I found myself today reading through some conversations on the Facebook page of a good friend. I’ve noticed that she’s been increasingly promoting conversations about and putting her energy, body, and voice into sharing her perspective on issues of police brutality in our society and I support that. I found myself inspired to respond to a comment in a thread in a conversation she was having but a short comment of my own turned into something longer that I thought might have some value outside that context so I’m restating it here. Thanks for doing the things you’re doing, being the human you are, and for inspiring me by also Trying.
So.
I’ve spent a lot of my adult life with a particular affinity for the character Batman. There’s a lot that’s appealing to me about him in some of the portrayals I’d seen that I identified with and inspired me, but as I’ve grown and learned over time a couple comedians whose names and works I’ve since forgotten have pointed out a couple things that cast the character in a new light for me.
Batman gets a lot of credit for always having a plan and good judgement and no actual superpowers but it turns out that in nearly every depiction of him I’ve seen he actually does have one, and it’s something that the police would greatly benefit from. Certainty. Before even arriving at the scene of a crime Batman already knows who did what and who “deserves” retribution, intimidation, and the violent expression of his idea of justice as administered through a perspective that is fundamentally structured around his childhood trauma. As with Santa Claus, not only are there actually Purely Good and Purely Bad people but he already knows which is which. That’s why his vigilante behavior is celebrated by the citizens of Gotham, because he punishes only the Bad People doing Bad Things and he is always certain and correct about who they are.
Police in real life have to... Hm. For the protective function they ostensibly serve in our society rather, they OUGHT to always contend with the fact that actual people aren’t purely good or bad and the totality of a person’s humanity is not determinable by a single action that may have many complicated layers to it. And they, as also human beings too, bring their perspectives and experiences and traumas to their criminal encounters.
Drunk driving is understandably illegal and objectively bad because we as a society have I think rightly determined that the danger posed to others outweighs pretty much any other concern in those situations. In that context I think a reasonable person might consider an alternative to armed police imposing their will by force on a drunk sleeping man that tragically but unsurprisingly escalated to an avoidable fatal encounter which may well turn his children into Batman.
Perhaps a tow truck shows up to that Wendy’s instead. The driver determines the home address of Rayshard Brooks…
(I nearly used the diminishing reductive term “the occupant” there but I then paused to locate and confirm the man’s name and spelling because as I understand it identifying a person by name is a shortcut to perceiving them as a human being whereas discussing a person exclusively in a limited context like “that guy” or “the individual” can be reductive and a shortcut to perhaps unreasonably simplifying a complicated situation.)
…from the license plate, and secures the vehicle before temporarily disabling it and towing it to that home address. Then the tow truck driver might hand the situation over to say an EMT(who could certify that Rayshard would likely just sleep it off safely), the DMV (who might then suspend his driving privileges), the police (who might add the vehicle description and license plate to a list of ones that they investigate when encountered on the road to confirm the driver is sober and not driving with a suspended license), and maybe a counselor (who might follow up with Rayshard to educate him on the dangers of drunk driving, perhaps equipped with the capacity to impose a spectrum of corrective actions and accountability like periodic sobriety tests, community service or restorative justice like working that Wendy’s drive through window for a few shifts, and group counseling with people like me who have been negatively impacted by drunk driving encounters. I would certainly volunteer my time for something like that and I know I’m not alone.)
Batman is also impossibly wealthy. Like able to still be super rich even after constructing and maintaining a secret space station kind of rich. But instead of aggressively applying his wealth and influence to structural changes in the society he’s ostensibly protecting like advocating for and incentivizing some of the things like I just discussed, he mostly just beats the shit out of poor, uneducated, low level criminals. Which like. Seems like a squandering of those resources and is maybe overly self indulgent. Straight white men these days, am I right?
So when I saw the character Black Panther portrayed as a guy who navigates these nuanced multidimensional and complicated situations with a focus on atonement for the sins of his father, empathy for his adversary, championing and spreading the culture he was afforded the opportunity to grow up in that gave him the perspective to try to perceive people more for what they can become than as what they are in any given moment… I don’t know. I mean, It’s not a competition but that’s a much more attractive character to me to celebrate and valorize. And the shorthand for communicating all that for me has become, Wakanda Forever.
