His Tuesday New York Times column is titled The Perfect-Victim Pitfall with a subtitled of "Michael Brown, and Now Eric Garner"
He talks about the pushback against the protests in the aftermath of the two Grand Jury decisions not to indict police responsible for the deaths of the two Black men, what he describes as a counter-narrative, then he writes:
This narrative paints the police as under siege and unfairly maligned while it admonishes — and, in some cases, excoriates — those demanding changes in the wake of the Ferguson shooting. (Those calling for change now include the president of the United States and the United States attorney general, I might add.)
He addresses the argument that neither Brown or Garner is a 'perfect' victim, that not all protestors have been civil as an excuse of dismissing the idea of countering oppression of Blacks should be dismissed as "inherently flawed" and continues:
But this is ridiculous and reductive, because it fails to acknowledge that the whole system is imperfect and rife with flaws. We don’t need to identify angels and demons to understand that inequity is hell.
He is just getting started with demolishing those who are trying both to justify the police actions and lack of indictments for them while dismissing as irrelevant or illegitimate the increasingly swelling protests across the country, and not just by Blacks.
Please keep reading.
Before I return to Blow's words, let me offer this observation, one of which I often find I have to remind people. Even those guilty of the most heinous of crimes are entitled to the full protection of the Bill of Rights, lest we start down a slippery slope that rationalizes doing away with the due process protections of the criminal justice system and we thereby all are diminished in our own liberty.
I make those remarks because, as one should clearly understand from reading Blow, it does not matter if neither Brown nor Garner was not close to being a saint. Both were entitled to protection of their rights, even if they were being properly arrested (which as far as I can tell does not apply in either case).
Let me continue with two more paragraphs from Blow:
The responses so far have only partly been specific to a particular case. Much of it is about something larger and more general: racial inequality and criminal justice. People want to be assured of equal application of justice and equal — and appropriate — use of police force, and to know that all lives are equally valued.
The data suggests that, in the nation as a whole, that isn’t so. Racial profiling is real. Disparate treatment of black and brown men by police officers is real. Grotesquely disproportionate numbers of killings of black men by the police are real.
Some will offer words like those of Rudy Giuliani, about Black on Black crime as an excuse. Some will talk about the level of crime in predominantly black neighborhoods. But, as Blow notes, those are not the only intersections with high crime - he cites concentrated poverty, school-to-prison pipeline, the history and scars of racial oppression.
He argues that to cite only the racial element while ignoring the rest of these factors "is bound to render a flimsy argument based on the fallacy of discrete factors."
And then he really gets going. It is one of the best presentations of what racism is I have ever encountered.
Because I cannot do it just without violating the standards of fair use, I am going to urge you to read it.
All of it.
Blow tells us
Racism is interpersonal and structural; it is current and historical; it is explicit and implicit; it is articulated and silent.
He would love to live in a world without racism. So would I.
He'd like different world for his children. I would for the children I teach, for my nieces, nephew, and grand-nieces.
Since he does not (nor do I) live in such a world, he offers these words:
Reality doesn’t bend under the weight of wishes. Truth doesn’t grow dim because we squint.
We must acknowledge — with eyes and minds wide open — the world as it is if we want to change it.
There is more.
You should read it.
All of it.
You should have others read it.
All of it.
Then his final paragraph will speak loudly to you:
In this most trying of moments, black men, supported by the people who understand their plight and feel their pain, are saying to the police culture of America, “We can’t breathe!"