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September 14, 2009 in Opinion
Leonard Pitts Jr.: A minority’s bigotry is just as loathsome
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
– Martin Luther King, Jr.
Your blues, author BeBe Moore Campbell famously wrote, ain’t like mine.
I’ve occasionally borrowed that phrase to explain how bigotry as experienced by majority and minority is not the same: The one has access to levers of power enabling it to express its hatred in public policy; the other has access only to fists and words. But there are times that observation is simultaneously true, and irrelevant. This is one of them.
There is, after all, a certain egalitarian outrageousness in what happened to 18-year-old Brian Milligan. Getting hit in the back of the head with a chunk of concrete is getting hit in the back of the head with a chunk of concrete, whether you are Jew or Muslim, gay or straight, black or white.
That’s reportedly what happened to Milligan the night of Aug. 18, after he walked his girlfriend to her home in their gritty Buffalo, N.Y., neighborhood. Milligan had headphones on, so he didn’t even hear it coming. A mob of 10 to 12 black males then stomped and kicked him and hit him with more concrete – all in the head and face, says his father, Brian Sr., 41.
As they struck him, they taunted him. “You white (expletive), we told you stay away from here. These are ‘our’ streets. We told you stay away from our women.”
Brian, you see, is white. His girlfriend, Nicola Fletcher, 18, is African-American. That difference in melanin has, they say, been a source of daily friction with a gang of black men in their neighborhood for months. She’s been shot with paintballs; they’ve both been repeatedly cursed and taunted. “They would hit on her right in front of me,” says Milligan. “They would call her baby and all that.”
Now there’s this. Brian Sr. says when he got to the hospital, he didn’t even recognize his son. “I seen a mess. I seen somebody laying there dead.”
Not quite, but close. Brian Jr. had a gash on his head that required seven staples to close. He had bleeding and swelling in his brain. His jaw and one tooth were broken. His sense of smell is gone. He has no memory of the beating.
Accord- ing to media reports, blacks in the neighborhood have been conspicuous in their refusal to cooperate with investigators. While a black anti-crime group has been trying to help bring the criminals to justice, Brian Sr. says other blacks have chosen silence. “I don’t know if it’s that they’re scared or they don’t care. That’s a coin I just don’t want to toss up in the air.”
Nor do I. So let me just say this: Assuming the facts are as we have been told, this demands prosecution as a hate crime. What happened to Brian Milligan is an offense against civil society. We should “all” be outraged.
I loathe bigotry in all its forms, but I have a special problem with bigotry as practiced by those who, by dint of their own history, should know better. When Jews hate Muslims for their religion, when gays scorn straights for their sexual orientation, when blacks beat a white teenager for the color of his skin, it suggests people too dense to understand the moral of their own story, the meaning of their own passages. The minority is no more righteous in its hate than the majority is.
Brian Sr., an unemployed construction worker facing a mountain of medical bills, is asking for help. A special savings account has been set up for Brian.
And yes, Brian and Nicola are still together. He credits her with nudging him to get his GED. “She loves me. And I love her. That’s more than anything. That sums it all up.”
Somebody thought they had a right to tell this kid where he could go and who he could see. They kicked his head in because of who he is.
And that’s a sadly familiar song. It is a blues we’ve heard too many times before.
Leonard Pitts Jr. is a columnist for the Miami Herald. His e-mail address is lpitts@miamiherald.com.
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tedelam on September 14 at 7:24 a.m.
i apolagize if i dont articulate my words correctly or my grammer isnt up to standards i dont usually read the news on the internet but i am outraged as well by this story ..i am a mixed race man my mother is white my father was black and my wife is white all my life i have struggled to deal with the many stereotypes given to me because of my color i cant believe that these black boys would stoop to a level like this and the witnesses would do so either this is a hate crime and prosecution should be great for these young men ..they assumed they were just in what they did and all they have done is to prove that ignorance has no color ild like to use another word but i cant this behavior is learned .with allthe hardships our black ancesters have gone thru to bring us to this point of freedom and we have alot furthur to go these boys have made a clear statement that effects all minorities..martin luther king wanted peace for all a world where we could exist without the hatred…..i have to admit when obama got elected i felt a sense of growth in america i thought because we had a black man in office america would finally change but then i said to myself its not the color of the skin its the man inside that matters we are so hung up on color we dont realize we are all the same God created us all equally our differences should not be a hindurance for what this country should be ..i hear stories about people that dislike the president now and realize most of them dislike him for his skin color wake up people hes the president elected by us at no otherr time has race of a president been a factor we have lost our pride in who we are and are destined to be destroyed by that …my grandfather was a share cropper he was raised on a plantation in slavery he died when i was ten i am forty three now its been less then fifty years since blacks were not allowed to attend the same schools as whites and we are repeating the same garbage that was put on our ancestors…to you witnesses it is your duty to turn these boys in because if you dont the next time it may be you or your son or daughter being in the wrong neighborhood with someone and the same or worse could happen …..this country was founded on christian values we are loosing a little of that each day this is a free country we can have our opinions as to who we marry and date or hang out with but how can we have that if we get to the point when we think we can tell someone else how to live there life…you kids are ignorant and you have just shown the world that we are no better then them ……in other countries they hate people for the cities they live in the clothes they wear there religios choices etc and at the rate we are going its only a matter of time before we get there..wake up america lets get back to getting on track and make this country great again..it was best said in the late 80s in los angeles california “cant we all just get along”well cant we!!!thanks for your time ted elam spokane washington a proud american
tedelam on September 14 at 7:27 a.m.
ps …i just remembered that we just passed an aniversary of sorts for 9/11 whats the deal here think about it arent we better then this