Minority Report
For those who enjoy dark humor, it’s funny to see the Internet detectives speculate about Ahmaud Arbery’s whereabouts and actions around the time of his murder. It’s as if they believe asking the right leading questions will unlock the case and, in a shocking twist, reveal the victim to be the perpetrator all along. And so you get questions like these: What was he doing wandering around an abandoned construction site (which even the site owner says was not a crime)? If he was jogging, why was he wearing Timberland boots and carrying a hammer (even though mainstream reports report he wore grey athletic shoes and don’t mention a hammer)? What about the recent string of robberies in the neighborhood (an occurrence that the murderers apparently made up)?
And when idle speculation alone wouldn’t do, the mugshots are unearthed and the criminal exploits — no matter how minor — exposed. As many people of color could tell you, it was only a matter of time until these bits of irrelevant, circumstantial information were introduced in order to muddy the rhetorical waters. In effect, it’s a way for critics to say, “see, he’s not as ‘innocent’ as you think he is!” The concept of “innocence” is afforded to an Ahmaud Arbery for only a brief moment before it is drowned in a sea of hollow recriminations.
It’s all part of a sad and predictable pattern that gets repeated whenever a black person in this country is the victim of an unlawful and fatal assault. In this regard, life for black people most closely resembles Minority Report, in which the Internet detectives claim to have precog powers that enables them to predict crimes before they occur. It doesn’t matter if Arbery had committed a crime in that moment (which he clearly hadn’t) when they can claim foreknowledge of some previous “crime” like wandering around a construction site. It doesn’t even matter if Arbery’s murders knew of that incident at the time of their confrontation — such justifications can always be introduced retroactively if need be.
We never get a full glimpse of the victim’s humanity — all the things that would make them figures of empathy — before we learn about their indiscretions, the bad choices that led to the fatal confrontation. By contrast, the motives or backgrounds of the killer (or killers) often do not receive the same level of scrutiny. It’s assumed that their actions stem from reasonable concerns about public or personal safety, and whatever unpleasantness results from those actions, while unfortunate, is seen as unavoidable and inevitable.
In America, we have a set of laws that prohibit and punish the use of vigilante justice. Of course, those laws weren’t designed for the benefit of black and brown people, historically speaking. But in recent years, we at least paid lip service to the notion that vigilantism had no place in civil society. But now we have a “president” who has made it abundantly clear that racial justice is a “both sides” affair, and that discrimination against protected groups would inform policy and be codified into law.
So from a social satire point of view, it’s funny how we’ve gotten to a place in this country where racists always — and I mean ALWAYS — look for extenuating circumstances to justify shooting black people. Except I’m not laughing.
