~by David Aiken~
 |
| Socrates, in Athens |
The discourse surrounding certain current
events in the media is very clearly shaped by a politically correct agenda, and
articulated through a diverse array of identity politics. This is also in
keeping with the contemporary authoritarian zeitgeist, as well, which is
reflected in the rise of politically hard-right, illiberal, and nationalistic
agendas in a number of Western democracies. To be sure, this is a troubling
state of affairs for the philosophically minded, especially when those current
events pertain to questions concerning Justice. What, for example, would the
author of The Apology say if, in matters of criminal justice,
preferential status were given to Athenians, such as Meletus, who came from the
Pithus deme or district, over and against other Athenians like Socrates who
grew up in the deme of Alopece, or those who hailed from the deme of Colytus, like
Plato himself? The questions of justice in these instances, obviously, would no
longer be about Justice; but rather about ethnicities and origins and, in
perhaps the best of instances, about obscure and arbitrary notions of ‘fairness’.
Some of us followed the story about a
tragic shooting in late 2013, by a shotgun owning white homeowner in a very
white suburb of Detroit, who shot and killed a black intoxicated woman who was
standing on his front porch, pounding on his door at 4:00 a.m. in the morning.
This is a tragedy of truly American proportions… and no one with an inkling of
humanity should wish to take sides in this story, because every side has
already lost in the human tragedy. And yet, to hear the media tell the
tale, the lawyers and legal analysts in the case all seemed to be gearing up to
heap an additional layer of legal tragedy upon the already unfortunate
core of American historical and sociological tragedy.
This new American tragedy, which begins
to rival Greek tragedy in the convolution of its story-line, could be called: The
Question of Justice be Damned! The Black Girl is Dead; So Now Let’s Kill
(socially or otherwise) the White Guy too Just to Make Sure That Equality
Happens for Everyone!
So,
let us just address right up front the philosophical elephant standing right
smack in the middle of the Michigan courtroom as lawyers had their way in this
case! It is telling, through the not-telling, that there would have been 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!’). But
what the media presentation clearly shows in this present case, without being
deliberately sign-posted, is that the narrative frame used to present this
tragic story includes the material substitution of Equality for Justice—or, more
plainly stated: the substitution of racial equality (i.e., both black and white
must suffer) for the more Just consideration concerning what, precisely,
the crime is in this story, and what might be an appropriate Justice
meted out to the various players.
My reflection is not about the hard
facts of the events of November 2nd 2013: 19-year-old intoxicated Detroit
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 followed
by misfortune and loss. They do not, however, tell us what this particular
story is about. And what it is about, clearly, is home-bound notions of
race and environmentally stoked fear enabled and escalated by a promiscuous
environment of gun 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 this
man out of sleep in his own home, discovered that he was not up to the task of
acting like a thinking adult in-his-world. But, then, there are a great many
people in the world who already suspect that this might be the case, generally,
with a great many, too many, other folks in America as well.
This
story’s “aboutness” may still yet be lost to us, the audience, because it seems
that the attorneys in the case, the legal minds in the know, want to stick
simply to the Plot and the hope of some degree of equivalency or fairness
in the outcome; but they 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. They do not seek the Justice of the case.
Yet the legal approach adopted by these
attorneys is nothing more than a disingenuous attempt to use historical
revisionism to hide the existence of the racial and fear-laden context that so
obviously surrounds this event.
There are two ideas embedded in the
lawyerly desire to control the racial overtones of this 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 idea is that,
if this particular avatar of the story (November 17, 2013) 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 or ‘socially 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."
As odd
as it may seem to say it, if a professor of law can publicly make the case just
for hard “facts,” then there is clearly an overpopulation of bad lawyers in the
world. As if facts have any existence apart from “spin” or contextual environment!
This is extremely unfortunate in questions of law, because while facts may
lead in some cases to equality, they do not necessarily also yield justice.
Now, welcome to the Twilight Zone beyond
the hard “facts” and into the other reality layer of “spin” and complexity.
Nota
Bene: This job of going beyond pure and hard “facts” is what the attorneys
in this case should have been doing, had they been interested in the
intricacies of Justice instead of some white-washed formulaic notion of equalities
and equivalencies.
The Time and Date:
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: Metro Detroit, MI.
· Place (writ
large): Detroit, MI 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 (writ
small): 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 only 7.9% African American.
All things being equal, then, the white
Shooter was asleep in his bed, which was, predictably, in his white-bread 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 Black Victim
found herself in an accident, very late at night, in a Looking Glass world…
because Black Southfield (70.3% African
American) is as culturally remote from White Dearborn Heights (70.1%
White) as Timbuktu from the Halls of Montezuma.
These simple-to-obtain demographics do
not yet provide us with much 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 drunk Black girl who was on his porch banging on his door in the
middle of the night. Simply on this telling, his seems, certainly, to be an act
of absolute irrationality. And the expert legal analyst brought in to advise
legally and expertly on this case, the Cooley Law School professor, seems to
think that the entire 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 obviously guilty… he has to be guilty, because his
action on that night was not that of a reasonable person.
Or was it? How might we, the outsiders, reconstruct the worldview 1) of a Reasonable
Person, who 2) also happens to live 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. Statistics
bear this out. America may have had a black president at the time of the events
we are here considering, and the Supreme Court may have just recently 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’
that needs to be taken into consideration in this case.
· Case in
point: On the official website for the French government in 2013, the French
State urged 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 trounced the national average in most
categories (there is a discrepancy in Larceny Theft), Detroit whooped 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 stomped all over Miami (except, yet
again, in Larceny Theft). What is there with Larceny Theft anyway?
o Between Detroit and New
York City, (with several areas of discrepancy in terms of the national
average), Detroit absolutely destroyed New York City in every category.
In fact, according to a 2013 ranking in
Forbes, and
despite a recent drop in its rate of violent crime, Detroit, MI was 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 philosophically-minded
outsiders conclude about the worldview of an idealized Reasonable Person living
in Detroit, MI? Well… to start off with, WTF comes quickly to mind.
Because suppose that I, Mr. Reasonable Philosopher, lived in or near Detroit, the most dangerous city in America in 2013, in a country
whose record of gun ownership per
100 residents remains #1 in the entire world, at 120.5
guns per 100 residents, which is a net increase from only 89 per 100 in 2013,
which was still #1 at the time. To the rest of the civilized world outside the
United States, such an idealized Reasonable Person living in Detroit, Michigan in
2013, such as the one the Detroit attorneys sought to reconstruct for the
Shooter in this case, would conceivably look very much like an insane, vicious
savage wandering the forest primeval in another Age of the World.
However, this view is deceptive. Because the Mr. Reasonable Me in
Detroit already begins to look markedly different from a different incarnation
of Mr. Reasonable Me living in the Netherlands, for example, which was #112 on
the list of gun ownership in 2013, at 3.9 guns per 100 residents, and which has
presently (2019) settled to a much-reduced position of #162, with 2.6 guns per
100 residents.
So if,
as the lawyers for both parties seemed wont to pretend in 2013, this trial must
play itself out on a terrain of neutral and theoretical reason, was this Shooter’s
act reasonable in the most absolutely neutral sense of that term? Absolutely yes
and no—in a non-absolute kind of way. It would depend on the geography.
In an
absolute and abstracted environment, such as Plato might find in his world of
transcendental forms or the Dutch in the Netherlands, this Shooter’s action would
be considered completely unreasonable – irrational even, very much like what
one would expect from an insane, vicious savage
wandering, etc. And had our Detroit Shooter lived in Transcendental-land
or the Netherlands, instead of Detroit, MI, and had an Unknown Person rang the doorbell
in the middle of the night on a Friday or Saturday, then his action would have
been absolutely irrational, and therefore incomprehensible. Such an act
as this would clearly have been absolutely irrational for this Shooter had he
lived in the Netherlands, for example. Why? Because the Shooter would ‘know’
culturally that 81% of the population of the Netherlands is Caucasian of Germanic or
Gallo Celtic descent—that is to say, they all look pretty much like the Shooter,
so there is no automatic sense of alienation between him and the ambient
population. Therefore, he ‘knows’ them without actually knowing them personally.
He would know they are like him; that he does not wish them harm as they do not
wish him harm, either to his person, his family, or his property; he would know
that, for the most part, they also do not ring doorbells armed with weapons;
nor does the Unknown door-bell ringing Person, even intoxicated, have any especial
malice in ringing his doorbell in the middle of the night.
So, to
follow out this lawyerly line of idealized reasoning, the actions of the Shooter
in Detroit, had he been in the Netherlands, would not only be unreasonable, but
he would obviously also be a raving lunatic; and a guilty verdict would be a
foregone conclusion.
HOWEVER, the tragic event of November
2013 did not play itself out in the Netherlands, nor on a Transcendental terrain
of absolutely neutral and theoretical existence. But in Detroit. So, there was
another reality-layer of unreasonableness in that situation in that location,
which is the irrationality of fear in its confrontation with otherness. And
just how does one go about rationally explaining fear, an emotion, an inherent unreasonableness
that comes of living in a jungle, of being surrounded by armed danger and
Hostile Otherness, which is also probably armed as well? There will be times in
the world, sometimes, when there are just no entirely rational explanations for
some of the situations that will inevitably bubble up from such torrid and
tension-ridden cultural fusions.
So in
fact the question of race, which a Politically Correct politico-legal system wants
at all costs to avoid, and the climate of fear engendered by the dark Other who
happens, tragically and accidentally, to find herself in a significantly
white-bread milieu, fused with an active ambient culture of gun ownership and
gun crime—associated with the dark Other: as much as we may find it
reprehensible on a variety of levels, this fusion does in fact give reasonable
explanation for an irrational act. An act that is intellectually
unreasonable because it is thoughtless and unempathetic, 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.
So, we
may conclude that had the Detroit Shooter been in the Netherlands instead of
Detroit, MI, then a jury could have reasonably decided that not only was he unreasonable,
but that he was also a raving lunatic. And they would have been justified in
finding for a guilty verdict. Had the Detroit Shooter found himself in the very
reasonable Netherlands, it would have been reasonable to conclude that he did not
act reasonably on that early morning in November 2013.
But instead
of the reasonable Netherlands, the Detroit Shooter found himself that morning in
a very emotionally fusional and unreasonable suburb of metro Detroit; which
means that the Law should not, reasonably and in the interests of Justice, have
limited its interpretation of the events of that morning to just the hard “facts.”
Because there were obviously other factors and forces in play. So, in this
circumstance, the philosophically minded observer can justifiably wonder why
Justice, through the representatives of the various legal teams, chose to yield
the day to a blind and archaic lex talionis. There is no such Platonic creature
as the Absolute Reasonable Person—the one-size-fits-all Reasonable Person for
all seasons and climes; and even if there were, there is nothing reasonable
about Justice in metro Detroit.
(Original essay reprised and reworked from Phrontisterion,
November 2013)
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