Two days ago, three people were shot and two others wounded in a shooting spree in Tulsa. All of the victims were black and the suspects were white. It was a horrific crime that touched many although it did not receive the flood of attention of the shooting of Trayvon Martin.
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| Left: |Councillor Jack Henderson Centre: Mayor Dewey Bartlett Right: Chief of Police Jordan (photo newstimes.com) |
Unlike the Trayvon Martin shooting, there was no rush to judgment, no screams of racism and no division of the community along racial lines.
Tulsa Mayor, Dewey Bartlett, put it succinctly:
“This is one Tulsa and whatever hurts a part of the community affects the entirety of our community.”
Contrast that statement with the divisive statements of too many in the media, online and positions of leadership in both the black and the white communities with regard to the shooting of Trayvon Martin. Those statement inflamed anger, intolerance and a breakdown of respect for the law and due process. It led to further violence and division. The result is a community polarized and a nation divided over the issue.
It even led to the victimization of people who had absolutely no relationship to the shooting whatsoever.
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| Jacob England and Alvin Watts arrested and charged in Tulsa shootings (photo: Tusla Police) |
In Tulsa, a community came together under unifying leadership and within 24 hours, two suspects have been arrested and charged with these terrible crimes. Both are presumed innocent until proven otherwise.
No amount of justice will ever remove or mitigate the pain suffered by the families and close friends of the victims in this tragedy but there is surely some comfort to be found in the knowledge that they are seen as part of a community that believes that when one is hurt, all are hurt.
In Florida, the assumption and the accusation is that the shooting of Trayvon Martin was a hate crime that was racially motivated. The media have manipulated information to support that narrative and the usual opportunists have manipulated the family and community into believing it at the expense of community unity.
In Tusla there is an understandable suspicion that the shootings there were a racially motivated hate crime but unifying leadership exemplified by this statement by Tulsa Police Chief Jordan demonstrates a different attitude than what came out of Sanford.
"Right now, I'm more worried about three of my citizens being murdered and if it takes us in a direction of a hate crime, that's certainly where we'll go and we'll prosecute him for that as well."
Even The Rev. Warren Blakney, a pastor at a city church and president of the NAACP's Tulsa branch, stated that while these shootings could well prove to be a hate crime based on the fact that they all took place in a black neighbourhood he went on to say that it was too early to make that determination.
"For a white male to come that deep into that area and to start indiscriminately shooting, that lends itself for many to believe that it probably was a hate crime…[but]… "it's just not time for us to say that."
It is a sad thing when someone dies, it is a terrible thing when someone is murdered. It isn’t just the victim who suffers. It is their family, their friends and the entire community. Our communities are undermined and made less secure. When one of us is victimized, we are all made a little less safe and are victimized by that simple reality.
Too many have never understood that in the shooting of Trayvon Martin. They fully understand that in Tulsa. In Sanford, a black teenager was shot. In Tulsa, it was members of their community. The victims' race was irrelevant when it came to how the community responded. In Tulsa it wasn't just black people who were shot, it was people. It is a lesson that people like Al Sharpton and others like him would do well to learn.
There is a lesson in Tulsa for all of us.
RELATED
Two Arrested In Tulsa Shooting - CNN
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/08/us/oklahoma-shootings/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
http://www.cnn.com/2012/04/08/us/oklahoma-shootings/index.html?hpt=hp_t2
Trayvon Martin - The Silence Of Selective Racism
Trayvon Martin - A Perfect Storm of Imperfect Journalism
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