Thanksgiving with Darren Wilson

Quote: “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.” – Martin Luther King

Fact: Police shot John Crawford dead in a Dayton, Ohio Walmart on August 5th when a 9-11 caller accused him of pointing a gun at shoppers. Surveillance cameras show him carrying a BB gun he intended to buy and talking on his cellphone before a cop yelled "Drop the gun!" while shooting him fatally a second later. His killer walked, with no indictment.

Crawford had worked a lot lately and looked forward to going back to school. The footage shows that bright future stamped out for good. 

Fact: Cleveland police killed a 12-year-old boy named Tamir Rice just this past weekend for brandishing a pellet gun on a playground.

Confession: I remember that age, when we mischievously stalked the neighborhood looking for pebbles to fire at Pepsi cans. When the faces in such stories have white skin, they inspire holiday comedies.

Confession: When I watch the surveillance footage of Michael Brown robbing a convenience store, I see a young man attempting, tragically, to drive out darkness with darkness. When I squint my eyes and pretend that I am witnessing a 6'4" tall white male shoving a store clerk into the magazine rack by his neck, my eyes tell me that the officer who claims to have felt physically threatened moments later probably tells the truth.

As a light operator on history's sound stage, for a show I have chosen, it bothers me when something goes wrong. I want the little guys to be truly heroic and the authorities to get their just desserts. 

Confession: I have felt rather neutral concerning the judgments passed on Officer Wilson. How cruel, especially when I believe his story.

I have wondered about him. Where have they holed him up for the last 100 days? I do not believe in the conspiratorial “They,” but if ever there was a “They,” it is “They” who arrived in Ferguson before the last infamous shot finished ringing and covered Darren Wilson in their cloak, as if “They” have foreknowledge of where and when storms of history will hit.“They” have gotten to know Wilson quite well, wherever “They” have kept him.

I wonder about Wilson’s friends, past and present, what type of woman he recently married, which church he goes to, if any, and for whom he pulls the lever on election day.

In a secret location somewhere, a cop who will soon resign thinks about the upcoming holiday. Occasionally, he walks by a television. A firestorm has erupted in Ferguson, Missouri. The instinctual thought always follows, “Hey, I patrol that area,” And then he remembers.

Later a photo flashes onto the screen. “Hey, that’s me. Dave must have taken that with his cell phone.” And then…

Confession: I begin to feel sorry for Officer Wilson.

Waking up that Saturday morning, a low-profile Missouri police officer; by noon, a Dracula, whom a second of daylight could kill.

He now finds himself scorched by a past and a present, which neither he nor any other of his race fully understand. It cannot be explained to them anymore than water can be explained to a fish. They cannot look directly at it without going blind.

Others allow it to power the future and propel the human race roughshod. With good intentions, they champion groups with less power on the world stage, but ignore particularities, automatically assuming that less power equals virtue for every individual. As a result, facts get stomped to death.

Fact: On the night of the Grand Jury announcement, the news outlets showed a split screen: Obama speaking on one side, and Ferguson looting on the other; one side showing the man who represents a small but significant step out of the darkness, the other a stampede backward into a celebration of the darkness, as if not running from authority so much as from the possibility of it. 

Meanwhile, Darren Wilson prepares for a secluded Thanksgiving with a couple of secret service members and State Policemen. They do not understand what the hell is going on. A book of American letters sits on a shelf above a 120" television and Xbox console. A letter from James Baldwin to his nephew lives on page 344, which no one has ever thumbed:

“There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.”

In Ohio, two families have an empty chair at their Thanksgiving table. Ferguson burns.