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AP Photo/Carlos Osorio, FILE
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Well, that is certainly some elephant that will be standing
right smack in the middle of a Michigan courtroom if the lawyers have their
way! Many of us have recently become aware of the tragic shooting, by a white
homeowner in a very white suburb of Detroit, of a black intoxicated woman who
was standing on his front porch in the middle of the night (between 4-5 a.m.) and pounding on his door. This is a tragedy of truly American proportions… and no one with an
inkling of sanity or humanity should wish to take sides in this story, because
every side has already lost in the human tragedy. Yet to hear the media
tell the tale, the lawyers and legal analysts in the case all seem to be
gearing up to heap a layer of legal tragedy upon an already unfortunate
core of American historical and sociological tragedy.
This new
American tragedy, which begins to rival Greek tragedy in the convolution of its
storyline, could be called: The Black Girl is Dead; So Now Let’s Kill the
White Guy too Just to Make Sure That Equality Happens for Everyone! It is
telling that there would be no interesting media story had the shooter and the
victim both been either white (an unfortunate incident in suburban America?) or
black (same old, same old). What this means, however, is that the mechanism
that seems to be framing this tragic story so far is the material substitution
of Equality, for Justice—more plainly stated: the substitution of racial
equality (or, both black and white must suffer) for the more Just consideration
concerning what, precisely, the crime is in this story.
My reflection is not about the hard facts of the events of
November 2nd: 19 year-old woman bangs on a stranger’s house door in
early morning hours, and ends up shot by the male homeowner. These are the
facts that tell of tragedy at a very human level—they are the simple, neutral
plot lines of a failure to communicate, and subsequent misfortune and loss.
They do not, however, tell us what this particular story is about; and
what it is about, it seems to me, is clearly about home-bound notions of race and fear enabled by a promiscuous environment of weapons ownership. After all,
it was not this man, the Shooter, who was out prowling around trying to
criminally impose his rather broken worldview on some unsuspecting victim;
rather, all the complexities of the real world came pounding on his door
in the middle of the night, and shaking him out of sleep in his own home,
discovered that he was not up to the task of acting like an adult in-the-world.
But, then, there are a great many people in the world who already suspect that
this might generally be the case with a great many, too many, Americans.
This story’s “aboutness” may still yet be lost to us, the audience, because it
seems that the attorneys in the case and legal minds in the know are trying to
stick just to the Plot, and do not wish to explore the Intrigue—they
do not wish to re-create the whole tragic Story in all its layered complexity
and messiness, but they only wish to give us its “neutral” or “objective” bare
bones. This is nothing more than a rather disingenuous attempt to use
historical revisionism to hide the existence of the racial and fear-laden
context surrounding this event.
Now there are two ideas imbedded in this lawyerly desire to control the narrative.
The first is that behind a thin veil of imagined neutrality is hidden the power
of Politically Correct compulsion. In an archetypal Barabbas moment, the crowd
is being stirred up and is beginning to clamor for blood; and the media play no
small part in the stirring up of this hornet’s nest. The second is that, if
this particular Huff-post avatar of the story (November 16th) is to
be believed, the lawyers for both sides in this case seem to be set on arguing
for Equality – one dead girl = (the need for) one dead shooter (the Barabbas
moment), instead of trying to establish whatever may begin to look like Justice
in this event of human tragedy.
The Cooley Law School professor who was interviewed as an expert analyst for
the article, in fact, boldly says that, “both sides would be wise to stick to a
"race-neutral" strategy. "Don't go there. Keep it on the
facts." "Who wants to bring race into it? Everybody else. ... The
defense doesn't want that. And the prosecution doesn't want to bring it in. I
don't think they need to." There is clearly an overpopulation of bad
lawyers in the world, if a professor of law can publicly make the case just for
“facts,” as if facts have any existence apart from “spin” or narrative.
Now welcome to the Twilight Zone of “spin” and complexity. Nota
Bene: This is the job the attorneys in this case should be doing, were they
interested in the intricacies of Justice instead of some notion of populist
Equality.
The Time: Between 4:00 and 5:00 a.m. on November 2, 2013;
which means that it was either very late or very early, depending on your point
of view, and that it was very dark outside.
The Shooter Setting: Dearborn Heights, MI.
· Place (part 1): Detroit, MI,
which is the 12th most populous urban area in the United States.
According to Wikipedia,
at the time of the 2010 census Detroit reported 70.1% White, and 22.8%
African American, which accounts for 92.9% of its population, the rest being
composed of Hispanic/Latinos, Native American, Asian, Pacific Islanders, and
other races.
· Place (part 2): As is true
with all populous urban areas, Detroit is an agglomeration of numerous smaller
communities. So, more specifically on the question of Shooter Setting, this
tragedy occurred in Dearborn Heights, which is an even more racially unmixed
enclave of metropolitan Detroit. For Dearborn Heights Wikipedia reports that in
the 2010 census the racial makeup of the city was a whooping 86.1% White,
and 7.9% African American.
All things being equal, then, the white Shooter was asleep
in his bed, which was in his home, which is situated in an overwhelmingly white
bedroom community of metropolitan Detroit.
The Victim setting: Southfield, MI.
· Place (residence): The
victim was from Southfield, MI, which is only 21.3 km from Dearborn Heights, or
about 18 minutes by car. At the time of the 2010 census, the racial makeup of the city was 70.3% African
American, and 24.9% White, which shows a marked shift in demographics from the 2000
census, when Southfield was only 54.22% African
American, and 38.83% White.
All things considered, then, the Victim found herself in an
accident, very late at night, in a Looking Glass world… because Southfield (70.3% African American) is as remote from
Dearborn Heights (70.1% White) as Timbuktu from the Halls of Montezuma.
These simple-to-obtain demographics do not yet provide us
with any insight into why a man in the safety of his own home and behind his
locked front door, the Shooter, would shoot with a shotgun and kill a girl who
was on his porch and banging on his door in the middle of the night. It seems,
certainly, to be an act of absolute irrationality. And the expert legal
analyst, the Cooley Law School professor, seems to think that this case will
hinge on a single factor: ‘"It's got to be reasonable," he said.
"The question is: What would a reasonable person do in these
circumstances?"’ So, according to our legal Expert Opinion, the Shooter is
clearly guilty… he has to be guilty, because his action is not that of a
reasonable person.
Or is it? How might we reconstruct the worldview of a reasonable person living
in Detroit, MI?
Point 1. For anybody living in the United States, let alone
a reasonable person, race is clearly an issue in almost any case involving
crime or the penal system. America may have a black president, and the Supreme Court may have overturned the National Voter Registration Act in a moment
of euphoria and blind ivory tour optimism, but race is still very much a
live-wire issue for citizens not-living in the La-La Land of the U.S. Supreme
Court justices. For Bill Maher’s take on the U.S. Supreme Court, questions of
race, etc., follow the link.
Point 2. For a reasonable person living in Detroit, Detroit
itself is clearly an issue in this case.
· Case in point: On the
official website for the French government, the French State urges their citizens to avoid traveling in certain areas of the United States,
including the city of Detroit: “The center is not recommended after the
close of business.”
· Case in point: Just for
kicks and giggles let us consider a Contest for Crime among various cities in
the United States. We can limit ourselves to the following seven categories of
criminal activity: crimes of Murder, Forcible Rape, Robbery, Aggravated
Assault, Burglary, Larceny Theft, and Vehicle Theft.
o Between Detroit and Chicago, where both cities
roundly trounce the national average in most categories (there is a discrepancy
in Larceny Theft), Detroit whoops Chicago resoundingly in the number of crimes
per 100,000 People (data from 2006).
o Between Detroit and Miami, where both cities
again beat the national average in most categories (except, again, in Larceny
Theft), Detroit stomps all over Miami (except, yet again, in Larceny Theft).
What is there with Larceny Theft?
o Between Detroit and New York City, (with
several areas of discrepancy in terms of the national average), Detroit
absolutely destroys New York City in every category.
In fact, according to Forbes,
and despite a recent drop in its rate of violent crime, Detroit, MI is the
single most dangerous city in America, coming in first for violent crime for a
continuous 5 years. Their data was compiled from “the FBI’s Crime Statistics database,
screening for cities with populations above 200,000,” which allowed Forbes to
eliminate cities like Flint, Mich., with its record-busting murder rate of 63
per 100,000, but yet which still allows them “to focus on major American cities
that presumably have full-fledged police departments.” In descending order of
violence:
1. Detroit, MI
2. Oakland, CA
3. St Louis, MO
4. Memphis, TN
5. Stockton, CA
6. Birmingham, AL
7. Baltimore, MD
8. Cleveland, OH
9. Atlanta, GA
10. Milwaukee, WI
So, what might we conclude about the worldview of an
idealized Reasonable Person living in Detroit, MI? Well… WTF comes quickly to my
mind, at the very least. Because suppose that I, Mr. Reasonable Philosopher,
lived in or near Dearborn Heights, MI., and that, although I wanted to go to
church on a Sunday morning, I dared not for fear that my home in this veil of
tears would be robbed as I attended to my heavenly duties (Read the story here).
Let us further suppose that I live in the most dangerous city in America, in a
country whose record of gun ownership per 100 residents is # 1 in the entire
world, at 89 guns per 100 residents. Mr. Reasonable Me in Detroit already
begins to look markedly different from a Mr. Reasonable Me in the Netherlands, for
example, which is # 112 on the list of gun ownership, at 3.9 guns per 100
residents. To the rest of the civilized world outside the United States, such
an idealized Reasonable Person as these Detroit attorneys are seeking to
reconstruct, would conceivably look very much like an insane savage.
If, then, as the lawyers for both parties pretend, this trial should play
itself out on a terrain of neutral and theoretical reason, was this man’s act
reasonable in the most neutral sense of that term? Absolutely not. His action
was completely unreasonable – irrational even. In much the same way, it would
be irrational that I should shoot the Anonymous Someone [knowing, as I do, that
81% of the population of the Netherlands is Caucasian of Germanic or Gallo Celtic
descent—that is to say, they look like me so there is no automatic sense of
alienation between us] who rings our doorbell in Middelburg (Netherlands) in
the middle of the night on a Friday or Saturday, which the kids around here
seem to enjoy doing on a regular basis (which is why, I suppose, doorbells
around here all have shutoff switches). Why would it be irrational for me to
shoot them? Because I “know” them without knowing them. I know they are like
me; that they do not wish me harm, either to my person, my family, or my
property; I know that, for the most, they also do not ring my doorbell armed;
nor do they have any particular malice in ringing my doorbell; they are just stupid.
So were we to follow this lawyerly line of idealized reasoning, the Shooter in
Detroit is not only unreasonable, he is a raving lunatic; and the conclusion of
the trial at a guilty verdict is a foregone conclusion.
However, there is another type of possible irrationality in this situation,
which is the irrationality of fear. How does one rationally explain fear, an
emotion, an inherent irrationality that comes of living in a jungle, of being
surrounded by danger and Hostile Otherness? It is not possible. So, in fact the
race question and the climate of fear engendered by the dark Other who happens
to find herself in a significantly white-bread milieu, as much as we may find
it reprehensible on a variety of levels, does in fact give reasonable
explanation for an irrational act. An act that is intellectually
unreasonable because it is thoughtless, but which is not emotionally
unreasonable; because like the stream to the ocean, this type of discriminatory
act flows from the wellsprings of indiscriminate fear.
Follow-up:
Follow-up:
- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-crime-dearbornheights/tearful-judge-gives-man-17-years-for-michigan-porch-shooting-idUSKBN0GY14C20140903
- https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/wayne/2015/06/12/renisha-mcbride-civil-settlement/71160078/
- http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/wayne-county/2017/01/25/michigans-high-court-weigh-porch-shooting-case/97040888/
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