Advice from Michael Brown's uncle -- only too prophetic and too true

As Michael Brown's family laid his body to rest in Ferguson, Missouri yesterday, the New York Times published two articles:   one about Michael Brown and one about Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed him.

Among those quoted in the article about Michael was his uncle, Bernard Ewings, who remembered talking with him once about how to interact with police officers:

"I let him know that, if the police ever get on you, I don't care what you doing, give it up.  Because if you do one wrong move, they'll shoot you.   They'll kill you."

The awfulness of that prophetic truth is made all the more awful by the fact that this is a conversation hundreds of thousands of black families have had with their boys and young men.   It is a warning that cannot be over-emphasized.

From what is known, it seems that Michael did not heed this advice at first;   and then when he tried to by holding up his hands in surrender . .  .  it was too late.    The police officer was already in the process of killing him.

Please, do not misread this:  I am not blaming Michael.   It is an indictment of our society of inequality and of our police and justice systems that put young black men at such higher risk than their white counter-parts.   They need to know that they cannot trust that the police will treat them fairly . . . and that they must act accordingly to protect themselves.

How many white families have had such a conversation?   But it is a reality of the world black families live in, still in 2014.

I remember an NPR program, from 10 or 12 years ago, about crime in low-income, African-American areas of our big cities, where children grow up hearing gunshots ringing out nightly in their neighborhoods.    One black teenage boy was asked what he thought his life would be like in 10 years.

His answer still gives me chills:   He replied, simply, and calmly, that he didn't expect to be alive in 10 years.   

Ralph