Rhetoric Race and Religion
My friend, Peter Heltzel, and a cohort of some 75 faith leaders in New York have called the lack of Police accountability in New York and elsewhere “a spiritual problem.” They’re right, and it’s a problem that requires a spiritual response.
Those faith leaders converged on New York’s city hall for a “Die in” protest in response to the death of Eric Garner, an African-American man who died of suffocation while being choked by officer Daniel Pantaleo, a New York City police officer. It is one of several cultural flash points which have raised the issue of police violence – particularly white officers on people of color – to the forefront of our national conversation. In the case of Michael Brown, the protests continue in Ferguson, MO, where officers responsible for the young man’s death also were not indicted, or even tried, much like officer Pantaleo. And of course the most recent groundswell in concern around this began about a year and a half ago in Florida when Trayvon Martin was shot, though not by an officer.
There are many issues at play in each of these incidents, including the militarization of our police forces, racial tensions in our midst that too often go ignored, and doubts about the impartiality about our Grand Jury and greater judicial systems. Perhaps almost equally as important is how perspectives on the results of these cases as they’ve been judicially reviewed, inevitably break largely across racial lines.
The faith leaders gathered in New York are right about the spiritual malady indicated by the apparent lack of accountability within our police forces, but the spiritual sickness goes much deeper, and is far more complex than any one policy, a single death or a trial (or lack thereof). Yes, we need to address these specific problems head-on, but until we consider the more existential deficits we’re suffering from in our communities, these problems will inevitably continue.
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