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Does the moral arc bend towards justice?
We cannot tell from here.
I was twenty when my friends and I piled into my Geo Metro and drove north through the night, six of us in that damn little car. We were a funny, rag tag crew, sticking out like sore thumbs in the Bronx — small town kids in a big city — and I found a piece of cardboard and wrote “41 SHOTS” on it in marker and carried it above my head as we joined the protest.
It all seemed so shocking to me then. I was even more shocked when all four officers were acquitted a year later. There would be no consequences for the murder of Amadou Diallo.
Sean Bell. Abner Louima. Philando Castile. Tamir Rice. Atatiana Jefferson. Terence Crutcher. Breanna Taylor. Marcus Smith. Does the moral arc of the universe bend towards justice? We do not, actually, know.
We only know that it is long. Twenty two years after that drive to the Bronx and making that cardboard sign and I am sitting with my neighbor on the porch watching the Derek Chauvin verdict come in on his phone and we both let out a breath that we did not even realize we were holding in. A sigh of relief for a guilty verdict for a crime documented from beginning to end? This feels like a very tepid bend.
We can only guess the curvature of an arc from the position where we stand. As I marched earlier…
