The Hate U Give*

"A  man . . . should know either everything or nothing. Which do you know?" (The Importance of Being Earnest, 2002).

I, twenty-three-year-old Jenny, know nothing. That's not to say I don't have moments were I do think I know everything. 

Like when Rob asked me out to the movies this week. He asked me if I wanted to see "The Hate U Give." I'd seen an ad, and I knew vaguely it was about a black teenage girl who witnesses an unarmed black friend of hers get shot. I was pretty excited that Rob wanted to see such a progressive movie.

A kid from my high school was shot by police. He was black. He was unarmed. One fortunate but also unfortunate thing was that the cops who shot him were wearing body cameras. I have seen the final moments of my friend's life. I did not know him well; If I saw him in the hall, I would say hi, but we weren't much closer than that.

His name was Elijah and he had an outstanding traffic violation fine against him. He did not have the money to pay it off right away, and the fine sat, unpaid, and became overdue. One day, police officers were investigating a theft, and they spotted Elijah, who fit the description of the thief.. He saw them too, and was likely afraid that they would barrage him about this overdue fine. He ran. They followed. He hid in a stranger's garage. The children that were home alone at the time called the police. You can read the whole article and watch the video yourself here. It's a disturbing video: three police officers are shouting different things at him at the same time. They ask him to show them his hands. He pulls his hands out in a "suspicious" way and is shot. From the time they confront him and he is shot, eleven seconds pass.  Elijah died in the garage. He was twenty years old. I have never heard any updates regarding the original thief they were investigating.

Every video I've seen of police violence against black man has disturbed me. I had even seen police officers from my home state harassing black men on video before. It all upset me. Obviously, it was evermore upsetting to see it happen to someone I knew personally. I did not believe my heart could break any more for others' sakes than it did for African Americans in our country.

Subconsciously, I went into the movie thinking I already knew everything I needed to about police brutality and Black Lives Matter. Elijah died six months ago. I hadn't thought about him for awhile. Instead of having all of my biases confirmed, I learned so much more from this movie. As I watched it, I revisited all the emotions I'd felt learning about Elijah's death, but more fiercely. This led me to sob throughout the movie. All I could think about were all the details about Elijah's life that I did not know that made his death all the more tragic. To rephrase a line from the movie, all I had thought about up until watching the movie was that Elijah had died, but I had not thought about how he had lived. A good, wholesome life is what makes its end so much sadder. It's easy to not care about someone dying when you don't know anything about their life. The more details you know about someone's life, the more likely you are to be affected by the abrupt end of it. 

Last month, the District Attorney of my district announced that the officer who shot and killed him would not face criminal charges. He very unfortunately and out of tunely referred to the shooting as "sympathetic fire." He was referring to a fellow officer brandishing his taser, but it was a gross phrasing of the situation. There is nothing "sympathetic" about this situation. I am sure if that this police officer would like more than eleven seconds in order for him to explain himself. I'm sure he would be sympathetic to his own children and give them more than eleven seconds to explain themselves.

As I watched the movie, I discovered something about myself: I do a majority of my life-learning in the midst of major pain. I was not just heart broken over Elijah's situation, I was completely distraught. I did not want this to happen to anyone else I knew if I could help it. This movie broke my heart, but it also left a life lesson inside it. A lesson cannot enter an unbroken heart, but the heart must break first to make room for the lesson. It's a painful way to learn compassion. But I got to thinking, that it just might be the only way to learn compassion. Lady Gaga sings it herself: "Till it happens to you, you won't know how it feels . . . it won't be real." Our hearts have to collectively break to learn, to progress, and be more compassionate. It is not coincidence that Jesus Christ died of a broken heart. He is a professed Savior of the World because He is all-compassionate, all-understanding, and empathetic. He achieved this after His heart broke. The more our hearts break, the more we become like Him. His heart had to break for the sake of everyone who ever was and is and will be on the earth. We have a lot of heart breaking to do. You can start by going out and seeing this movie.

I don't think a stat will get the people in my state to care about police brutality. But once it's a friend, a neighbor, a family member, they just might understand the impact police brutality has on a community. It isn't a real state of affairs until it happens in your neighborhood, like it did mine.

Everyone can learn so much with an open heart--it just has to break first.