“The McMichaels did not intend to kill Mr. Arbery that day. All they intended to do was to stop him, question him, and hold him and wait for the police to arrive.”
You’ll start hearing this defense, if you haven’t already. It seems so understandable, so smooth, so compassionate.
But.
No.
Imagine you’re going to “get out of the house.” Just go for a drive. It’s May, and it’s a beautiful day.
“I’m not going bowling,” you say. “I know that bowling is bad for me. I get mad when I can’t get 300 and I mess up the place.”
But you take your bowling bag with your bowling ball & shoes to the car. You put on your favorite bowling shirt, with your team name on the back and your own name embroidered in beautiful, colorful script above the pocket on the front. Your glove is right there on the seat along with the bag.
And while you can drive any route through town, you happen to make the turns that take you to Harmony Lanes (or whatever), where you go inside “just for a snack and a smoke” because hey, a man gets thirsty.
The lanes are open. You got a $20 bill in your pocket. What’s the harm?
Thirty minutes later you’re smashing the scoring device, pulling down the racks, tossing chairs, and threatening people because . . . well, you didn’t get that 300 you’ve been dreaming of.
“They knew I can’t handle it. They should have done something about it. It’s not my fault.”
Well.
You set yourself up to commit a riot. You laid out your tools & brought them with you. You got to the place where you wanted to riot. You did everything you could to set yourself up for an outburst.
And you struck out because you could not strike out.
This is what the McMichaels did. They ginned themselves up to be “angry” about break-ins and robberies in the neighborhood. The police records show no such things from anyone for the previous six months–except that the elder McMichaels left his truck unlocked and a gun on the front seat, and that got lifted, per his own police report. There are no security camera feeds that back up their claim that they “saw” other crimes of the same nature in the neighborhood per the “police” who showed them to such “evidence.” They convinced themselves that Mr. Arbery was “the guy” who was responsible for the thefts “reported” in the neighborhood. They jumped in their truck with their weapons loaded. They got a third party to come along in a separate vehicle (who filmed the interaction, the shooting, and the murder). They lied about what they did, and why. They spread their story around with their friends, showing them the video and laughing along with it.
They committed murder “with malice aforethought.”
Maybe they didn’t think in their conscious mind that they were going to kill a Black man that day. But guns and cars and weapons and false stories blaming Black men and the entire nature of their existence made murder the outcome as sure as thunder follows lightning.
If we’re honest about this—honest about America—it’s likely they’ll get off. White people killing Black people are usually let off with either a reduced sentence or a slap on the wrist–or even with nothing at all because somewhere there’s a law written for white control and white anger that will “give them an out.” Whether it’s Stand Your Ground laws or the Castle Doctrine or just the reality of white control of the police and the courts and the justice system, it’s not at all likely for these two white men to endure more than jail (for now) with the implicit support from all the people in the system who will work to make their temporary stay as pleasant as possible. They’ll receive support from their white community and white politicians and partisan media outlets (cough FOX cough). They already have the white/orange president* defending them with the old “we haven’t seen all the video–what came before this” schtick that white people use to defend white violence against Black Americans.
The reality that many people already know is that it will take enormous, Herculean efforts by people to keep the focus on the murder and the process and the trial, let alone the convictions (with a jury comprising white people from the community—all it takes is one “no” vote and they get off). The system is designed to derail justice for Ahmaud Arbery and give white men yet another pass for violence and racism.
But even though the outcome for justice is very, very low—we have to try. We have to hope that somehow people will have the sense of justice roused in their hearts—and the love of their fellow man ignited–to not only cry out for justice but to make it happen.
We have got to stop thinking that it’s okay for Black men, Black women, and Black children to die at the hand of white people for no reason other than white power and the demand for the control of Black bodies.
We’ve got to want justice, to push for it, to spread the demand for it, and to love it.
Thank you for courageously and consistently speaking up about racism. I was moved by your last sentence to share an excerpt from my daily inspirational quote:
“There is no force on earth that can equal in its conquering power the force of justice and wisdom. …There can be no doubt whatever that if the day-star of justice, which the clouds of tyranny have obscured, were to shed its light upon men, the face of the earth would be completely transformed.” ~ Baha’u’llah,
Thanks. I appreciate your response, and I appreciate your words from Baha’u’llah.
We all seem to want the same things—love, justice, harmony, hope.
May we one day all see them become reality.