White Awake by Daniel Hill

Author:Daniel Hill
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: White;cultural identity;privilege;ethnic blindness;race;racism;race relations;recial reconciliation;white identity;white privilege;multiethnicity;ethnicity;multiethnic studies;multiethnic ministry;multiethnicity and the church;Christian;church;Caucas
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2017-07-13T20:31:16+00:00

A City on Fire

One event that rattled the city of Chicago and brought the need for lament to the forefront was the 2015 release of a video from the dashboard camera of a police cruiser that recorded the shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald. Videos of the shootings of unarmed civilians often exacerbate the divide between the white community and certain communities of color, but the pervasiveness of abuse in this episode left our city in a nearly universal state of shock, anger, and sadness.

The video shows a teenager stumbling erratically down a busy street at ten o’clock at night, appearing to be under the influence of some kind of substance. He was also in possession of a three-inch pocketknife, and you can hear the officers shouting at him to drop it. But instead of dropping it, McDonald began heading in the other direction and was then shot as he walked away from the officers. In contradiction to this, the police report claimed that McDonald had verbally threatened the officers first, and the police use of lethal force without provocation served as the first major offense.

Shooting a teenager from behind was bad enough, but what happened next is what made the killing seem cold blooded. After watching McDonald collapse after the first shot, the officer shot him an additional fifteen times, expending the capacity of the semiautomatic firearm. McDonald may have survived the first gunshot, but he had no chance after the second onslaught.

Once the sixteen shots were fired, the scene moves as if in slow motion. Many who’ve watched the video have felt helpless at the chilling display of a young man dying alone. No one came to his aid or checked on his status as he lay there. Not one person showed even a modicum of interest in this precious child of God as he breathed his final breath. Like the blood of Abel crying out from the ground, McDonald’s blood screamed for justice.

Fuel was poured on the fire when it was discovered that a multilayer conspiracy had covered up evidence for more than thirteen months. This was the straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back, as it exposed a system of justice failing on all levels. Members of the Chicago Police Department, who are employed to serve and protect, had chosen to tamper with evidence to protect one of their own. The Cook County State Attorney’s Office, which was tasked with bringing cases of negligence like this to light, turned a blind eye. The Office of the Mayor, tasked with overseeing the police department, failed to take action of any kind until a whistleblower exposed it. And it certainly didn’t dispel perceptions of conspiracy as the coverup overlapped with the political season in which Mayor Rahm Emanuel was running for reelection.

McDonald’s death shook Chicago, and it was tragic no matter how one looks at it. But for a time it snapped the city out of its collective slumber. To me, this was most evident in the white church of Chicago, which historically had been silent during eras of racial unrest.

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