And, so far, only at the hands of one state's attorney.
Baltimore’s chief prosecutor charged six police officers on Friday with crimes including murder and manslaughter in the arrest and fatal injury of Freddie Gray, a striking and surprisingly swift turn in a case that has drawn national attention to police conduct.
The state’s attorney for Baltimore, Marilyn J. Mosby, filed the charges almost as soon as she received a medical examiner’s report that ruled Mr. Gray’s death a homicide, and a day after the police concluded their initial investigation and handed over their findings. Officials had cautioned that it could take considerable time for her office to complete its own investigation and decide whether to prosecute.
Five of the six officers are in custody, Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake said later. ...NYT
Take note. The justice -- charges and swift action to detain brutal police officers -- is coming, not from the federal government and not from white men, but directly from the mayor of Baltimore and the state's attorney for Baltimore, both women and both women of color.
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Dan Fejes at Pruning Shears (a white male, for all I know) also gets it. So let me step back from what appears to be a blanket condemnation of white maleness and take a look at the attitude towards "rioters."
Rioting like that in Baltimore - in minority neighborhoods, typically sparked by some kind of injustice - inspires the right to denounce it without qualification. It’s always wrong and never achieves anything - or does so at too high a cost. Of course, rioting isn’t always wrong in their eyes. When it’s done in response to, say, a sporting event then the rioters are described euphemistically as fans or some such thing. (Cf. how white suspects get yearbook photos and are called wrestlers, black suspects get mug shots and are called, well, suspects.)
In certain special circumstances - such as when America launches a war of aggression, annihilates a country’s political infrastructure, and stands by as a state of nature emerges - rioting can even be a totally, completely understandable reaction by people who have suffered decades of injustice. Given the right situation conservatives will start talking like the worst kind of equivocating, lily-livered bleeding heart liberals. So it’s good to keep the right’s moral relativism in mind when reading their absolutist tone. What we’ve had this week has just been the wrong kind of rioting.
Even more interesting, their claim that rioting doesn’t accomplish anything is contradicted by the very fact that the commentary has been written. ...Fejes,PruningShears
Bingo.
