A profound difference

Ferguson, Baltimore, and Charleston.  Three different cities that experienced deaths of blacks. In one case, by a white police officer later exonerated of wrongdoing.  In another, allegedly by black and white police officers currently under indictment.  In the last, allegedly (probably indisputably) by an apparently deranged young white man.  Again, the cities share the experience of violent deaths of blacks.  That is where these cities are the same.  How are they different?

The differences are profoundly startling.  Riots, property damage, and civil unrest in the first two cities.  No riots or property damage, but exceptional, perhaps unheard of statements of forgiveness by relatives of the killed.  Why the profound difference?

In the first and second incidents, there was but one dead individual, while in the third there were nine dead.  So scale or numbers do not appear to be the reason.

In the first incident, rioting and civil unrest began almost immediately, in part because of a now thoroughly debunked urban myth of an unarmed individual with hands in the air being shot by a police officer.  In the second incident, riots likewise began almost immediately, in part inflamed by the maladroit actions of the mayor, even before the investigation was completed.  So in neither case was the civil unrest precipitated by a finding of guilt.  Strangely, in the third case, with overwhelming, indisputable evidence that a white man entered a church and gunned down nine people, the city's citizens neither burned, rioted, confronted police, destroyed property, nor called for uprisings, as occurred in the other two cities.  Why the difference?

Could the sole difference be that white police officers were involved in the first two cases, and thus seen by some as justification for the illegal reactions?  In the first case, a single police officer was involved.  In the second, a half-dozen police officers of different races are being investigated for their involvement.  Do those points of police involvement justify lawlessness?  Does destroying businesses and property in one's neighborhood stand for rational protest?  Does burning cars and assaulting police officers comport with the philosophy of the 1960s non-violent protests that changed our nation?  If deemed appropriate, even required by some in the first two cases, why did almost the exact opposite happen in Charleston? 

Answers do not come readily or easily. As observers, we see wanton violence by some, balanced against forgiveness by others. We see some (not even relatives of the victims) choosing to inflame, such as the professor in Memphis who declared, “whiteness is most certainly and inevitably terror.”  Yet, a sister of the reverend killed in Charleston told the suspect, “We have no room for hate, so we have to forgive.”

Strangers to the victims in Ferguson and Baltimore chose violence, lawlessness, and inflammatory rhetoric.  Family members of the victims in Charleston chose faith and forgiveness.

A profound difference in reaction.