Black and White Before the Law
I’ve been thinking about Elijah Doughty.
I think about a young man, full-grown, laughing with his friends about the dumb stuff they got up to when they were kids. Remember when we stole those bikes, just for a bit of fun? We grew out of that.
I think about a boy, broken and lifeless on a dirt track. He’ll never grow out of that.
The driver had lain in wait. Engine off. Lights off. Waiting for the bastards who’d taken his bikes. He lay in wait, and when the boy appeared, he pounced. Chasing him. Hunting him.
He drove too close to the bike, in the dark, over rough terrain. He wanted to make the boy swerve from the path and fall off. That’s not condemnatory speculation: that’s what he said himself. A suspicious observer might wonder if he’d set out to mow the boy down all along, but we can afford to be charitable. The charitable view is that he told the truth: that all he wanted to do was make a kid without a helmet crash his bike in the bush. That’s the man’s defence: he didn’t want to make the kid’s death certain, only possible. That’s the happy gloss we can put on it, if we want to give the driver the benefit of the doubt.
Not done for murder. Not done for manslaughter. Done for dangerous driving — like a man who’s looking at his phone and doesn’t notice he’s run a red a light — and given three years. Because like the judge said, it was at the “lower to middle” end of the dangerous driving range. Not TOO serious, because after all, he wasn’t speeding. He wasn’t drunk. When he lay in wait for the boy, when he took off through the night to chase him down, when he rolled his two-tonne truck over his helpless body — he was stone cold sober and in full control. That, the judge said, made it better.
It’s almost redundant to point out how different things would be if the players’ identities were reversed. If a black man ran down a white boy for stealing a dirt bike, he doesn’t get off with three years. He doesn’t get to dodge manslaughter while the judge praises his honesty and sobriety. You know it. I know it. Everyone knows it. You can deny it — maybe, for your own peace of mind, you have to deny it — but you know it. You live in this world too, and you know how it works.
A black man doesn’t get this result if he runs down a white boy. But there’s a sick absurdity in even posing the question, because we know it wouldn’t happen anyway. Who but a white man would feel so confident in his place in the world, so secure in his sovereignty over others, as to go out to hunt down whoever had taken what was his: to live out a cinematic fantasy as the citizen-warrior cleaning up the town? And who but a black kid would represent an easy enough target for that white man to feel safe chasing? A man who knew he mattered ran down a kid he knew didn’t. It wouldn’t happen the other way around: everyone in this country knows the script too well.
I’m sure that script can change, as it’s changed before. It has to. It’ll take effort and will on a scale far greater than any of us as individuals — but we hold the capacity for change too, within ourselves. I don’t believe this is about guilt for sins of the past, or responsibility for the actions of others. It’s about a clear-eyed view of the past, present and future — an acknowledgment of the reality and of our duty to stop tolerating it. It’s about self-examination and facing our own prejudices: the prejudices that colour our reactions to the stories in the news, or the people we pass in the street, depending on the colour of their skin, and the lessons we’ve spent a lifetime absorbing, maybe without even knowing it. It’s about listening, and learning, and staying angry in the face of injustice. And of course, recognising that what I think about it all doesn’t matter — maybe I’m wrong. But engaging, and thinking, and not turning away from what looks too hard…I think that has to be a start.
I doubt any politician will ever read this, but just in case…
Please, if you have been elected to represent the Australian people, especially if you’re a member of one of the major parties: say something. Have the courage to comment on this, to say, “This is not right”. I value the rule of law highly, but valuing the rule of law doesn’t mean pretending that a system is perfect and never errs. I beg the leaders of my country to make their voice heard, so that people who are suffering can hear that someone in power is on their side. I say that in the hope that someone in power actually is. Please. Speak. Otherwise, when the oppressed lash back, how can you argue that they have to respect the law, when you’ve made it so clear that the law is not meant for them?
Please speak. For the boy lying on that track, and the man who’ll never get to laugh with his friends about the past.
