Today, I’m pleased to share a conversation on that I had recently with DeRay McKesson, one of the young civil rights leaders who was on the ground in Ferguson in the wake of Michael Brown’s death. Since then, DeRay has gone on to become a best-selling author and political force for racial justice among many of his other successes. While we’ve disagreed on some things over the years — primarily what constitutes a justifiable use of fatal force by law enforcement — but one thing that we do agree on is that the issue of police violence remains a concerning one for Black Americans. One needs to look no further than the recent murder of Sonya Massey to confirm that. Ten years after “Hands up, don’t shoot” became the rallying cry of Ferguson, Massey had her own hands up when she was shot in the face by a sheriff’s deputy in Illinois who has now been indicted for murder. Instead of saying “don’t shoot,” Massey said, “I’m sorry.”
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It was a rumor. Let’s start with that. I don’t think it was done nefariously. I think the people who said it that day and in the days that followed truly believed it. It’s what they had been told, after all. Somewhere along the line — somewhere in this game of telephone that people like me try to get to the bottom of — maybe there was a lie. Maybe someone lied. Or, they just got things mixed up in the heat of the moment. They got it mixed up because someone they knew had died and his body was baking on the asphalt in the middle of the street with blood leaking from a bullet wound in his head.
The rumor was that Michael Brown had his hands up on this very day, 10 years ago today, in Ferguson, Missouri. He had his hands up and he said, “Don’t shoot,” the people said. That’s what started it all. Mike Brown, a kid no one had ever heard of, had his hands up and was saying “Don’t shoot” when a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri shot and killed him on August 9, 2014. That’s where it begins. Or at least, that’s where it begins in a sense. Ferguson was a domino. There have been many more over the years.
“Hands up don’t shoot” is the beginning of a lot of things. As I sit here this morning, though, the thing that strikes me the most is that the falsehood of “Hands up, don’t shoot” is the beginning of our current political moment. No matter the event, no matter the truth of what happened on any given day, each side can claim their own version. Ferguson and Black Americans were rightfully incensed over the claim that Brown had had his hands up and was saying “don’t shoot.” But when it turned out not be true, much of white America — themselves already incensed and afraid after watching Ferguson burn —dismissed the entire movement for racial justice that Ferguson birthed.
White America took that mentality — these people lied about what happened, denigrated a good cop, and then burned their own town and they’ll do it to our’s next — and ran with it. They ran with it right into the waiting arms of Donald Trump, the “law and order” candidate. Then they kept running with it.
The truth can be complicated. The first thing you often hear about a news event like Ferguson is a chaotic and murky version of the actual truth. But white America would not forgive this falsehood of Ferguson. Already driven by racial anger at what it saw, white America took the idea that they were being lied to by people who were, in their view, anti-American, and began to apply to everything that has happened since. The impeachments of Donald Trump — fake, based on lies. The 2020 election. Lies, again. Stolen from them. George Floyd — he died because of a fentanyl overdose, not the knee on his neck.
In a way, it’s a shame that “Hand up, don’t shoot” turned out not to be true. If it had been, we might not be exactly where we are today. But something tells me that white America would have found another reason to drag us to our current state. There’s always a reason, it seems, for many Americans to want to usher us toward authoritarianism and backwards toward a past rooted in white supremacy.
I say this not because this is what I learned at some leftist Ivy League university. The education I’ve received that has led me to this conclusion has come from witnessing the events of the last 10 years with my own eyes. I’ve learned how and why we’ve ended up here by being on the streets of places like Ferguson and witnessing the aftermath firsthand. My education has been history itself.
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