Read the Comments: Terence Crutcher and Our Sin of Silence

Read the Comments: Terence Crutcher and Our Sin of Silence September 20, 2016

Again. AGAIN.

Again this morning I am sitting in front of the screen with the struggle that is starting to feel all too familiar–to watch, or not to watch?

I do not want to watch the video of Terence Crutcher being shot by police. It is no small thing to witness the end of a human life. I’ve been in the room when people die. More than once. In those cases, it is a sacred thing. But it is no small thing, that passage. It is a holiness that I hold lightly–but never take lightly. And watching death play out on my computer screen–that feels like taking it lightly.

To view a death that is ‘trending’ in the news also feels like complicity in the culture of violence-as-entertainment. It’s a culture that I oppose, often and vocally. Every death viewed on the screen desensitizes us to the realities of violence, and–I’ll just say it–diminishes the sanctity of life. This man deserves the dignity of not having a million people watch the last few seconds of his life, as though it were a show that we watch on FX after the kids go to bed.

But.

via Pixabay
via Pixabay

I also recognize that if I turn away, it’s a choice I make out of privilege. That kind of violence is not a daily factor on the street where I live. It doesn’t follow me home, or watch me closely, or stop me on the corner because of my skin color. So in choosing to not look, I am choosing the privilege of my own relative safety, my own sheltered world.

So lately, I’ve been choosing to watch. Because this keeps happening. It’s not that it’s happening more often, but the evolution of the camera phone and our so-connected lives are putting it front of us more often. Every day, it seems. Again. And I have to wonder if part of why it keeps happening is because people like me chose not to watch for so long.

I’m not choosing my own comfort and safety any more. I’m going to watch.

And also–I’m going to read the comments.

I know this goes against everything I’ve ever said about “step away from the comments section,” and “do not feed the trolls.” And I still hold those as good rules for life, in general. But in this sort of situation–which KEEPS HAPPENING–those rules no longer apply. It is my own comfort and safety and mental health that I’m choosing when I do not read the comments. I do not want to see the ignorance, the hate, the white rage that dominates these public spaces. I do not want to witness the less overt ways that well-meaning folks perpetuate toxic systems of racism.

But me choosing not to see it is part of the problem. Me “stepping away from the comments section” just means I don’t have to look in the face of what people of color have to look in the face of every day.

So I’m done with that. I’m telling you this, here, so that you can hold me accountable. I’m going to read the comments. I’m going to do my best to understand where white people’s willful ignorance is coming from. But more importantly, I’m reading so that I can better understand what it is that my non-white brothers and sisters are up against.

I’m reading so that I can see what my sins of silence have wrought.

I challenge you, as well. Watch the videos. Read the comments.

I’m not suggesting that you must ENGAGE the comments. I doubt that your quippy response to a stranger’s bigotry–however articulate and profound your remarks may be–will change any hearts or minds in the grand scheme of things. But read it anyway. Sit with the discomfort. Let your stomach turn. That sick feeling is your empathy talking. It is compassion. It is the unsettling spirit that leads to progress and systemic change. Let that feeling have you. Let it lead, and see where it takes you.

The more you let yourself see–and read, and hear–the more ready you may be the next time someone you actually know says something like, “well, he had a record.” Perhaps you can remind them that past crimes are by no means a justification for an in-the-moment execution. The next time someone says “well, they just need to learn to respect authority…” Perhaps you could remind them that disrespect does not come with the death penalty in this country. At least, not officially. The matter of respect being earned is another discussion entirely, of course. But maybe it’s one that you can engage, with people in your life with whom you have an actual relationship. But first, we have to make ourselves see it. We have to stop pretending that we live in another world from the one in which these things keep happening.

Because they just keep happening.

Watching the sickening video, and reading the sickening comments, does not cure the sickness. But it does slowly, somehow, begin to break the sickening silence.


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