Ahmaud Arbery was murdered last February while jogging in the state of
Georgia.
Mr. Arbery was black. His two murderers, a father and son, are white. Neither of them has been arrested or jailed. The father is a retired police officer who worked as an investigator for the state attorney’s office. The son killed Mr. Arbery with a shotgun at close range (as you can see in the video below).
The two men saw Mr. Arbery jogging through their all white neighborhood and immediately saw him as a criminal. So, they jumped into their pick-up truck and hunted him down, killing him in the street.
They claimed he looked like a burglary suspect – probably because all black men look alike to them. Their defense claims that they acted in accordance with Georgia’s Stand Your Ground law, even though they had driven blocks away from their home in order to ambush Mr. Arbery, who was shot in the middle of a public road.
Ironically, their “stand your ground” defense is actually a testament to their own racist sensibility. Obviously, in their minds, all of America is the white man’s ground, where all black Americans are trespassers and criminals.
Their actions unveil the deeply ingrained suspicion throughout white America that all African-Americans are suspect, guilty until proven innocent.
Imagine how differently this incident would have been handled if two black men had shot down a white jogger running through the neighborhood. The shooters would have been beaten by the arresting officers, thrown in jail without bail, and quickly convicted with life sentences.
Mr. Arbery’s murderers have not suffered any of these things. They are white men living in white America, an American where black people are still – in 2020 – considered to be inferior, a genetically criminal underclass.
[I have often thought of this racial double-standard when watching the white, anti-government demonstrators protesting their governor’s stay- at-home orders. A good number of these protesters arrive at their state capitols with guns, often semi-automatic, high-powered rifles. Oh, my goodness, how very, very differently these demonstrators would be handled by the authorities if they were angry black Americans doing the same things.]
Three state attorneys have been taken off the case for conflicts of interest. The Arbery family lawyer will soon have a chance (finally) to present his case before a grand jury, where the proceedings will probably remain closed.
Had the video recording of Mr. Arbery’s murder not been disclosed, the two murders would undoubtedly have gone free after being declared innocent.
When the local police informed the victim’s mother about her son’s death, they simply repeated the murders’ version of the story. They told Mrs. Arbery that her son was a robbery suspect and that he aggressively started the confrontation that ended in his death.
But the police version of the story merely repeats a long-standing racist trope: whites are driven to defend themselves against the aggression of inherently violent black men.
Look at any photograph of an American lynching, for that is what we are talking about here. What do you see? A crowd of armed white people looking at the mutilated body of a black man accused of some crime against a white person.
America is still infected with such racism.
Examples similar to Mr. Arbery’s occur regularly all throughout this country, month after month, week after week. Often the assaults are committed by uniformed police officers – perhaps you have seen the recent videos of policemen beating black citizens for not wearing face masks in public. [So, why haven’t the Capitol police punched Donald Trump in the face?]
White America’s suspicions about the racial inferiority of “colored people” continues to cast a heavy, destructive shadow all across in this country.
African Americans live with the weight of that oppressive shadow every day of their lives.
So my question remains: what is the white church in America doing to help eliminate that racist burden for our brothers and sisters blessed by God with a different skin color?
Update 1: Please take a few minutes to watch political activist and former Ohia state legislator Nina Turner’s response to Ahmaud Arbery’s murder on HillTV’s program “Rising.” She speaks from her heart as an African-American mother, poignantly describing the effects such crimes have within the black community.
Update 2: I just read a southern pastor’s blog post lamenting Ahmaud Arbery’s death. It is a good example of what is wrong with so much of white American Christianity. His analysis is entirely emotive and individualistic. In his mind, Arbery’s death is one more example of “sin in our society.” His solution is to “hold your children close” and “pray for Jesus to come quickly.” He has nothing more to offer. Frankly, it’s pathetic. No wonder African-Americans attend their own churches, while seeing white congregations as out of touch.
