What Is The Answer to Changing the Way We Think?

What is the answer to changing the way we think, the way we behave, the things we are raised to believe are okay -- that are not okay? Today in the news, the sentencing of the three men convicted of killing an innocent black jogger because, well, basically because he was black, and in their neighborhood…was announced. All three men are sentenced to life imprisonment, for the death of Ahumad Arbery. The father and son who committed the crime were sentenced without the possibility of parole. The third man filming the event was sentenced to life imprisonment but parole was not taken off the table.

The question I lost myself in this morning, on a broader, nation-wide scale was: will learning about that sentence cause other men – men who think as these three men think – to re-assess their behavior and their thinking, to consider that vigilante activity is unwise, to consider maybe tossing their guns into the trash and taking up a different hobby? To face the fact that they have no right – NO right – to take the law into their own hands, and decide who is guilty of a crime when no crime has been committed?  To consider that there are rules in our country even if they are not the “rules” by which they themselves live - and that we all must obey them? Will it help them to open their minds and their hearts to the possibility of discarding their racist approach to most all situations of life?

Or --will it further embolden them to prove that they must “take this country back” – back to ancient days where black men were assumed to be criminals and treated as such; back to days where male energy was exercised by abusing others who couldn’t fight back, or weren’t sufficiently armed to fight back – or perhaps by abusing others who were women and didn’t dare fight back.  

Will this sentence stir anger and justification for such actions?  Will it cause political upswings in populations among the white supremacists who in the last couple of years have all jumped out of the closet and marched down the main streets of their town waving torches, carrying weapons and shouting obscenities?

The tragically sad thing about all this is that this thought, this question, ever even occurred to me. Well, that‘s not correct. Obviously the tragically sad thing about this is that an innocent young black man lost his life, and his family lost their loved one, forever. The bizarre thing about all this is that the question knocked at the door of my thoughts this morning, upon reading the sentencing information. My reaction was not to say yes, good job, dear judge. They deserved this and no one will ever do this kind of thing again. Perhaps this will be a lesson to all others considering this kind of behavior.

But that is not where we have landed. Even before this case was brought to court, before charges were filed and arrests were made, the crime had been shoved under the rug, within the local legal leadership. Covered over and ignored as not worth addressing. Had it not come to the national attention of people who saw the leaked video of the crime, or read of its existence, the family of this young man would never have seen justice. Not that there is justice when something as irreversible as the death of a precious family member innocently out for a morning jog occurs, at the hands of men whose masculinity is so insecure that they have to prove it, demonstrate it – by carrying guns and killing people. Will a profoundly important lesson be lost here, because we have all so locked ourselves into our own ways of viewing the world that nothing can be learned. healed or changed? I hope I’m wrong in my concerns, and I know I’m not helping things by expressing those concerns.  I just couldn’t help it.