I am sure/hopeful that by now many have heard that Michael Dunn was sentenced to life without parole for the killing of Jordan Davis. If you don’t quite remember which gunning down of an unarmed Black American this awful case was, Michael Dunn was a 47-year-old White Floridian who stopped at a convenience store with his fiancee to pick up a bottle of wine. There, he was angered that the rap music coming from a nearby Black teenager’s SUV was too loud for his preferences. He told the young men to turn the music down, and he and Davis, one of the backseat passengers, argued. Michael Dunn then took his gun and opened fire on the four teens in the car, shooting ten times, even as they sped away from his murderous attack. Three of those bullets struck and killed Jordan Davis.
Facts you may not know:
- Michael Dunn is a software engineer, born and raised after the Civil Rights movement, visiting Jacksonville from Central Florida
- Jordan Davis was a passenger in the back seat, not the driver
- Jordan Davis was a high school student in Air Force ROTC
- Prior to this sentencing, Michael Dunn already had been convicted and sentenced to 60 years for shooting at the other three teenagers (the sentences are running concurrently)
- The jury in the Jordan Davis case was comprised of 10 White and 2 Black citizens
- Michael Dunn’s defense argued that the teens had pulled a gun on Michael Dunn so he shot only in self-defense and continued emptying his gun into the children’s car as they drove away to ensure they did not fire back (per “Stand Your Ground”). The Sheriff and other witnesses confirmed none of the children were armed.
Having spent a few weeks in social media now navigating the never-ending evil that is the Trump campaign, the virulent attacks on Colin Kapearnick’s sitting in protest of police brutality against Black citizens, and the...okay, literally, the constant filter of racial animus and entitlement through which ALL events affecting or involving people of color are passed, for which I do not have time, energy or wrist support enough to list, I am sharing these three thoughts:
1) A lot of entitled White Americans are just one unchecked moment away from being the next racist headline. Michael Dunn stopped at a convenience store to buy a bottle of wine. He literally did not have the most basic tools to ignore that SUV, get his items and go back to his hotel with his loved one. Can we all agree, or surely consider, that this case was not one iota about rap music? I believe it was the anger that these young men of color were at the same convenience store, in a nice car, being visible and audible and ultimately, not deferential.
Far beyond the inexplicability, futility and immaturity of a nearly-50-year-old man getting into a protracted argument with high schoolers, for Dunn, shooting all of them in response was a viable option. It was on the menu of possibilities for dealing with young men playing loud music. So what level of disrespect for, of utter dehumanization of, those young men must you have to think the next step after being “disobeyed” is to murder them all like insects on your kitchen floor?
I see that level of disrespect a lot in my various social media accounts. In one of my friend’s timelines, an actual police officer was “yelling” at posters who supported Colin Kapearnick’s protest, including veterans, to go find another country to live in. A glance at his public page showed shocking posts about Black people and about President Obama, together with a newspaper posting about “armed thugs.” When challenged to explain his insults of POTUS in light of his insistence that people respect “symbols of America” like the flag, he exited the conversation.
There is zero chance people of color in his town stand a chance of justice if this LEO pulls them over. There is a high likelihood, instead, that he will be the next viral YouTube video for having lost his already frail grip on civility and human decency and murdered someone. He will not examine his racial animus, his darkness. He is a pot waiting to boil over into some innocent person’s life.
2) To entitled White Americans, nothing is worse than being called a “racist.” To quickly unpack this, that might be because:
a) White American culture was built on racism, they know exactly how depraved and bestial it is, and they want no association with it. Other than the extraordinary privilege it bestows. That part is awesome. So the entitled constantly argue that privilege is not about race or not their fault or even non-existent (“someone tell me where my bag of ‘privilege’ money is!”). Meanwhile, no one stands, nor will they ever, for Jane Eliot’s seminal question:
b) For the entitled, lacking the tools, stamina, credentials or interest in engaging in constructive conversations about race, the fallback redirection to whether or not someone is “unfairly being called a racist” lands right in the comfort zone of their basic discourse level. That is why they will argue to the end about whether or not Trump/Michael Dunn/Dylann Roof and their ilk (yes, “their,” collectively, as racists) should be branded racists while uttering not a word of outrage about the horrific things that they say and do. They have no tools for the latter, and there are no tools required for the former.
As an example, last week, a high school classmate was insulting a friend of mine while sputtering poutrage about Kapearnick. I explained why we couldn’t continue such important dialogue with someone who posts racist images to their (of course, public) timeline. He immediately went down the you’re-calling-me-a-racist rabbit hole, and I clarified that I’d called his posts racist, and that they were reflections, certainly, of his own beliefs. I posted screengrabs of the virulently racist images he’d shared and discussed, and he countered that he found those “humorous.” All conversation simply continued around him from that point on.
He has since demanded that someone prove the present-day impact of slavery on Black people. And I have since posted:
The thing is, this man cannot and will not see his hate for what it is or see any value in trying to learn about racism. He feels comfortable entering a dialogue for which he has neither intellectual nor emotional tools, and he gets defensive when people of color don’t welcome him and his dismissive speech to the chat. Again, to me, he is one negative engagement with a person of color away from demanding he “be respectfully listened to” via some senseless act. Worse, not only will that person not see it coming, HE won’t see it coming. He has not acknowledged, much less examined, any of his angry beliefs or the sea of hateful images he receives and shares and laughs about daily (I pulled ten images from less than a month of nearly daily posts to his timeline). Like an endlessly looping video game, he keeps replaying images projecting our savagery and his glory over and over. He not only believes them, he feels empowered to convince us that WE are the ignorant and confused ones lacking support to our arguments. He is a ticking time bomb of ignorance and hate, and sadly, the justice system is statistically on his side of a fatal decision.
2) The entitled simply cannot bear to relinquish control of “the narrative.” This pertains especially to the narrative about race since it is that false narrative that has convinced them that they are intellectually superior to people of color. This becomes a tautology of sorts, ultimately. And a waste of time.
I don’t argue with the entitled about the inevitable facts missing from or easily invalidating their statements about racism. I don’t “show links” (what level of Driving-Miss-Daisy privilege would even make you write this to a stranger?) or otherwise try to educate them. I just confirm immediately whether or not they are willing to step up their level of engagement.
I believe you can’t just show up and believe that being White = being right. I show up with a lifetime of anecdotal evidence and still have research and data to support what I am advocating for, and the entitled and wildly ignorant must do the same. Why? Because, again, people are DYING because of this casual attitude towards race, racism, people of color, privilege, etc. That was how a Michael Dunn was created and a Jordan Davis was murdered in cold blood and broad daylight.
It is this belief, that any uttered fiction that aligns with the common, racist stereotypes about people of color magically becomes plausible, that makes a Michael Dunn argue — evidence and multiple witnesses be damned — that Jordan Davis pulled a gun so he, Michael Dunn, had to fire repeatedly, after a retreating vehicle, to save his life. We all know cases where the-unidentified-Black-thug-did-it has worked wonders for murderers. I’m relieved and grateful and maybe a bit surprised that it sank like lead with this jury. In fact, I’d like to think enough of them have, at minimum, engaged in this dialogue over the past few years of social media expanding access to diverse experiences and thoughts, that they saw through that immediately. (In interviews, they assured reporters that they did.)
What we end with now, instead, is Michael Dunn biting his lip, claiming he is sorry he took a life, and Jordan Davis’ family and many of the jury weeping openly in the courtroom over the tragedy of it all.
Dunn’s apology may be real. I am not moved, first, because, per the evidence presented at trial:
“Prosecutors say Dunn was unperturbed after killing Davis. Afterward, he returned to his hotel room, made a drink, ordered pizza and walked his dog.”
Second, an apology is wholly insufficient in the bigger picture. Young Black men’s lives do not exist so that the entitled can snuff them out in order to, finally, find some level of humanity and decency in their souls. Locked away for the rest of his life, it is too late for Dunn, regardless, per his Circuit Judge, Russell Healy:
"Mr. Dunn, your life is effectively over," Healey said, according to The Associated Press. "What is sad is that this case exemplifies that our society seems to have lost its way."
I wonder if it isn’t also too late for all of us? As long as the entitled so adamantly refuse to examine their own casually racist beliefs and behavior, the equally casual killings will continue. The blood and the tears will keep flowing. The lies and justifications will proliferate. The cultural complacency that allows this violence, that really mandates it, will thrive.
This particular realm of American violence cannot be fixed as long as the people most necessary to this conversation can continue to stay out of it, to de-friend, unfollow and block an issue because it is unfamiliar, unimportant, disquieting or upsetting. I read a thought-provoking manifesto, Why It’s Time Black People Simply Disengage With White People In Discussing Race, a few weeks ago that said this in the most powerful way I’ve yet seen it expressed:
How nice it must be to have the option of simply logging off of your oppression.
Much of what the author of that post wrote resonated deeply with me, and yet, I have reached quite the opposite conclusion. When people ask, then, why I engage at all with the entitled, I reply that it is because they are the only answer to the problem. So I engage with them exclusively around awareness of their personal role in continuing this problem. I don’t do it expecting them to change, though some do stay in the conversation, dial down the rhetoric, ask and offer more personally and profoundly. I do it to remind everyone in the conversation that it is not on us, as people of color, to prove racism exists or to fix it. It is on us to turn the lens right back at the entitled and say, this is wholly on you. And perhaps it will work if we appeal to the narcissism and relentless self-preservation that accompanies this particularly mindset: if you don’t address your own entitlement, you may be the next hashtag, too.
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