slate | Did you know Michael Brown was a killer?
Did you know he was a devoted gang member with an extensive juvenile record
who routinely robbed convenience stores and committed acts of mayhem?
And did you know that when Officer Darren Wilson shot Brown, he wasn’t
using unjustified force, he was defending his life? The 6-foot-4,
300-pound 18-year-old fractured Wilson’s eye socket while reaching for his gun, and was killed while charging at Wilson to land another blow.
If this sounds suspect—if it sounds almost unbelievable—then your
head is in the right place. Nothing in this narrative is true. Racist
innuendo aside, there’s no evidence Brown was a violent gang member, nor is there evidence of any serious wrongdoing—as
a juvenile, Brown was never convicted of a felony nor was he facing
charges as an adult. And while Wilson was taken to the hospital after
his encounter with Brown, he didn’t suffer serious injuries—the
fractured eye socket is a myth.
But if you read websites like the Independent Journal Review, dive into far-right media, or explore the world of Darren Wilson support pages,
you’ll find plenty of people who buy the fantasy. They reject the
mainstream picture of Brown: A typical teenager, struggling to carve an
identity and a life out of his beliefs, actions, and missteps. In their
minds Brown was a budding criminal, and Wilson a hero. Or, as one Wilson
supporter said during a demonstration for the officer, “We’ll all see this in the end that it was a good shooting. You know, it was a good kill.”
We know why the Brown family was quick to give a loving portrait of
Michael. Like any parents in their situation, they wanted the world to
see their son as they did—a decent boy who didn’t deserve to die.
The question is for the other side: Why attack Michael Brown’s
reputation? After all, if the goal is an objective look, there’s no need
to explore Brown or Wilson as individuals. Brown could have been Gandhi
or he could have been the Unabomber; all that matters for the case is
what happened in a few brief moments on the streets of Ferguson.
