New Orleans Police Beat 64 Year Old Man

I recognize that I have been uncharacteristically silent about the beating of Robert Davis in New Orleans. What else is there to say? If I could somehow make sense of it, it would not be so awful. The officers claim he resisting arrest and that was what justified beating the 64 year-old man into a bloody pulp. I've spent a lot of time in lively college towns. I've seen officers wrangle with drunk men resisting arrest. I have never seen officers behave in such an extreme fashion for a misdemeanor.

More disturbing than the video of the officers beating Mr. Davis is the video of the interaction of the officers and Mr. Davis after the beating. To see the aftermath of the beating, go to CNN and click on the link for "CNN video of the aftermath (viewer discretion advised)". The video is 2:27 minutes long. Note how Mr. Davis is allowed to lie in a pool of his own blood. Note how the officers casually step over him and kick him proddingly. Mr. Davis has no humanity in their eyes. He is smply not a person deserving of humane treatment or consideration. We would be appalled if a video surfaced of men beating a dog, even a rabid dog, and leaving him to flounder in this own blood and bodily fluids the way the officers left Mr. Davis. I would wager that animal-lovers would tear up upon seeing such a video and there would be an outpouring of general outrage. I know that people tend to feel more warmly towards animals than they do toward humans, but can we agree that humans should be treated with at least the same care as dogs? Where is the outrage? The story passed with no fanfare. Mr. Davis is 64 years old. He could be someone’s grandfather. He could have been my grandfather, not because either of my grandfathers was given to public drunkenness, but because they were black men who might have found themselves on the wrong end of a police baton.

I have been told that I take these infractions too personally. After all, the police in New Orleans did not beat my grandfather; Bob Bennett did not suggest that my parents and I ought to have been aborted to decrease the crime rate; the police department and the INS are not dragging my siblings off of school grounds and deporting them to Mexico without their parents; and no one I know has yet been killed while shopping at Dillard’s. I have led a blessedly violence-free life. However, isn’t it time that someone took these issues personally? Shouldn’t someone be outraged? Christians? Whatever happened to protecting “the least of these”? Civil rights activists? Whatever happened to the “Beloved Community”? Progressives? Whatever happened to making progress?

The silence is deafening, yet speaks volumes. Our half-hearted protests and short-attention span boil down to a garbled public discourse: “Oh my goodness. That is totally unacceptable—does my butt look good in these jeans? I can’t believe the police—do you think Brad and Angelina are gonna have a baby—beat that old man in the street. Did Bill Bennett ever apologize? I think Nick is totally better off without Jessica. Are there still Katrina evacuees living in the nation’s sports stadiums? Poor Katie Holmes.”

The consequence of the negroification of "Welfare Queens", the former Secretary of Education Bill Bennett assuming that all blacks are natural-born killers, and the adoption of the "omnithug" and "readi-ho" personas by the MTV generation has been the conflation of "black", "immoral" and "poor". This conflation robs individuals blacks of their humanity and excuses violent mistreatment and discrimination.

I really want someone to tell me that Mr. Davis would not have been beaten if he had been black. I want desperately to be convinced. And it won't make me feel any better to say that he would have been beaten if he had been Latino. We all know the anti-immigration forces are working harder than a Know-Nothing to denude Latinos of their humanity as well. I strongly believe, I have to believe, that if the humanity of members of racial and religious minorities was not in question, that if they were viewed as human beings, as individuals with families and hopes and feelings, then the violations of human and civil rights that I so often write about would not occur.

Robert Davis may or may not have been drunk that night. His drunkenness is not at issue; his humanity is.