APRIL 14, 2021 – During last year’s protests following the death of George Floyd, Jr., Mike Max, the popular sportscaster on local CBS affiliate WCCO, assumed double-duty as street-beat reporter. He did a fine job—reporting objectively, asking hard questions, not flinching in the face of approaching tear gas. Last night he appeared in the police state of Brooklyn Center.
Soon after curfew, Max caught up with a young (white) woman among the dwindling group of demonstrators. He asked her what she was demanding.
“Justice,” she said.
“Given that the officer involved in the shooting and the police chief resigned today,” Max asked, “and that Derek Chauvin is on trial, how else would you define justice?”
“The officer should’ve been fired,” said the woman. “And why is there a trial? There shouldn’t even be a trial. We all saw what happened.”
I flinched. Such words uttered casually over an abundance of beer and pizza would stuff me with distress. But if the woman’s idea of justice reflects a common sentiment among protesters, we’re in worse shape than I thought on January 6. On the right: hooligan authoritarianism. On the left: frontier justice. In either case: the end of the ideals that define us.
This young woman and countless others, I fear, need a crash course in remedial civics. For its survival, our democracy requires a citizenry halfway educated about the nation’s basic operating principles.
For starters, we need to define “justice” amidst racial injustice.
Is justice served only by Chauvin’s public hanging without trial, followed immediately by the forced, public suicide of Kim Potter (the officer who shot Daunte Wright)? Do we achieve justice if Chauvin is convicted and sentenced to the max if we then sigh with relief and move on? Is there justice if we focus exclusively on police reform, yet avoid the long, hard project of improving health care, education, transportation, housing, and economic opportunities in underprivileged Black communities?
To press the point further, can real justice come only via reparations? Only for Americans whose ancestry is 100% (kidnapped) African? If less than 100%, only if “whiteness” is traceable to slaveowner abuse not consensual unions? Is justice served by reparations for Blacks if not for Indians—or any number of other groups savaged by one aspect or another of American culture, policy, and history? Is justice achieved if payment of reparations for Blacks is forced from Asian Americans? From whites whose immigrant lineage post-dates civil rights legislation of the 1960s?
Is there justice if George Floyd’s family is paid a $27 million settlement but Daunte Wright’s family receives only $10 million, and in either case, if no settlement funds are earmarked for the education of whites about the history of slavery, Reconstruction, Jim Crow, the Great Migration, and the Civil Rights Movement and nothing for . . . those crash courses in remedial civics?
When it comes to defining “justice” and ignoring “injustice,” we all do poorly when we all do poorly, and right now, as a nation we’re flunking.
(Remember to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.)
© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
