most of us and overlooking those who have not been so fortunate.
Our system has failed all of us, and all of us have failed Michael Brown.
Avoidance has not worked. Violence has not worked. And pointing fingers has not worked. Maybe it’s time that we look to ourselves and acknowledge our own culpability in the factors that allowed these deaths to occur and their killers to remain unprosecuted. Michael Brown’s death is on the shoulders of Darren Wilson and prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch, but it is also on me and you.
As Michael Brown Sr. described, it is not enough to cite this as racism, and it is not enough to blame the police. Each one of us can choose to be an activist, an advocate and a friend. On a daily basis, we can choose to educate ourselves about social issues and their impacts. We can choose to listen and give victims unable to defend themselves the benefit of the doubt. We owe it to each other to participate in community outreach programs and dedicate a portion of our time to consider the welfare of others.
It is time to not only acknowledge privilege, but actively take advantage of the opportunities it affords some to work towards a culture that fosters equality, rather than exclusivity.
We know how Michael Brown died. We should not stop asking ourselves — and our society— why.