The Beating in Detroit

It's been a few weeks now since the awful beating of white motorist Steve Utash in Detroit. Charlie LeDuff ponders the same questions we all have about it:

Sadly, the talk after the attack on Mr. Utash wasn’t about a man who stopped to do the right thing. It wasn’t about Ms. Hughes, the gun-toting angel of mercy who saw no color except the red of his blood. It wasn’t about the use of justifiable force or the value of carrying a sidearm.

Instead white people asked: Where were the old-school civil rights advocates who usually spoke out against such beatings? Where was Reverend Al? Why did it take Jesse Jackson almost two weeks to say something? Not that any of them really wanted famous civil rights leaders coming to town and marching around. What they seemed to be demanding was an admission from black leaders that blacks harbor racial hatred, too.

Thank God at least one woman stopped to help him. But coupled with that awful shooting of the convenience store owner near where my brother used to live, and you wonder where God was in any of this.  You see him later in the generosity of strangers who have contributed to funds to support these families. But something is terribly wrong that this occurs at all in society, and that society allows many of the perpetrators to escape without punishment. I hope they can catch the murderers in the convenience store case and that that more arrests are made in the beating of Mr. Utash. At a minimum, I hope the limited consciences of these individuals gnaw at them and they live daily with the guilt and shame of being soulless. And the families begin to heal.