Pursuing Justice For All continues a string of Pulitzer worthy columns by the New York Times columnist.
Let me give you a taste of this column. After writing about Stinney's having to sit on a book for his execution Blow offers this comment:
(Note to humanity: When the person in your death machine requires a booster seat, maybe you should reconsider what you are about to do.)
The heart of his remarks about Stinney comes in three paragraphs immediate after discussing the vacating of the conviction last week:
This was a victory of sorts: a 70-years-too-late admission that the justice system failed that black child, and that the failure culminated — in short order — in the taking of his life. Yet something about it feels hollow and discomforting, like the thunder that rolls long after the lightning has cracked the sky and split the tree.
It boldly announces itself in all its noisy nothingness. It was the white flash that did the damage and produced the splinters.
That is all too often what “righting” racial injustice looks like in this country: a hollow pronouncement that follows the damage but doesn’t prevent its recurrence.
Please keep reading.
Blow writes this column in a broader context, one in which more direct taking of Black life by the criminal justice system through the actions of law enforcement,
But there is more to this column. It is, after all, written today, the day after the assassination of two New York Policeman.
Blow addresses this as well, writing
The heart aches for every life lost.
He writes that every life is valuable, that the killer deserves our condemnation, even while noting that he was "deranged and suicidal." He sees no contradiction, because
Humanity is the common thread.
He ends with a powerful paragraph, one that I can only hope will be taken to heart by the uniformed officers of the NYPD, because the families of those killed recently by police have already condemned yesterday's shooting. Read Blow's words, and pass them and this column on:
The cries of ancestors mingle with those of activists and those of dead officers. Anguish stretches across generations and across the racial gulf. Equal justice demands its proper place. The taking of life on both sides of the badge must be redressed.
Indeed.
Because it is the only way my usual final salutation can have meaning in this case:
Peace.