Social Justice Is Not Black and White: Fear, Division, and the Cult of Media

In the aftermath of Freddie Gray’s death, Baltimore explodes. Yet this picture—of a little Black boy offering a bottle of water to a police officer, an officer who may still see him as a threat in the shadow of repeated killings—captures a rare, fragile moment of reconciliation.

Were this only the vision for us all: to see each other as needing each other…

I reshare this blog on #SocialJustice after wrestling with my emotions from #MichaelBrown. And now, those same emotions are as raw as they were six months ago.

Social InJustice

As a mother, the ache in my being for any parent who loses a child is unbearable. But to lose a son—murdered by an officer sworn to uphold the law—is unconscionable. To lose a son, marginalized for the color of his skin, is irreparable.

To lose a son, when the scales of justice tilt under the weight of his blood, and even the verdict of a jury offers no reparation—that is inconsolable.

I stand with the mother of Michael Brown and the people of Ferguson in a grief that defies measure.

We are psychologically drowning in hurt and pain. We are all scarred by the extremes of social injustice.

We are told to see everything only through the microscope of Black and White.
We are taught to incise the vitriol of hate, fueling the war-making of prejudice.
We are conditioned into the psyche of divide and conquer.
And the media drowns us in the furor of our worst fears. 

For 24 hours, we are incensed by the atrocities of a verdict, and then we find ourselves captive to the very power of that medium—feeding our own despair.

Perhaps the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and so many others, victims of heinous societal injustices, are the call to reclaim and demand a deeper justice: human justice.

Human justice is not practiced in a courtroom—as we now know too well.

It begins at birth. It begins in the conduct we extend to each other, in the respect we nurture in our families, in the virtue and value we instill in our children and loved ones.
We are the forces of human justice when we live by those truths.

When we awaken to the opportunity we are born to share, we will no longer find excuses to divide by race, by color, or by what society deems valuable.
When we choose to revere humanity itself, the lives lost to injustice will be honored in their memory.

To achieve social justice, we must refuse slavery to the idea of Black and White. We must awaken to the conscious experience of our highest being.

As Robert Nesta Marley sang—and as so many prophets of life have proclaimed:

“Until the philosophy which holds one race superior and another inferior is finally and permanently discredited and abandoned—everywhere is war.
Until there are no longer first-class and second-class citizens of any nation—everywhere is war.
Until the color of a man’s skin is of no more significance than the color of his eyes—and until basic human rights are equally guaranteed to all without regard to race—there is war.
And until that day, the dream of lasting peace, world citizenship, and the rule of international morality will remain but a fleeting illusion… now everywhere is war.”