AN UNSPEAKABLE HOPE

Racially implicated police violence finds an unlikely redemptive turn in this memoir by a survivor.

On Nov. 11, 2012, Ford was pulled over by Pittsburgh police for allegedly running a red light. Mistaken for a gang member with a similar name, he was ordered to step outside his car. When he did not immediately comply, he was shot five times, paralyzing him from the waist down. During the trial, “all three officers were claiming they believed their lives were in danger.” However, the jury decided that the police response was unwarranted. Given his experiences, Ford has many valuable lessons to offer. “Now I know that I might not have been shot had I said to the officers, ‘I’m uncomfortable. Please have your supervisor come here to the scene.’ These are words all young Black men should know,” he writes. Angry and yearning for revenge, Ford began to absorb peacemaking lessons of the sort offered at one turn by Quaker activists and at another by an entrepreneur who advised him to invest the proceeds of his legal settlement. Speaking to young people about his experiences also began to change some of his views. “If I killed a police officer,” he asks, “what example would that set for these youth who believe in me? Who follow me? What example would it set for my son?” Anti-police activism gave way to an unexpected reconciliation with the officer who shot him. More, Ford urges a kind of enlightened capitalism amid a closing self-help manifesto: “Money talks. Activists must learn to engage in conversations across the racial, political, and financial divide, for only the sharing of widespread resources can bring about change. If we build more businesses, if we generate more jobs, if we grow the economy, everybody wins.”

A timely book about resiliency that will find both advocates and detractors but is well worth hearing out.