I know. I felt it, too. Relief, that for once I don’t have to cringe before a mighty injustice. Justice, as has been rightly said, has not been done, not fully. But at least its raging opposite did not happen—an acquittal even in the face of iron evidence of a monstrous depravity. At the very least, not that.
And I know. I tried to hold it back, but for just a moment I thought that maybe, at last, a turning point had been reached. That the next time an ego-addled enforcer thought about slamming around a Black body, he might think something along the lines of, “This could get me in deep s**t.” And he wouldn’t yield to temptation. I did, for a brief moment, think that might happen.
And I know. Even as I thought both these things, I died a little inside, hearing the news. Another shooting. Another death. Another protest.
But I also know something still more. And that is that for all the possibilities of change, and even for all the status that is still quo, we are still stuck as a nation. Because a backlash is coming.
There are people out there who have already noticed that the guilty verdict came about because bystanders didn’t just stand by. Those people will work to make it harder to video, to cajole, to call 911. They will do all in their power to make it easier to pass by.
Many have also already taken notice that the guilty verdict happened because of stellar prosecution. Those people will do all in their power to keep that from ever happening again.
Many have also noticed that protests kept everything in the face of the public. Those people are already working to destroy protestors.
And the word is already going out: You got your verdict. The system works. We have eliminated the one bad apple. There aren’t any more.
Now that is very depressing. It would be easy to walk away now. To give up. But it isn’t the time. What we need instead is to brace ourselves. Watch out. These are very un-creative people except in one field. In the brutalizing of Black people, they exhibit a ton of creativity. When an avenue closes, they find an alley. When a loophole opens up, they take it. But don’t give up. Acknowledge that supremacism is a virus which mutates, which makes variants. Don’t give up. Let’s mutate right back. Get back in the struggle. Increase our own creativity and find, wherever possible, our joy in the endeavor. We’re not done. We’re keeping on keeping on.
But first, we have to brace ourselves. If we aren’t ready, we will be knocked over. And it will be a long, difficult time to pick ourselves back up again.