A Boy is Buried in Brownsville
A boy is buried in Brownsville.
Jaime Gonzalez was shot this week by police in his school in Brownsville. Jaime was carrying a pellet gun and pointed it at police. Police warned him -- called out at least ten times -- to drop his pellet gun. Jaime didn't. Police shot and killed him. Jaime is dead, a boy of 15. He will never become a man. He will never find the woman of his life. He will never have that first paycheck and think about how much he can do with those few dollars. He will never own his first car and care for it more than anything. He will never finish high school or march in his school's band again. He will never go to college or serve in the army. He will never have frustrating and bewildering and confused and angry boys of his own. He is dead and buried.
The comments from the Houston Chronicle, which I read, are nearly universally critical of Jaime. Of course, none of these critics know Jaime, nor were there in the hallway of his school when he lifted a pellet gun. None of these critics were there that morning when he left his parents to go to school, with those thoughts in his head that boys have -- that things have to change, that he wants to be in control just once. None of these critics know Jaime. But they judge him, and they do so harshly.
One user, with the name "DeportThem2009e," apparently in reference to Jaime's family name or his Spanish-speaking friends at the funeral, simply says that the "Little idiot shouldn't have pointed a gun at the cops." Another, "momomonster" makes the swift judgement that "I saw [sic] where the parents demanded answers and to know what gave the police the right to shoot their son. I demand to know WHO taught the young man to carry a weapon to school and not obey the police orders to put it down. THEY should go to jail." He "demands" that the parents go to jail, as if it were the parents ... really? ... who taught a boy to carry a weapon. This is Texas; this is America. Guns are easy to come by, especially pellet guns. Carrying a pellet gun isn't really rocket science -- it's learned easily.
User "flypusher" argues that "There was no injustice here. The kid did something incredibly stupid, the cops gave him a chance to live, but he chose to be even more stupid and he paid the price." But we don't kill boys for being stupid. We don't kill boys for being "troubled." We don't kill boys for making choices. And user "pro-all" claims that the Gonzalez family needs to own-up that "their son wanted to die that day." Do we know this? Anyone who works with children, especially children in middle school, know that they are in fact, pretty stupid. They do stupid things. And as experienced, mollified adults, we don't understand what they do. It's easy to project one's adult, more rational attitudes onto a situation, but the fact is, we don't know what was going through Jaime's brain that morning. We don't know what he was thinking or feeling or experiencing or fearing when cops were in the hall, yelling at him. Cops who surely came in full body armor, black and big, rifles and pistols pointed at him, yelling, yelling, yelling. Another writer says that it's the kid's fault if the cops tell him to drop the pellet gun after ten times. But with boys, ten times sometimes isn't enough, and it's never enough to kill. Before killing a boy, perhaps twenty times would be necessary. Thirty times ... forty times ...
"Bigpappy," with all his ALL CAPS and over-use of exclamation, as if to make us really, really pay attention, tells us, as if it is so simple, that "...........IT IS STILL THE KIDS FAULT!!!!!!! No matter how you slice it, the kid in this instance is 100% to blame." Really? Is any 15 year old boy really "100% to blame" for anything? Before their brain matures, before they have the experience of the world in their bones, before they can even drive a car? Is any 15 year old boy so mature and responsible and even fully cognitively aware of his surroundings that he can be "100% to blame" for his choices?
Jaime made several mistakes that morning. But we don't kill boys for making mistakes. Jaime was stupid. Jaime perhaps was confused or frozen or angry as hell. But we don't kill boys for being angry or frozen or confused. Jaime is dead, and critics in far-away Houston, forgetting what it was like to be a boy, writing from their warm houses on a sunny weekend with falling leaves and football victories, critics who never knew Jaime or his school or his teachers or his band or his Spanish-speaking family find it easy to judge a boy who is dead and who cannot speak for himself. But Jaime won't speak, and his family will be ignored in their inconsolable sorrow, the sorrow of a father who will never see his boy become a man; the sorrow of a mother who will never see grandchildren.
A boy died in Brownsville this week.
A boy died.
Matthew 7.1-4
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