Four Little Girls Essay Response

Four Little Girls
Eugene “Bull” Connor, Police Commissioner of Safety of Birmingham, Alabama, clearly failed in his own hate-driven campaign against desegregation. Coupled with this failure to extinguish a handful of peaceful protest marches, Bull Connor also failed to appropriate the South’s senselessly racist worldviews with that of the sensible reactionary precautions that would be more relatable to the mainstream media. Bull’s disregard for context and lacking desire to find a progressive solution to the problem exposed the weak-mindedness of those moderates in Birmingham calling for sympathy from the country. Subsequently, Eugene Connor became the catalyst for situational understanding in the region. The media’s freedom during these events allowed a narrative that reflected true human morality and the juxtaposition of tenured human beings with peaceful resistance training involved in positive civil rights reform and the dog-wielding, fire hose-wielding, power-wielding police force gave way for ethical reflection. Quite obviously, in hindsight, Eugene “Bull” Connor’s crusade on Birmingham’s weakest population seemed, to the national public, an atrocity conveying the true instability of desegregation. To characterize his response as anything but listlessly immoral would give credence to an unthinking way of living in which one’s own values have no basis in reality and therefore no respectable place in modern society. One could say Eugene “Bull” Connor was simply following the laws promoting segregation in his state and that that was just but, to the contrary, he was not. Eugene Connor and his police force weren’t even just in the eyes of the law. Eugene and the segregation laws he upheld were not protected by the Supreme Court. In the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court case segregation in public schools was deemed unequal and unconstitutional. Eugene’s regime for keeping Alabama segregated went against the Supremacy Clause. This allowed his actions to be accurately descriptive of his personal stance on the issue of human beings interacting with other human beings and not the stance of the governing bodies. Further, this disconnect permitted the media to fully demonize the gross misconduct of his response as that of alien to the new, civil America; a threat to civility would make desegregation inevitable. To draw modern parallels, differences need be identified. The role media plays, today, to uphold the presence of certain political narratives among the population might directly go against moral law. Current civil rights events seem to center, still, around police violence as the police are the manifestation of the law. In examples such as, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and Tamir Rice, the response of the socializing mainstream media has been to be careful to draw conclusions against those in power as to not promote any anti-establishmentarianism. This careful concession to actions that promote chaos create a muddled thinking in the American public. The subtle disconnect of supreme law and police action that allowed the public to discredit the efforts of Eugene Connor as “right” is non-existent in today’s society. The doublethink that does exist, however, is a product of the population allowing police militarization under the proud fear of post 9/11 terrorism and our moral disgust for its actual effects. We know that our laws protect the police that shoot and kill unarmed African American males but we neglect to have any argument against legislators and news media that throw “terrorism” around with such utility. Peace.