Urban Thought Collective

To say that most of Oakland, CA and the rest of us breathed a collective sigh of relief June 4 after hearing that Johannes Mehserle, the former Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) cop who shot unarmed Oscar Grant in the back on New Year’s Day, would be bound over for trial on the charge of murder, is not a worn-out cliche.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, after listening to seven days of testimony, Judge Don Clay concluded on June 4 that Mehserle hadn’t gotten his stun gun and his service pistol mixed up when he shot Grant. “There’s no doubt in my mind,” Clay said at the close of the former officer’s preliminary hearing in Oakland, “that Mr. Mehserle intended to shoot Oscar Grant with a gun and not a Taser.”

Whether or not Mehserle will ultimately be found guilty of Grant’s murder of course, remains to be seen. Rarely has any law enforcement officer been found guilty for the murder or human and civil rights violation of the people of color they brutalized, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

I said earlier that most of us breathed a sigh of relief. That’s because of the fear that Mehserle’s “reason” for shooting Grant – that he had actually been reaching for his Taser stun gun instead of his firearm – would be believed and that would be the end of it. The reason for this fear has nothing to do with paranoia, but with the complicity of mainstream media.

Before Mehserle had even secured a lawyer and turned himself into the police to be questioned, it was the media that parroted the line that Mehserle had been attempting to reach for his Taser and grabbed his gun instead.

It is important that seeds of support be planted in the minds of the general public. This is how the media functions as a most crucial cog in the wheels of oppression. The work of Ida B. Wells-Barnett, credited with being an early investigative journalist in the area of lynching, bears witness to this fact. Much of Wells-Barnett’s work reprinted newspaper accounts that not only reported on the lynchings of Black men accused of raping white women, but many of the papers actually called for the lynchings to take place.

Most recently in Inglewood, CA, the police department killed again with the shooting of Marcus Smith. Smith and others had been at a party the night of May 17 when fighting started. Police were called to break it up and upon their arrival, they state that Smith pointed a gun at them. Witnesses to the shooting state that not only was Smith unarmed, but that he was shot in the back. One account has Inglewood police officers planting a gun near Smith’s still-warm body.

Inglewood police officials maintain that Smith was armed and attempted to fire on police officers. Additionally, both a department spokesman and the Chief of police, a Black woman, stated to the media that Smith was “a known gang member,” and “had a criminal record which included a felony narcotic offense.” When I first read this the thought that came to mind was, “At what point did the police know he was a gang member – before they shot him 18 times in the back or immediately thereafter?”

The purpose of an official statement from an authoritative body that a person “was a known gang member,” or, “had a criminal record” is to automatically trigger in the public’s mind that the shooting was, more than likely, justified. After all, a gang member/criminal, more than likely, would be carrying a gun and prepared to use it.

On Bill O’Reilly’s January 9, 2009 show, during his ‘Talking Points” memo, ostensibly decrying the violence in Oakland that erupted after a march to protest Grant’s murder, O’Reilly described Grant as laying on the ground “reportedly incapacitated.” I wonder about O’Reilly’s choice of the word ‘incapacitated.’ Technically speaking he did use the word correctly, meaning “to deprive of ability, qualification, or strength; make incapable or unfit; disable.” But in common, everyday usage, it brings to mind someone who can’t do anything because they are too drunk or too high.

If he had only used the word “compliant” or “cooperating” to describe Oscar Grant, than perhaps I wouldn’t think he was, in some way, trying to say that Grant was responsible for his own murder. The media not only report facts and information, they create public opinion; they not only reflect reality but they also shape and create it. The media is a most powerful institution in this country. But, as Huey Newton, co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self-defense once stated, “the spirit of the people is greater than the man’s technology.”

The job of critically analyzing the media and all that comes from it is not the job of specialists in far off places. It is all of our jobs.
We must all be up to this task.
Our lives depend on it.
And that’s not a worn-out cliché.

Thandisizwe Chimurenga is a community activist and journalist. She can be heard most Thursdays on “Some of Us Are Brave: A Black Women’s Radio Program” on KPFK – Pacifica Radio in Los Angeles. She is also the Director of the Ida B. Wells Institute, a leadership development and media training program for Black women and girls. Her social commentary blog is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.