Ralph Yarl and Why Black Lives Matter
Will Ralph P. Yarl lead America to reconsider “Black Lives Matter”?
It was the horrific American nexus of the proliferation of guns, violence against children and the permission structure this country has granted to bigots. All three converged on April 13, in Kansas City, Missouri.
On that day, Andrew Lester, an 84-year old man shot an African-American teenager -- twice -- in the head and arm, through a glass door. There was little, if any conversation between the two. Yarl never even crossed the threshold of the house before the shots popped off; Yarl never even got a chance to explain to Lester that he was — maybe? — at the wrong house to pick up his twin brothers. “I can tell you there was a racial component to this case,” Clay County Prosecuting Attorney Zachary Thompson said at a news conference. Yeah, I guessed as much.
Imagine, for a second, what went through Ralph Yarl’s mind before the bullets started flying through the glass. Ralph Yarl meant to go to a house on Northeast 115th Terrace, as his mother had instructed him to do, but he went instead one block away, to 115th Street by mistake. The punishment for a mistaken address while being black? Two bullets.
Welcome to America. #RingingaDoorbellWhileBlack
According to the family GoFundMe page:
On Thursday, April 13, 2023, my nephew Ralph P Yarl was on his way to pick up his twin younger brothers from their friend's house a few blocks away from his house. He didn't have his phone. He mistakenly went to the wrong house, one block away from the house where his siblings were. He pulled into the driveway and rang the doorbell. The man in the home opened the door, looked my nephew in the eye, and shot him in the head. My nephew fell to the ground, and the man shot him again. Ralph was then able to get up and run to the neighbor's house, looking for help.
Unfortunately, he had to run to 3 different homes before someone finally agreed to help him after he was told to lie on the ground with his hands up.
Lester, of Kansas City, was charged for one count of armed assault and one count of armed criminal action for shooting 16-year-old Ralph Yarl with a .32-caliber pistol. Lester, who faces two felony charges, couldn’t be bothered to find out why a teenager that he didn’t know was ringing his doorbell — he shot first, asking the most pointed of questions with bullets. “‘I was supposed to pick up my little brothers from their friend's house. And I went and knocked on the door and the man came to the door with a gun and shot me in the head,’” a neighbor said Yarl told her, according to KMBC. "There was blood from ... where he was at all the way up all over the door," Zac Dovel, another neighbor, told CBS News.
To put things into perspective. Yarl is a junior at at Staley High School. He is also a member of the Technology Student Association and Science Olympia Team, as well as a section leader in the marching band. He is, from all accounts, a good kid, helping his mother with his brothers.
Luckily, Ralph Yarl survived and is at home recuperating. Some more good news: thus far, the family has received over 85,000 donations of $3.2 million against a goal of $2.5 million on the family’s GoFundMe page, set up by his aunt to cover medical and recuperative expenses. As good as it is that his family don’t have to worry about medical expenses and that so many Americans demonstrated through donation that they see the clear injustice of the situation, Yarl is going to come out of this psychologically scarred. Further, I wondered how many similar events — in the 60s and 70s and 80s, before social media and Black Lives Matter — were just swept under the rug. How many Ralph Yarl’s didn’t survive, didn’t have GoFundMe pages to help in the rehabilitation process, didn’t get national coverage as a result of the Black Lives Matter movement?
Which brings me — as such incidences always do — to the George Floyd moment. It was a bittersweet moment for Progressives, borne out of a tragic event. Life, in mid 2020, was on pause for everyone, rich and poor alike. Millions were out of work, on lockdown and glued to their screens with little to distract. The murder of George Floyd on May 25th at the hands of the Minnesota police transfixed the nation and led to a collective, fulminous outrage. It was described at the time as “A Racial Reckoning.” It went from national news to a global movement. And even a year after the killing, a majority of the public regarded police violence as a serious American problem. From NBC News, on June 5, 2020, in the thick of lockdowns:
The virus itself has wreaked havoc on black and brown communities, both on the health and economic side. The latest data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics showed that fewer than half of black workers were employed in April.
As Georgetown Law professor Lawrence Gostin, an expert in public health law, told NBC News, the pandemic "has exacerbated protests against racial injustice nationwide."
"George Floyd's death was the spark, but the COVID-19 epidemic is at the foundation of today's grievances," Gostin said. "COVID-19 has shined a spotlight on racial injustice in America in the most profound ways. The COVID-19 epidemic has caused tens of thousands of preventable deaths in the African American community. Racial inequalities in health have been with us for decades, but COVID-19 has amplified the inequities."
This “racial reckoning” lasted about a year.
By the midterm election in 2022, the pushback against police scrutiny had not only begun, but helped deliver (albeit: slightly) the House of Representatives to Republicans. Dishonest “defund the police” ads polluted the airwaves during those midterm elections. And although the Republicans underperformed greatly, the message was felt in the suburbs — particularly in Long Island — which had previously been Democrat strongholds. As always with America — racial progress, followed by a backlash. Reconstruction followed by Jim Crow; Obama followed by Trump. Repeat.
Will Ralph P Yarl lead America to reconsider “Black Lives Matter”? And, if so, will there be, as so many other times in American history, another backlash in the opposite direction? Does America even have the will at this point in time to break this endless cycle of racial progress and then reversal? Do Americans have the sustained will to change our racial dynamic in a lasting way?
I want to end this on a positive note. Every time I get melancholy about America’s avoidance of dealing with the problem of race in a sustained and serious manner, I think about the younger generation. Young people of today, thirteen and under, are light years ahead of the populist, regressive, antidiversity on the right. They give us a hint — just a glimpse — at what the future beyond our lifetimes will probably look like. On all issues of Diversity. And on that note, below I’ll leave off with a report on a protest by the students at Ralph Yarl’s high school, which fills me with more hope than darness:
Sudan live news: Fighting continues despite new ceasefire (Al Jazeera)
China Is Studying Russia’s Economic Playbook for Conflict (Foreign Policy)
People should say why they are running for president (SEMAFOR)
What’s Behind Israel’s Unprecedented Protests with Edo Konrad (Chris Hayes Podcast)
Why the Philippines Is Exposing China’s Aggressive Actions in the South China Sea (The Diplomat)
Hidden Medieval Rooms Found in Sudan Contain Rare Nubian Christian Art (Ancient Origins)
Le Pen’s opposition to pension reform, focus on public order ‘pays off’ in polls (France24)
“The astonishing last-second $787.5 million settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems, which came after the jury had been seated and on the brink of opening statements Tuesday, served as stark reminder that lies have consequences.” (Reliable Sources)