Let me take a step back and get a wider view. I see so much division in our nation right now. Words seem to have taken on new meanings depending on which side is talking so that just as in the story of the tower of Babel, confusion and misunderstanding are driving us apart.
In this specific case the split seems to come from the question of who's lives are worth defending. The left says "black lives matter," and the right hears "officers lives don't matter." So the right responds "blue lives matter," and the left hears "minority lives don't matter." This leaves both sides rightly (at least in their understanding) defending their positions saying:
"THAT'S NOT WHAT WE SAID!"
Just as when Colin Kaepernick sat down with Army Green Beret Nate Boyer, I truly believe that if we could slow down and listened to each other most of us would find that we really do agree on more than we imagine.
How so?
Perhaps it will help by starting with a separate situation, one I'm 99.9% sure both sides agree on: abusive priests. Neither side approves of pedophiles taking advantage of their position as priests to hurt children! Of course from the outside looking in, it's a lot easier to accept that priests are corruptible and to even go a step further and start seeing all priests as dangerous and untrustworthy.
From inside the church it's so much harder to believe that leaders you know, you see regularly, you trust to administer communion and hear your confessions, perform your weddings could possibly be (or be covering for) such monsters! Surely the authorities would deal with abusers and justly punish them and remove them from situations where they could abuse again!
But no, in hindsight, they did not do that. Instead they hushed the accusations and shuffled the abusers to places that were unaware of the the truth, other states, other countries, other vulnerable children.
Back to the topic at hand, I think statistically (correct me if I'm wrong) those on the right are more likely to have good trustworthy relationships with police officers. They are family, neighbors, fellow church members, and so on. When the left says "police brutality is a real problem," the right says, "my dad isn't brutal, my neighbor isn't racist, my daughter is working for the good of our community and would never take a life without it being absolutely necessary, my friend gave his life in the line of duty!" It is so personal and thus so hard to imagine that trusted organizations wouldn't justly deal with abusers who step across the line of decency.
On the left side of the "debate" are those who've lost sons, daughters, fathers, mothers, brothers, friends, and teachers to officers who claimed to fear for their own lives, but then watch news reports where white mass shooters are arrested calmly, taken to burger king on the way to the police station, and so forth. The officers who seem to casually take minority lives so often get minimal consequences and if they are thrown off one force may be hired to police another community where their past actions aren't known.
Do you see the parallels?
In both cases, abusive priests and abusive officers, wouldn't it be better for everyone if the "bad apples" were dealt with correctly and barred from ever being in a place of authority where they could damage another life? And, when they aren't given serious consequences for lives destroyed, doesn't it suggest that those in the administration may also be rotten?
If your loved one is a police officer, do you want them working along side officers who take innocent lives, who rape women, who plant evidence at investigations? Isn't calling out such atrocities the correct response? Doesn't sweeping it under the rug or letting them off with a slap on the wrist put your loved ones lives in danger? If the community cannot trust the police department in their neighborhood, why would they trust that your father, daughter, friend or cousin is an honest officer truly there to help them? Don't both sides have a common interest in holding the police accountable?
When I saw that The National Black Police Association responded to the current controversy saying:
I was thrilled. It is a statement of the common interests of both sides!
“Kaepernick’s stance is in direct alignment with what law enforcement stands for—the protection of a people, their human rights, their dignity, their safety, and their rights as American citizens,”
I was thrilled. It is a statement of the common interests of both sides!
Then I saw the that The National Association of Police Organizations is "calling on all our member officers, their families and friends to join in boycotting all Nike products," I was left reeling!
For those of you boycotting the NFL or burning your Nikes, let me see if I can explain the feeling of betrayal this letter evokes in me. I get the same sinking pain in my gut as when I read that Catholic League President Bill Donohue defended the Catholic Church saying:
“There is no on-going crisis—it’s a total myth,” he writes. “In fact, there is no institution, private or public, that has less of a problem with the sexual abuse of minors today than the Catholic Church.”
Really?He's defending them?
Don't stick up for abusers, don't defend those who take innocent lives, or tase 11 year old girls! I truly don't believe my friends and family knowingly support this behavior. Surely we can come to agreement if we just take a step back and listen!
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Update: When looking up links last night I ran across one heartbreaking story that I can't get out of my mind.
Sadly, I think it illustrates my point perfectly. Just as minorities are often told to "stop making things up," "stop resisting," "do as you're told," "the police are there to help you," this child was told not to lie about the priest and sent to be counseled by his abuser!
'Instead, [of believing him] he said, his behavior was dismissed, shrugged off by parents and teachers labeling him a “bad kid.”
"And they were kind of happy that I was spending time with a priest, ya know — like he'd be the one to straighten me out."
'Nobody will believe you'
He hit his breaking point when he was about 13 years old.
An argument after detention led to him telling his parents what Brzyski was doing to him, and had been doing to him for years.
His parents didn’t believe him though.
“You don’t lie about a priest like that,” Delaney father's said as he slapped his son across the face.
“They didn’t know what to do with me.”
Delaney said his parents did reach out to the priest after his confession to them. However, it wasn’t to protect him like he had hoped, and said he needed.
They asked his abuser to counsel him — “their son was troubled,” giving Brzyski even more access to him.
So Delaney went to counseling.
With the man who had been raping him.'
It may take a huge paradigm shift to see those we trust as possibly not worthy of the faith we've placed on them, but let us, as a nation, listen to those who tell us they are being abused. Let us weed out the abusers from those meant to be helpers.
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I welcome your comments, but reserve the right to delete any that cross the line of decency.
2 comments:
So very thoughtful, Heather. I think your comparisons are profound. Efforts to "protect our reputation" can so easily keep us in denial, both individually and corporately. And continue to wound our victims.
I'm so glad it resonates with you. I'm interested that you connect it with protecting ones reputation as that thought never crossed my mind when writing.
In my mind it is more about the inability to see the faults of those we have put our trust in. Was it easier for parents to believe that a "man of God" was a monster or that their teenager was rebellious? Is it easier to believe that "officers of the peace" are deliberately and/or accidentally killing minorities or that those who died "did something to deserve it?" The horrors of life are so much easier to bear if "what goes around, comes around" is actually true.
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