Well, Which One Would Michael Brown Have Wanted You To See?

There's nothing too tragic to be given the clicks-for-cash treatment, as Jezebel so ably demonstrated this evening.

In an article that manages to stretch the boundaries of racism, carelessness, and dishonesty in just a thousand words or so, Kara Brown (no relation, AFAIK) attempts to pound the reader into submission with a litany of ridiculousness.

As a black person in America, it's getting exhausting to still have to explain, in the year 2014, your right to exist in this country...

Can you explain why Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is still alive but Mike Brown isn't?

Given that Mr. Tsarnaev had bullet wounds to the throat, back of head, and side of head, not to mention the fact that they killed his brother, is the answer because Dzhokhar Tsarnaev has a really thick skull?

Can you explain why a black man is killed by the police every 28 hours in this country?

That figure is based on a "study" by the "Malcolm X Grassroots Movement" and has all the credibility of a YouTube comment. Nobody else has been able to come close to that number or frequency.

Can you explain why the Ferguson Police Department disproportionally searches black people while the contraband hit rate for white people is higher?

Think about this one for a minute and you'll realize that the answer is problematic for nearly everyone. My first answer is that "The Ferguson Police Department is better at profiling whites." And is that because a majority of white people who are not involved in criminal activity are easy to spot? Is that because the average white non-criminal in that area looks like Michael Scott from The Office while the average black non-criminal in that area looks exactly like the average black criminal? Is the answer that the Ferguson Police need to be better trained in how to distinguish real thugs from wannabes? But if you think the answer is that white people are actually committing crimes at a higher rate than black people in the United States of America, you need to learn how to read a statistics page. The sad fact is that even if you assign every unsolved murder in the country to a white person just for the hell of it, it still looks bad for African-Americans. The reasons are up for debate --- I'd personally suggest that feeding poor people a 24/7 stream of media that glorifies degenerate activity has terrible results no matter what race you're discussing --- but the numbers are hard to argue.

And, of course, Ms. Brown's most ridiculous question:

Can you explain why media outlets reporting on his death used the photo of Mike Brown on the left instead of the right?

And the answer is: because that's the image Mike Brown wanted you to see, and it's the one he made available.

Seriously. If the cops kill me tomorrow, do you think they'll go dig up my high-school graduation photo? (They'll have to dig hard; I didn't have senior pictures taken and I skipped yearbook days in the other years.) Do you think they'll ask my mother for a photo of me? Or will they Google "Jack Baruth" and take the first photo they see?

Is that even a question serious people would ask?

Ms. Brown is suggesting that the image on the left perpetuates stereotypes about violent, stupid, thuggish Black youth. But the image on the left is the one Mike Brown took of his own free will. It's the one he showed his friends. It's how he wanted to be known and recognized. I guarantee you he didn't give a shit about the photo on the right. Most kids don't. Mike Brown, for better or for worse, was the kid on the left. To use any other photo would be disrespectful to him and his memory.

When Ms. Brown declares that the photo on the left shouldn't be used, she's declaring her privilege. That she, as a member of the enlightened progressive media, should have the privilege to rewrite Mike Brown, to make him the kid on the right and ignore the kid on the left. To use his story and his identity to suit her purposes.

In other words, she proposes, with her question, to deprive Mike Brown of his humanity.

Which is exactly what the police did, in much sharper and more permanent terms.

Ms. Brown also notes that

We shouldn't have to explain that the clothes we wear don't protect us against, or make us more susceptible to, violence.

But only certain clothes fit the script, and the script could never be written by someone as powerless as Mike Brown, dead or alive.