Bryan Stevenson Response

To the children whom it may concern: Be careful children! I must tell you of my worst nightmare before it comes to haunt you! It can creep into your homes at night… it’s alive, it’s frightening, and it can shake your warm and cozy house until it comes crashing down! It’s big and it’s brutal, and though it may not hide under your bed at night, it’s always in the closet. This thing is more destructive than Jaws, more intimidating than Goliath, and more eye opening than the Loch ness Monster. Some brave people have tried to kill it, but have never been successful. This thing has always lingered, and never has been killed. And throughout it’s great and many days has and will always destroy. This thing I speak of, o dear children, this thing you must watch out for! This thing I speak of, o dear children, this thing is everywhere! This thing I speak of, o dear children, this thing it makes me cry. The name of this thing that you must be aware of, this thing is called injustice.

America fears the possibility of the black mans’ innocence. When it comes to crime, we need a place to point our fingers, direct the blame, lay the fault. Taking responsibility for complacency and recognizing the true need for genuine justice in this country would take work, and the lazy American (including myself) has a hard time dealing with this subject.

On Friday, in Windows, Bryan Stevenson so eloquently and graciously presented how widespread the crippling disease of complacency among Christians today has become. He addressed the entrapment and endangerment of the comfort of middle-class suburbia, and I was shaken in my seat. Why is this disease so common? Didn’t Christ come back to warn us about people who get stuck in this frame of life? The problem is that there is an error in the system. We are stuck on natural selection, only we unnaturally select ourselves by oppressing those around us. Henri-Frederic Amiel, a Swiss philosopher and poet once said, “An error is more dangerous the more truth it contains.” The truth is, oppression, racism, prejudice, hate, etc… have been infiltrated and taught through every system, for as long as there has been a fallen world. One of the most devastating parts of this cycle is that in the United States we are not even completely aware of who we are oppressing. A lot of hands go into producing the fashions that we so casually buy at the mall. I often wonder who’s sweat or possibly blood it took to make the shirts that I wear. I wonder that even more when I pay so little for my purchase.

Stevenson talked about the issue of impartiality behind court doors. He told distressing stories of injustice, which took place in the places which are bound by Constitution to promise justice. Freedom looks like a hopeless cause if the system continues in this present partiality. Stevenson pointed out that the courts fear true justice because it is a harder road to walk on. It’s easier to convict an innocent poor man than convict a guilty rich man. Hope is diluted when even our judges are convinced that discrimination is inevitable. Fairness has never fully been a reality, but must the United States flaunt this flaw? I was appalled, ashamed, and hurt by some of the stories that Stevenson told.

It must be really easy to be blind to others pain and suffering, because so many people have had their eyes gouged out to the truths of injustice in this country. All we know are the stories that 20/20 feeds to us as absolute truth- black men are dangerous drug addicts, yet racism is no longer a problem. Could it be possible that the circular war of oppression to depression to drugs to crime and back again, is the cause of hopelessness among minorities? If someone showed the faces of my family and me on the news every night and convinced society that my entire identity was as a criminal with no chance at a future, I would pray every night that God would take me away from this hopeless world.

According to Stevenson, there are two things necessary to think about in terms of justice. The first is that ideas are not enough to create justice, and action must be infiltrated. I agreed that the vision of a better and brighter future doesn’t feed the homeless, dress the naked, or employ the unemployed.There has to be an action behind a vision, and resources (people) to pursue it. The second point was that to create justice, one must be hopeful in orientation. Justice is impossible to obtain without optimism, expectation even. There must be an internal recognition of the possibility that oppression and injustice can and will be overcome and there must be a decision that there will be no other alternative. If there is no hope, oppression will minimize serotonin and will maximize depression and desperation. People are worth more than the disgusting mismanagement with which a pride-filled, “justice-seeking” country uses to administer their people. As Stevenson said, “Each of us is worth more than the worst thing we’ve ever done,” and I am convinced that Jesus would have said the same thing.