Institutional racism. Rampant income inequality. A broken justice system. America may never be a great society
David Masciotra, AlterNet
Salon - Monday, Dec 29, 2014
It seems police can get away with anything: choking men who have
surrendered; shooting unarmed teens; knocking pregnant women to the
ground. While the issues involving race, civil rights and the
relationship between law enforcement and communities are essential for
examination and correction, few are talking about how all of this fits
into the larger pattern of America’s cultural decline and decay. America
has become a society addicted to violence and indifferent to the
suffering of people without power. Whenever there is a combination of a
culture of violence and an ethic of heartlessness, fatal abuse of
authority will escalate, and the legal system will fail to address it.
Critics
are right to condemn the criminal justice system for its embedded
inequities and injustices, but they are hesitant to condemn the actual
jurors giving killer cops get-out-of-jail-free cards. These jurors are
representational of America: ignorant and cold. They hear testimony from
eyewitnesses claiming Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown while he had his
hands in the air, and set Wilson free without trial. They listen to
reports of three officers choking Robert Saylor, an unarmed man with
Down syndrome who wanted to see a movie without a ticket, and they send
the police back to work. They watch video footage of police choking Eric
Garner in New York, and of two police officers brutally beating
Keyarika Diggles, a woman in Texas, and they decline to make them pay
for it.
Have they been programmed into cruelty and apathy by American schools, churches, families, politics, and pop culture?
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