Thoughts On The Death Of Rodney King

I’m sorry for the death of Rodney King. Mr. King drowned yesterday in Southern California.

Mr. King was a fellow human being who was responsible for his many mistakes, and who also very much part of a world that he never made. I’m sorry Mr. King was never able to find a right path in life.

I’m sorry for the police who were so removed from their humanity for some amount of time that they beat Mr. King so severely.

I’m sorry for the many police officers who know a right path, but who sometimes end up engaging in actions that are wrong and who end up defending many of the persons and institutions in our society who profit when we are unable to get along.

I’m sorry that some folks in Los Angeles used the excuse of the not guilty verdict in the trial of the Los Angeles police officers accused of beating Mr. King to attack their own communities and to attack the innocent truck driver Reginald Denny.

I’m sorry for all the self-destructive behavior we see in America.

I’m sorry for the people who leave comments about Mr. King’s death such as the one you see below from the Facebook page of Houston hate speech radio station KTRH 740—

“Looks like His baby days are over, the welfare state will have to pay all his babies mothers, to bad it was not a family event. Hes all wet”

I’m sorry that we are never able to come to full terms with the most brutal aspects of our national history.

I’m sorry–and hopeful–for all of us because  for both good and ill Mr. King, the police who beat him, the rioters in Los Angeles, Reginald Denny, and the people who say they are glad Mr. King is dead are  quintessentially American.

I’m hopeful because sometimes progress is made, and because so many of us realize there is better path than the way we so often treat each other in this nation.

Here is an obituary of Mr. King from the Los Angeles Times.