Is white clergy’s #UseMeInstead response to police practice targets off the mark? Some think so

#usemeinstead (I'll make it easy for them.) pic.twitter.com/0IvOhLNfL3

— PrJGonnerman (@JoyGonnerman) January 17, 2015

Clergy from around the country have been waging a campaign against a Miami police department practice they see as racial profiling.

Earlier this month, a South Florida NBC News affiliate broke a story about a North Miami Beach police department using mug shots of black men as targets at a firing range.

The police chief claimed that this was not a case of racial profiling, but a regular practice where the department used images of people of every race. Last week, the city council banned the practice.

Joy Gonnerman, a pastor in Pocahontas, Iowa, was outraged by the practice. “I thought, as I was looking at it, of the systemic issues that somebody had to decide first that these were pictures to use,” she told the NewsHour. “I get frustrated with the kind of systemic indifference that has gone on.”

She was engaging in a conversation with several other pastors on a Facebook group when someone came up with the idea to offer up photos of white clergy for target practice instead. The members hoped to show solidarity with the black people being profiled.

“Because I’m not a person of color, so I do have a certain privilege in this,” Gonnerman said. “This is actually a person, a human person who’s loved, and it should not be easy to just say, ‘We’ll put a bullet in your head.’”

And so starting on Jan. 16, white clergy began tweeting images of themselves, using the hashtag, #UseMeInstead.

I'm late to this @myNMBPolice but acknowledging my white privilege pls #UseMeInstead of mugshots #BlackLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/JXGBiYAxDx

— Lori Johnson (@loribythesea) January 26, 2015

Dear @myNMBPolice if you insist on using photos for target practice, don't use young black men #UseMeInstead pic.twitter.com/haCqMJKvdO

— Ruben Austria (@rubenaustria) January 25, 2015

But the campaign was not embraced by everyone in the religious community.

“While I appreciate the intentions behind the hashtag, my initial concern remains on the table: a movement about the precious lives of black people becoming being shoved aside for the elevation of white saviors,” said Broderick Greer, a student at Virginia Theological Seminary in Alexandria, Virginia.

#UseMeInstead shows ingenuity and great intentions, but it also centers whiteness and erases black people.

— Broderick Greer (@BroderickGreer) January 26, 2015

Greer said that for black Americans, this type of thing is part of reality, and not an isolated incident.

“There is no doubt in the mind of a socially conscious black person that the faces of people who look like them are being used for law enforcement target practice; they see the fruit of this practice in the lifeless bodies of Renisha McBride and Michael Brown, of Tamir Rice and Tanisha Anderson,” he said.

Greer is disappointed that the conversation has focused so much on the benevolence of the clergy, rather than on the issue at hand: “the black people whose faces are used for the strategic placement of government-issued bullets.”

“While #UseMeInstead might be a genuine gesture of solidarity,” Greer said, “It might be most helpful to ask black people what we want before making that decision for us.”

When asked about the campaign, North Miami Beach Councilwoman Barbara Kramer told WLRN, “It was such a drastic error. Thanks so much for the offer, but we’re not interested in using anyone’s real face.”