Social justice is at heart about the emancipation of marginalised groups. The yearning to end a system of inequality, unfairness and discrimination is a commendable virtue to have. But sometimes, we immerse ourselves so deeply in ideology and become so lost in dogma that we lose our empathy and forget what our politics is about.
In all the stories of racism we have heard recently, the one of Liam Neeson is something else. In a very candid interview, he admitted he once set out to murder an innocent black man after someone close to him had been raped. The ordeal left him filled with intense anger, “something primal”, he revealed in an interview to promote his new thriller Cold Pursuit, about a father seeking retribution for his murdered son.
“I went up and down areas with a cosh, hoping I’d be approached by someone,” Neeson said. “I’m ashamed to say that – and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some ‘black bastard’ would come out of a pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could kill him”.
These are chilling words. We might acquaint Neeson with the violence of thrillers but to hear the actor say it himself is deeply harrowing. The storm of anger and outrage that erupted afterwards suggested that this was a man still wracked with racist sentiments. On the one hand, this underlined an ageless prejudice which has gripped white populations in western societies: that black men were innate brutes who would rape and pillage white women. Large parts of western societies shaped by racism have had at the foundation of their prejudice a fear of black men.
Some of it still exists in how they are regarded as criminal elements in society. It’s very hard not to find jarring the sheer violence in Neeson’s words, to visualise a man haunted with the grief, pain and anger of someone close to him being raped, and seeking violent revenge, prowling the streets looking for an excuse to kill. Perhaps if we are being honest, we are shocked because white supremacists killing black men they fear and hate is not suddenly uncommon today, as much as we might pretend. Racism is socially conditioned and can be ingrained subconsciously within people, where they react differently to situations with different people because of how they perceive them. If you’re a racist, you might view an Asian woman as powerless, a black person as aggressive and an Arab as a potential terrorist.
But like I said, this was a man filled with grief, pain and anger. Someone who could not look past the terrible experience that occurred to someone he loved. And in our rush to condemn, judge and sentence the man, we have wrapped ourselves so tightly in ideological scaffolding that we forget this basic thing about life: humans are flawed, deeply and terribly and painfully so. We are social animals, shaped by our relationships to others, and we feel it all: love, anger, grief, revenge, pain and loss. More so when it happens to those we care about.
Neeson insisted he wasn’t a racist and maintained that had assailant could have been white, he would have been equally violent. A possible explanation for his vengeful mentality isn’t one of inherent racism towards black people but that in being told the rapist was black, and being given no details as to who it was, every time he came across a black man he associated them with the rapist.
People are entitled to be angry with him in a world where too many black men are still killed in somewhere such as America for looking like a criminal. That can and should be a debate, certainly for the parts of the west where it remains a crippling issue for black people. The point shouldn’t be to entirely excuse Neeson nor ignore the way men are almost socially conditioned to react violently to terrible situations compared to women, or the racism involved.
But understanding and empathy can sometimes go a long way in overcoming differences, in finding bridges. The Guardian journalist Gary Younge discussed the historical racism that drove white people to regard black man as threats. But he saw the shame in Neeson’s words and the remorse and willingness to change. The ex-footballer John Barnes, a regular victim of racism, commended Neeson for opening up with a really thoughtful and nuanced take, believing it was important that more people discussed this, and raised the important point that nearly everyone at some point had prejudiced opinions in them.
If we continue to deplore Liam Neeson then we are effectively arguing that racists are incapable of change. Or, we can accept that something terrible happened to someone in his life, and he almost did a terrible thing too. But he didn’t. It doesn’t justify what occupied his mind briefly, but it shouldn’t be the axe that sentences him. He insists he is a changed man, and we owe him the benefit of the doubt.