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A Mother's Love

© Regina Sewell

Almost two years after Amadou Diallo, an immigrant from West Africa, was fatally shot by New York Police Department officers*, the Justice Department announced its decision not to pursue federal civil rights charges against the officers involved in the Diallo slaying. It is hard to believe that racist stereotypes portraying young black men as dangerous offenders did not play at least some part in the officers' decision to open fire on Diallo when he reached for his wallet. Such a slaying by police of a middle class white male in a similar situation is unheard of.

My initial response to the Justice Department's decision was angry resignation. Part of me wanted to lash out against a system that is so clearly racist that it justified the police slaying of an unarmed man because his skin was black. Another part of me shrank with hopelessness because I feel like there is nothing I can do, that anyone can do, to turn the tide of racism in a country where blacks were turned away from the polls and lots of Jewish American voices didn't count in the last election.

Not long after the Justice Department's announcement, I heard snippits of a speech made by Diallo's mother, Kadiadou Diallo, on National Public Radio. To my amazement, Kadiadou Diallo did not speak out against the Justice Department in hatred or anger. Nor did she speak in resignation. Instead, she acknowledged the racism behind her son's death and noted her disappointment with the Justice Department's decision. She then asked us to act out of peace and love and from this place to act to create change. With a mother's love, Kadiadou Diallo called for all of us to take the higher moral stand. In doing so she issued a challenge for all of us to demand social change without invoking the very hatred we are fighting.

This is one of the challenges of all times. How do we fight for peace without creating more strife and more resistance to peaceable solutions? Or put another way, how do we attain social change without using the very tools -- anger, hatred, and brute force -- that we are trying to dismantle? How do we challenge systems of oppression without becoming oppressive ourselves? At the same time, how do we do this without giving away our power? That is to say, how do we not exploit anger and hatred without becoming victimized ourselves. Kadiadou Diallo gave us the answer to all of these questions: we expect change to happen and demand justice in the name of peace and love.