Deserve’s Got Nothing To Do With It

In the wake of the killing of Jordan Neely, several people reminded me of this old post from 2012. I wrote it for Radley Balko’s great and regrettably departed web site The Agitator. I had to fish it out of the Internet Archive. Fortunately Radley’s tearing it up doing great work at his new site The Watch, which you should read.

I wrote this eleven years ago about the death of Rodney King and about the rhetoric we use to justify or condemn how the police treat people, but I think it holds up today, and increasingly applies to how citizens use violence against each other. It’s been edited for my general illiteracy and to remove dead links. It grieves me how little has changed, despite a temporary surge of concern for police violence. Some people reacted to Jordan Neely’s killing by being mad at Jordan Neely; they remind me at the people who were incensed at Rodney King’s funeral 11 years ago.

They buried Rodney King this weekend. They came to praise the man they buried, not to condemn the criminal justice system illuminated by his videotaped beating. For the most part, speakers respected the family’s wish that the service be about remembering the man, not the politics. Indeed, speakers praised King’s capacity for forgiveness, an attribute that once exposed him to ridicule. “People should not be judged by the mistakes that they make, but by how they rise above them,” said eulogist Al Sharpton, a man with reason to hope fervently that proposition is true.

But while King — the man — inspired words about family and love and forgiveness at his funeral, King — the man and the symbol — still inspires raw hatred and outrage. Skim the comments of any news article about him, like this USA Today story about his funeral:

As usual this ass bag sharpton has to get his time in the spot light….and lets not forget king ran because he was on probation…..high as a damn kite….speeding…..once they got him stopped he continued violent behaviour. Ohhhh and after he got his money he was once again arrested and jailed for doing the same thing…..violating his probation….. the content of his “character” and his continued nefarious behaviour spoke volumes about him. He made the decisions that drove his life…and death.

Or check out the comments at National Review Online, which are ...