Fracture

by Joy-Ann Reid

  Still, the pressure was on for the president to give voice to the anxieties of African Americans. They had memorized the names: twenty-three-year-old Sean Bell, killed in the early morning hours on his wedding day by plainclothes police outside a Queens strip club in November 2006; Ramarley Graham, eighteen, shot dead in the bathroom of his grandmother’s Bronx apartment on February 2, 2013, after police burst into the home without a warrant, and Grant allegedly tried to flush away a small bag of marijuana; Oscar Grant, twenty-two, shot and killed on New Year’s Day 2009 by an Oakland, California, transit cop as he lay facedown on his stomach, hands behind his back (his story was told in the movie Fruitvale Station in 2013); Rodney King, Amadou Diallo, Patrick Dorismond, Arthur McDuffie, and decades’ more names. Each story triggered its own microcosm of outrage. Most recently there was Trayvon Martin, whose name and likeness had become synonymous with a movement—while white America had quietly moved on. And now Michael Brown.

  With Ferguson erupting in flames, something had to be said.

  The president stood before a backdrop decorated with the presidential seal and reiterated his sympathy for Brown’s family. He spoke about the responsibility of police to conduct a transparent investigation, then turned his attention to the conflagration in Ferguson, saying, “[T]here is never an excuse for violence against police, or for those who would use this tragedy as a cover for vandalism or looting,” and likewise, “there’s also no excuse for police to use excessive force against peaceful protests or to throw protesters in jail for lawfully exercising their First Amendment rights. Here in the United States of America, police should not be bullying or arresting journalists who are trying to do their jobs and report to the American people on what they see on the ground.”

  Obama called for a cooling of raw emotions, saying, “Let’s remember that we’re all part of one American family.”

  Activists in Ferguson, and their supporters around the country, were outraged that Obama had focused on the small number of looters, rather than taking on the issue of violence by police. On MSNBC, the president’s old friend Michael Eric Dyson accused him of timidity and a lack of boldness that was letting the African American community down. CNN commentator Marc Lamont Hill accused the president of ignoring the obvious racial component in the Ferguson conflagration and not “leading the nation to a new level of understanding.” He also said Obama prioritized calm over the legitimate expression of black anger.

  “To be clear, I didn’t have any unrealistic expectations for Obama,” Hill wrote. “I didn’t expect him to pump a black fist in solidarity or scream ‘fight the power’ from the makeshift press room. I didn’t even need him to take a clear side on the issue. I did, however, expect him to tell the truth.”

  The president may have disappointed members of the black community, but he was being pilloried by law enforcement, including the head of the national Fraternal Order of Police, who derided as “unfortunate” the “incongruity of [the president’s] evaluating police tactics from the comfort of Martha’s Vineyard.”

  Holder continued to be restless, and made it clear during his daily consultations with the president and Valerie Jarrett that he wanted to go to Ferguson, even though the Justice Department had already ordered an independent autopsy of Brown’s body and sent FBI agents to conduct their own investigation. But Obama, backed by Jarrett and other senior advisers, worried that sending Holder to Ferguson would only ratchet up the emotional stakes and focus undue attention on the administration without accomplishing anything concrete.

  For the president, Ferguson also had an awkward political dimension.

  Other than the city’s mayor, most of the politicians involved in the growing shambles in Missouri were Democrats, including Governor Nixon, county prosecutor Bob McCulloch, and Jeff Roorda, the former cop and St. Louis Police Association spokesman who would become the lead opponent of any attempts to alter the system that protected police officers from the reach of law, as well as the chief antagonist of black lawmakers.

  Nixon, who had deftly handled the aftermath of the deadly tornadoes that tore through the town of Joplin in 2011, had been considered a vice presidential prospect if Hillary Clinton ran for president in 2016. Obama publicly called him a “good man,” though his stewardship of the Ferguson crisis was clearly wanting. Finally, Nixon turned security in Ferguson over to an African American captain in the Missouri State Highway Patrol, Ron Johnson, and displaced the local and county police command. The decision outraged McCulloch, who was refusing repeated calls that he recuse himself from the case—because of his close family and professional ties to police, as well as his father’s death, allegedly at the hands of a black assailant. Finally McCulloch announced that he would turn the decision of indicting the officer who killed Michael Brown over to a grand jury, but not before publicly dressing down Nixon and daring the governor to use constitutional authority to sideline him.

  The Johnson appointment touched off twenty-four hours of calm, even euphoria, as state police, shorn of tactical military gear, walked among the protesters, and Captain Johnson embraced mothers and sons and uncles in the city where he grew up.

  It didn’t last.

  The next day, Friday, August 15, Ferguson police released the name of the officer who killed Michael Brown: Darren Wilson. But over vigorous objections by the Justice Department, Chief Jackson simultaneously released surveillance video and stills from just before the encounter with Officer Wilson that appeared to show Michael Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson taking two boxes of Swisher Sweets minicigars from a convenience store and shoving the store clerk aside on their way out the door. Police released the incident report related to the alleged robbery, but no report detailing the circumstances leading to Brown’s death. Brown’s family and supporters accused the authorities of trying to smear the dead teen to help ensure Wilson’s exoneration.

  This caused the streets of Ferguson to explode again, prompting state police to declare a midnight curfew. Three days later, Nixon called up the state’s National Guard.

  On Sunday, a week and a day after Michael Brown was gunned down, Captain Johnson addressed thirteen hundred people at Greater Grace Baptist Church for a service in Brown’s honor; thousands more gathered outside. Johnson told the crowd about his “black son, who wears his pants sagging, who has his hat cocked to the side, who has tattoos down his arms, but he’s my baby.” He apologized to Ferguson’s black community, saying, “I am with you,” and threw his fist into the air as he walked off the dais to cheers.

  Speaking after Johnson, Rev. Sharpton called for peaceful protests to continue, irritating young activists in much the way Obama had when he warned citizens against violence, rather than warning police. “Don’t loot in Michael’s name,” Sharpton said. “We’re not looters. We’re liberators! We’re not burners. We’re builders!”

  Sharpton thundered that no politician who wanted to be president could avoid Ferguson. “This is the defining moment in this country,” he said. “All over the world, the debate is how the rights of people are dealt with by the state.” He insisted, “Ferguson and Michael Brown Jr. will be a defining moment on how this country deals with policing and the rights of citizens to address how police behave in this country.” It was a pointed rebuke of two Democratic politicians who African Americans had noticed were being conspicuously silent: the Clintons.

  “Jeb Bush, Hillary Clinton, don’t get laryngitis on this issue,” Sharpton said, referring to two potential 2016 presidential contenders. “Nobody can go to the White House unless they stop by our house and talk about policing!”

  Indeed, more than two weeks into the Ferguson nightmare, with Michael Brown’s funeral planned for August 25, neither Clinton had issued a public statement about Ferguson.

  Obama’s supporters, meanwhile, were keen to point out that no previous president had reacted more quickly to a fatal police shooting. George H. W. Bush had declared himself “horrified” by the videotaped beating of Rodney King nineteen days af
ter the tape’s release in 1991. It took Bill Clinton more than a week to speak out on the verdict in the O. J. Simpson case, which rent the country along racial lines in 1995. At the time, Clinton called on the country to “clean our house of racism.” Whether Obama’s statements were considered forward-leaning enough by black commentators, the president, his supporters insisted, had weighed in early. More important, his administration, through the Justice Department, was taking decisive action.

  On Monday, August 18, the president arrived in Washington for three days of cabinet meetings and walked into the White House Press Briefing Room to make yet another dual announcement about the progress in Iraq and the situation in Ferguson. Obama had met earlier that afternoon with Attorney General Holder, who informed the president that he was going to Missouri to oversee the federal investigation; he planned to arrive by midweek, on the day the grand jury hearings were to begin. He would meet with the FBI agents, U.S. attorneys, and prosecutors on the ground. Whatever reticence the White House had had about the trip was immaterial now. Holder was visiting his team in the field, and needed no White House assent.

  When asked if he would go to Ferguson, Obama demurred, saying he had to be mindful of putting his thumb on the scale, calling it important not just that justice was done, but that justice was seen to be done; there should be no perception that the president of the United States was taking sides against an individual police officer.

  Supporters and old friends, including Harvard’s Charles Ogletree, were urging him to be bold and to address the racial issues laid bare by Brown’s death. But the president’s demeanor remained cool. He called for “healing,” and for Americans to come together and recognize their shared humanity.

  The statement fell so flat that Slate writer Jamelle Bouie tweeted, “Barack Obama is either very tired, doesn’t believe a single word he’s saying re: Michael Brown, or both.” Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates agreed, declaring on his Twitter feed that he felt “bad” for the president, “Not sarcastic pity. Like really feel bad.” On Vox.com, former Washington Post columnist Ezra Klein declared that the Obama White House simply no longer believed in his ability to bridge divides.

  In Ferguson, activists were equally frustrated, telling reporters that the president needed to stop talking and come to the scene, to “bring all this to justice.” Being more direct, Tef Poe, a local rap artist and a leader of the Ferguson protesters, bluntly declared: “Fuck the White House. I’m never voting again. Another disenfranchised black male.”

  Obama had also touted his “My Brother’s Keeper” initiative, a White House program launched in February 2014, on the anniversary of Trayvon Martin’s death, that was designed to “unlock the full potential of our young people, including boys and young men of color.” A cadre of black writers felt this was an outrageous non sequitur that unfairly redirected the blame for Brown’s death onto the supposedly “broken” black family, even though Brown had a loving, involved father—as Trayvon Martin had—and even though Brown, despite getting into occasional trouble, was days away from attending community college.

  Writing on her social media feed, Ebony.com writer Jamilah Lemieux spoke for the detractors. “Can we get a My Brother’s Keeper for the cops?” she tweeted. “They must not have dads, they keep killing people.” During an extended rant, Lemieux echoed Marc Lamont Hill from days before, writing: “I don’t expect President Obama to become a race man, I expect him not to reinforce notions of inherent Black deficiency. . . . And, also, not to bring up My Brother’s Keeper when talking about a police killing.”

  For many, using Brown’s death as an opportunity to tout a program about reforming black behavior was akin to grafting a titanium limb onto a rotting body; it may be an undeniable wonder, but it can do the corpse no good. The protesters and their legion of online supporters didn’t want a new program to shore up black men—they wanted changes in policing that would keep more black men and boys alive.

  Police in Ferguson, meanwhile, were angrily complaining that the media coverage was casting them in such a negative light they felt threatened on the streets. But the Justice Department issued scathing rebukes of officers who were patrolling with their name tags removed, some of them donning “I am Darren Wilson” bracelets.

  Holder arrived in Ferguson on August 20 to the warm embrace of the African American community and the literal embrace of Captain Johnson. He met with the Brown family and visited local haunts, where he was received like a favorite son. Holder met with his FBI field agents and reassured local leaders and members of Congress during a closed-door meeting that the investigation was proceeding apace. With Holder in Ferguson, Obama returned to his family on Martha’s Vineyard.

  It had now been more than two weeks since Michael Brown was killed. And when Hillary returned to the Vineyard for a book signing on August 24, the day before Brown’s funeral, she simply ignored questions about Ferguson as reporters volleyed them her way. Senator Clinton’s camp refused comment when queried on the matter by MSNBC, the Huffington Post, and other news outlets. On CNN, Marc Lamont Hill called Hillary’s silence “shameful.”

  “The Clintons have made so much of their political bones on the backs of black voters, getting black support, getting black love, identifying black causes,” he said. “Hillary Clinton will go to Selma in 2008 and clap with black people and put on a fake southern accent and pretend to identify with black struggle and black pain. But now that real black issues are on the table, now that real black struggle is in the public eye, she has said nothing.”

  On August 25, Michael Brown was eulogized before thousands of mourners and family members at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, as throngs of media from around the world crowded outside. Rev. Sharpton delivered a fiery broadside against police brutality and a stinging rebuke to anyone who dared stay silent in the face of such an urgent national demand for action.

  Three days later, Hillary Clinton finally spoke out, at the end of prepared remarks at a tech conference in San Francisco: “Watching the recent funeral for Michael Brown as a mother, as a human being, my heart just broke for his family because losing a child is every parent’s greatest fear and an unimaginable loss. But I also grieve for that community and many like it across our country. Behind the dramatic terrible pictures on television are deep challenges that will be with them and with us long after the cameras move on.”

  Clinton may have been tardy with her remarks, but she displayed a freedom that Barack Obama seemed never to have, and she was able to directly address the seismic forces rending Ferguson, Missouri, and the country.

  “Imagine what we would feel and what we would do if white drivers were three times as likely to be searched by police during a traffic stop as black drivers instead of the other way around,” she told the nearly all-white audience. “If white offenders received prison sentences ten percent longer than black offenders for the same crimes. If a third of all white men—just look at this room and take one-third—went to prison during their lifetime. Imagine that. That is the reality in the lives of so many of our fellow Americans in so many of the communities in which they live.”

  Some black commentators marveled at how much bolder Clinton’s remarks were than Obama’s and that they were devoid of the mitigating language of respectability. Writing in Slate, Bouie pointed to polls showing that Obama began to lose the approval of whites after his comments on the Henry Louis Gates arrest during his first months in office.

  “By siding with the black Gates against the white police officer,” Bouie wrote, “Obama gave greater salience to his race. Put another way, Obama entered office as a president who was black, but ended that summer as a black president.”

  He quoted The Atlantic’s Ta-Nehisi Coates, who in an August 2012 essay titled “Fear of a Black President,” posited that as president, Obama found himself having to be “twice as good and half as black.” As president, he also had to be twice as careful with his words.

  Hillary Clinton had no
such constraints. There was no need for a white woman, speaking to a nearly all-white audience, to soften blunt truths about race and the disparate treatment of white and black Americans, including by police. Instead she could examine the exemption from the burdens of racial disparity that she shared with her Silicon Valley audience, and invite them to empathize, for a moment, with their fellow citizens. And then they could all go back to their lives.

  Obama was not so lucky, and he found himself in the middle of another racially divisive case, which pit law enforcement against citizens, Right against Left, and according to polls, increasingly black against white. This could easily damage his political party, which was fighting to defend a half dozen Democratic Senate seats in deeply red and purple states. These Democrats wanted the president of the United States to do nothing more than to make himself inconspicuous in every way.

  Late into the night of November 25, two days before Thanksgiving, prosecutor McCulloch announced that the grand jury in the Ferguson case declined to hand down an indictment against Darren Wilson. McCulloch had chosen to make the announcement at night, as crowds massed on the streets of Ferguson and tensions mounted. When he spoke, issuing what sounded like a lengthy defense of Officer Wilson, the streets of Ferguson erupted again.

  The Congressional Black Caucus fired off a statement, signed by chairwoman Marcia Fudge that seemed to capture the depth of black despair. “This decision seems to underscore an unwritten rule that black lives hold no value. . . . This is a frightening narrative for every parent and guardian of black and brown children, and another setback for race relations in America.”

  President Obama went before the cameras one last time, pleading for calm and for respect for the rule of law. He called on the nation to focus on its vast racial progress, while noting that “what is also true is that there are still problems and communities of color aren’t just making these problems up. Separating that from this particular decision, there are issues in which the law too often feels as if it is being applied in discriminatory fashion.”