Leadingchurch.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/07/08/the-big-question-about-why-police-pull-over-so-many-black-drivers/

Anglican Journal

Warning, this piece is explicit. I’m keeping the link because I’m trying to figure out the purpose of such a piece in something like the NYMag.

The Banner

Frank Bruni NYTimes

NYTimes

We must see all unwarranted violence for what it is: A corrosion of culture.

I know well that when people speak of love and empathy and honor in the face of violence, it can feel like meeting hard power with soft, like there is inherent weakness in an approach that leans so heavily on things so ephemeral and even clichéd.

But that is simply an illusion fostered by those of little faith.

Anger and vengeance and violence are exceedingly easy to access and almost effortlessly unleashed.

The higher calling — the harder trial — is the belief in the ultimate moral justice and the inevitable victory of righteousness over wrong.

This requires an almost religious faith in fate, and that can be hard for some to accept, but accept it we must.

The moment any person comes to accept as justifiable an act of violence upon another — whether physical, spiritual or otherwise — that person has already lost the moral battle, even if he is currently winning the somatic one.

When we all can see clearly that the ultimate goal is harmony and not hate, rectification and not retribution, we have a chance to see our way forward. But we all need to start here and now, by doing this simple thing: Seeing every person as fully human, deserving every day to make it home to the people he loves.

NYTimes

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/437625/dallas-police-shooting-demands-calm-debate

NYTimes

HT Freddie deBoer: There is no such thing as history

Tomorrow a cop could come up and shoot me and get away with it. That’s what we all have to deal with. But the odds would be vastly higher of that if I were black. That’s what black people have to deal with. And if next year those odds are a few tenths of a percentage point lower, if the gap has narrowed just that much, the moral horror of living under that condition will not have shrunk an iota. Progress did not come soon enough or real enough for Alton Sterling or Philando Castille. It never does. See that’s the little paradox of assuming progress, as the Jon Chaits of the world always do: if it’s to be assumed, then there’s nothing to celebrate, and if you do celebrate, you celebrate on the backs of those for whom progress always comes a day too late. If the target does not change with the times, if progress in fact does not outstrip the progress that’s claimed, then it’s only progress for those who need it least. No, it’s not 1968. That’s not the tragedy. The tragedy is that it’s 2016, and here we are, a million boots in line, stuck in this grim and awful world. And Jon Chait is locked in here with us.