A Response to a Facebook Post About Michael Brown

Mrs. ______, After reading your response on my mom's post, I was overwhelmed with a lot of negative feelings as your choice to use the word "thug" echoed in my heart. I have spent the past 30 minutes in prayer as I want to reach out to you in a peaceful and prayerful way. I hope that is how you receive this message because that is how I am writing it. When you called Michael Brown and Dorian Johnson "thugs," you were dehumanizing them. They had a mother, a father, brothers and sisters, friends, and loved ones who gave them a name and called them by that name because they are humans with an inherent dignity that I believe can never be taken away. Their names were Michael and Dorian. Would you call my friend Joe a "thug" because he is Black and is currently staying at a homeless shelter here in Louisville? Would you call my friend Rick a "thug" because he has a drug felony and is currently in a rehab center? I hope that you wouldn't because I love Joe and Rick. I had lunch with Joe today at a soup kitchen. He gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek as we said goodbye until December when I return from a semester studying in Europe. Last week, Rick and I got dinner and he told me he loved when when we said goodbye. He's going to be my pen pal this semester. Mrs. ______, the situation in Ferguson is complicated. No one but Michael, the police officer, and God really know what happened. I don't know. You don't know. My mom doesn't know. But what I do know is that Michael and Dorian are human beings. Joe and Rick are human beings. You and I are human beings. And we belong to each other. All of us, despite our race, the neighborhood we grew up in, the schools we attended, the jobs that we have. We are all humans, and the similarities that we have far outweigh our differences. I said this in my Facebook post and I want to write it again. As a white woman from a very privileged upbringing, I am in no position to make a moral judgement on the men, women, and children who are taking a stand against injustice in St. Louis. They are the people who have experienced hundreds of years of oppression, violence, and racism in "the land of the free." The rioting and looting that you allude to in your posts are reactions to a larger system that has targeted young Black men for hundreds of years. A system that includes racial profiling, over policing of predominately Black neighborhoods, the militarization of the police, mass incarceration, and HUGE disparities in education, housing, and employment. I have learned about these disparities in my studies and I have witnessed them in my own life. I have even benefited from these very disparities as a white, upper-middleclass woman. If I am to truly follow the life of Jesus, I must spend my life working for equality, peace and justice. For me, that looks like working toward a world where everyone has the same opportunities that I have had. It's time that we listen to what people have been trying to tell us for years...that racism did not end with the civil rights movement, that our neighborhoods are just as segregated as they were in the 1950s, and that we have a responsibility as members of the human race to uplift the human dignity of every human person. You fail to do this when you call Michael and Dorian "thugs." I fail to do this when I dehumanize and overgeneralize police officers. I hope this message finds you well and I hope that you reconsider referring to Michael and Dorian as "thugs" again. Try referring to them as human beings, as our brothers and sisters in Christ, as friends. That's how to fight against injustice and oppression in all forms. Peace, Sarah Nash