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At Michael Brown Funeral, Sharpton's Double-Edged Eulogy Evokes Anger
By Byron Yrok, Aug. 25, 2014, Washingtonexaminer.com
The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., has been so heavily politicized that it would have been unreasonable to expect Brown's funeral to be free of politics — especially when it featured a eulogy by the Rev. Al Sharpton. And indeed, the Brown service, held Monday at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, was intensely political. But not in the way some observers expected.
It's probably safe to say most white viewers thought Sharpton would deliver a rabble-rousing condemnation of the police, the government, and the American system, concluding that they all combined to end a promising 18-year-old life. On that, Sharpton came through; the first half of his speech and his summation were essentially restatements of much of the anti-cop rhetoric surrounding the Brown shooting.
But the middle part of Sharpton's speech was something altogether different, and it fit uneasily into a debate that has been going on about the larger meaning of Ferguson.
After a demand for broad reforms in American policing, Sharpton changed course to address his black listeners directly. "We've got to be straight up in our community, too," he said. "We have to be outraged at a 9-year-old girl killed in Chicago. We have got to be outraged by our disrespect for each other, our disregard for each other, our killing and shooting and running around gun-toting each other, so that they're justified in trying to come at us because some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go."
"Blackness has never been about being a gangster or a thug," Sharpton continued. "Blackness was, no matter how low we was pushed down, we rose up anyhow."
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| Rev. Al Sharpton Source: www.breitbart.com / AP |
The shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., has been so heavily politicized that it would have been unreasonable to expect Brown's funeral to be free of politics — especially when it featured a eulogy by the Rev. Al Sharpton. And indeed, the Brown service, held Monday at Friendly Temple Missionary Baptist Church in St. Louis, was intensely political. But not in the way some observers expected.
It's probably safe to say most white viewers thought Sharpton would deliver a rabble-rousing condemnation of the police, the government, and the American system, concluding that they all combined to end a promising 18-year-old life. On that, Sharpton came through; the first half of his speech and his summation were essentially restatements of much of the anti-cop rhetoric surrounding the Brown shooting.
But the middle part of Sharpton's speech was something altogether different, and it fit uneasily into a debate that has been going on about the larger meaning of Ferguson.
After a demand for broad reforms in American policing, Sharpton changed course to address his black listeners directly. "We've got to be straight up in our community, too," he said. "We have to be outraged at a 9-year-old girl killed in Chicago. We have got to be outraged by our disrespect for each other, our disregard for each other, our killing and shooting and running around gun-toting each other, so that they're justified in trying to come at us because some of us act like the definition of blackness is how low you can go."
"Blackness has never been about being a gangster or a thug," Sharpton continued. "Blackness was, no matter how low we was pushed down, we rose up anyhow."
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