Ligon Duncan links to a piece by Bryan Loritts on his reaction to the shooting of Michael Brown. Loritts explains why others need to hear him about his pain:
If you sense exasperation from we African-American’s over yet another news story of a black man slain at the hands of a white man, this is a wonderful opportunity to grab some coffee and seek to understand our hearts. I need my white brothers to know how I felt as I sat in the preaching classes in Bible college and seminary not once hearing examples of great African-American preachers. I need you to know how I felt when I was forced face down on the hard asphalt of Crenshaw Boulevard in Los Angeles, 1993 all because I was nineteen and driving my pastor’s Lexus, a year after the Rodney King riots. I need you to ask how I felt when I walked into a Target recently behind a white woman who took one look at me and pulled her purse tightly.
I wonder, though, if Mr. Loritts feels this death the way Michael Brown’s family and friends do. I understand that an African-American male may be able to imagine what Michael Brown experienced before being shot in ways that white Americans cannot. But I wonder if Mr. Loritts distracts us from a much deeper pain when he likens this news to his own experience. Not to sound disrespectful, but Michael Brown’s experience seems to me to be in a fundamentally different category from Mr. Loritts’. One man is dead, the other is alive. Recognizing that difference may help a lot of people on both sides of the racial divide remember the family and friends in this situation who lost a loved one. Heck, some of those family and friends may even be of European, Asian, or Latino descent.
Old Life 