Ferguson and the problem of the angler fish

In the coming days the consensus seems to be that the grand jury will decide not to indict Officer Darren Wilson in the killing on Mike Brown. Ferguson has fallen out of the news cycle through no malicious intent. The threat of riot porn is gone, and by nature of our quick moving media cycles, it is simply no longer the belle of the ball. What's left is a fewer number of people going in the time they can. Retiree's, sitting with their signs, people with loving families and jobs given time off, and a few hours of yelling from people who can make it before or after a shift. Streamers have mostly left, because without impassioned locals in the face of dispassionate local law enforcement, the viewership is simply not there. If you have been invested, you know very well that it is still going on. You know that something about this feels different, and it's not just the inevitable aftershock when the decision is announce. The people are fed up. This is not another L to take and move on. There may not be a concensus amount protestors in how to go about fighting for what's good and right, but there is a concensus that a line has been crossed. You'll be made aware of it again when the decision is announced. The people of Ferguson and St Louis will make sure of that. Maybe property will be damaged, maybe innocent business will be harmed, and maybe money will be lost. This will be the part to which you pay attention. Society will make sure of that. You will make sure of that.

There will be outrage at these people being violent because our infallible justice system declared a man innocent. Because an officer was just doing his job. What did these business owners ever do to those people? These people just want an excuse to be violent and loot. They are thugs.

You won't just be missing the point, you'll be looking at the wrong thing entirely. You're looking at the light while the angler fish eats you.

When I ask people what they think about Kanye (and, well, I do this a lot), the most common response I get is “I like his music, but I don't like the person.” When I follow up with a why question, I hear comments about the “quality of his person”, his ego, and the ubiquitous reference to his interruption of Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs. This moment, in people's timeline's and subsequently what's remembered in history, manages to demand more weight than the 2005 post-Katrina. When I bring up the 2005 post-Katrina telethon, most people remember that moment as well. “George Bush doesn't care about black people.” It tends to add more fuel to their Kanye-hating fire. That he would take something that's suppose to be about helping people and make it all about himself. So egotistical. Yes, bringing yourself onto a stage without invite in such a “structured” setting, I can see how someone can come to the conclusion that someone must think they are much bigger than everyone else, the institution, and the moment. So egotistical. But I have to ask them “have you actually watched the video of the telethon?” It's nothing about him. Without seeing the video,and even some people that have, that was most people's one take-away. “George Bush doesn't care about black people.” It's the fire and the looting. The light of the angler fish.

This past April, NBA Clippers owner Donald Sterling made some off-color comments to his girlfriend about her interaction with black people in public. It caught fire. The ESPN news cycle and even some non-sports cycles latched on to the headlines, highlighted the overtly racist comments he made: “It bothers me a lot that you want to broadcast that you're associating with black people. Do you have to?" and "You can sleep with them. You can bring them in, you can do whatever you want. The little I ask you is not to promote it on that … and not to bring them to my games." These comments brought all sorts of outrage and statements of we-won't-have-this-in-our-league and celebrities coming out of the woodwork to condemn this and subsequent action and all the hoopla. Those comments were just fires and looting. Light on an angler fish.

The real substance of the Sterling conversation, the dangerous part that will eat you because you're looking at something else, comes around the 1 minute mark of the recording. That the racism isn't his fault. That it is the culture, it has been and will always be that way. “I am living in a culture, and I have to live within that culture.” The kind of culture where his friends call him to tell him his boo has a black person on her Instagram. Wait what? Why did this get missed? His friends, the powerful and rich-enough-to-own-sports teams, call him because his minority laundry was getting aired out in public. I suppose that does not make for a very interesting headline. Anglers are not pretty fish (as I typed this I google image searched “angler fish” and involuntarily groaned).

If you watch the full Kanye video, instead of waiting for the punch line, listen to what he's saying. Watch his body language. This is a man visibly distraught because he is seeing, possibly for the first time, what a systemic problem racism is. He is watching black people stuck in the city and the wreckage-- stranded because without personal vehicles their only hope was to rely on good Samaritans to get them out, all exacerbated by the wealth gap. He is seeing the worst damage in areas of less desirable real estate-- mostly populated by black people and deep roots of segregation. He is seeing the media bias, things like this. He's seeing there they were never meant to make it out of the system. The involuntary groan of seeing the angler fish's body.

Have you and your friends ever talked about those parts of the events? The real parts?

When St. Louis burns, try to look past the fire and the looting. Don't get distracted by the angler fish's lure and miss the more dangerous, more terrifying part. Find the real substance behind it, and talk about it.