HOW BLACK LIVES MATTER? MODERN DAY LYNCHINGS!
Well as usual I was poking my head around social media & scrolled to see in my feeds that a young black man, Alton Sterling was shot in cold blood, up close by a police officer in Baton Rouge, LA! The following footage was posted online on various social media.
[VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED]
But then in the ripe hours of this morning, I saw yet again ANOTHER young black man, Philando Castile was shot and killed. Like Alton, it was up close & point blank range. However the victim was in a car with his girlfriend in the passenger side & their small child was in the backseat. This following a traffic stop for a busted tail light. The following footage was recorded live on Facebook by the victim’s girlfriend.
[VIEWER DISCRETION IS ADVISED]
I was rather saddened last night because regardless of why or how, another family has to plan a funeral for another senseless murder. When will this end, I asked myself? And then it dawned on me…the shit may never!
I have come me to a serious conclusion: “…[We] justify those that died by wearing the badge…”
I don’t know if it’s irony or just coincidence but I just wrapped up a binge session of Orange is the New Black. [SPOILER ALERT…skip this next paragragh if you haven’t seen the latest season]
Anyway, after I got done I was a little saddened as one of my fav characters was killed off. The assailant, although just being stupid & overreacting was a male, white correctional officer & the victim was one of the lady inmates who was of course black & unarmed. But the way they spun it for the show was purely racial! They spent 45 minutes of the show trying to find a way to use the victim’s past against her like some sort of scapegoat to escape being liable. When that didn’t work, they tried blaming the C.O. but eventually found a way to make him the “victim” again. It went on simply to prove the point that Black lives don’t matter. Not in a “poke fun at” kinda way but in an eye opening sort of way.
Before that I watched the entire remake of the book-turned-miniseries, Roots on demand a few weeks ago. So I was feeling a bit Rage Against the Machine-ish!
Fast forward to last night! It brought me to a serious conclusion.
WHAT THE FUCK MAN???!!!
Today I’m not sad. I can barely even grieve for these families I barely know. I am angered! I am pissed off! I am enraged!
Our black lives don’t matter! Women’s lives don’t matter! Our kids’ lives don’t matter…not in America & probably not a few other places on earth!
Of course technology today makes it easier to shed light on these horrible things & social media makes it effortless to spread it across the world but it does nothing to stop it because we do nothing to stop it. We may pray and protest but until the next trending event, I fear that these events will too be forgotten. Why? Because if one thing I learned is that a generation that forgets its past, repeats it! We make light of our past & even poke fun at it but we don’t truly hold onto it. We don’t pass it down to our children. We leave no legacy. Shit we barely observe Black History Month.
We CANNOT expect a system that was built on oppressing people to save those very same people!
Point blank fucking period!
You can go on posting all the hateful shit you have experienced in the past or will experience today or tomorrow all the fuck you want! You can protest and march or even pray! It won’t change the fact that BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER!! Regardless if it is a degenerate/delinquent youth or an upstanding member of so-called society… Our lives aren’t enough of a factor to bring change.
Black lives didn’t matter when our youth were given drugs to poison us & foolish bullshit on TV to distract us! Black lives didn’t matter when our mothers, fathers, sisters & brothers were racially profiled/harassed by so called law enforcement & hate groups. Black lives didn’t matter when our sons/daughters hustled to make a buck as drug dealers/strippers because we weren’t offered “their” good jobs for shitty wages! Black lives didn’t matter when our grandparents marched & died for civil rights! Black lives didn’t matter when our great grandparents hung from trees! Black lives didn’t matter when our ancestors were sold/traded from forgotten places on a whole other continent….not to mention later kidnapped. Black lives didn’t matter when those that eventually made it to America were chained/branded/beaten/bred like fucking cattle! Black lives didn’t matter when our ancestors were raped & murdered, their homelands pillaged & our history nearly wiped out of existence. Not to mention the fact that we’ve been taught our history by the very same educational institutions that tried to hide half of the shit from us.
Which brings me to a dire point… Our black lives barely matter to us. So why the fuck do we act so disillusioned? Maybe while we were partying & fucking up our own lives, we forgot somewhere that racism & sexism have become blurred lines and spun off scandals instead of the blatant torture we endured first hand. Where and how did we forget that we were always targeted and taken out without thought? It happened when we became sheep amongst the packs of wolves & left our young to be slaughtered. Broken homes with no discipline, guidance or nurturing. We removed G-d from everything important until tradition & tragedy begs us to call on HIM. We worship reality stars and filth on TV and wonder why our lives are soaked in drama. We shout “FREE MY NIGGA” after he murders or harms others until that same nigga is then slain. We went from proud to belligerent & from decent to ratchet.
But it doesn’t validate or justify centuries of this shit!
I am so full of emotions today. Although this shit is not new to me. It is not new to our history. But I won’t be so close minded to say that all cops are like this. Nor will I negate the fact that some of the victims of cop shootings have put themselves in questionable situations in the first place. That leaves cops with what starts out as good intentions to protect and serve but ends in disaster. I can’t imagine the stress this kind of job places on the human psyche, which can be jaded by years of dealing with race, poverty & any other factors that can affect judgement. Not to mention some of the police altercations that end in violence are often the result of them having no other means of diffusing situations.
However you have those individuals who are racist and who do approach with extreme prejudice even when it isn’t called for. But the bottom line is that officials need to give psyche evaluations to their police counterparts every month or something. Too many cops are using needless force against unarmed folks in rather “standard procedure” situations. Yeah tax dollars, yada yada but something has got to give and someone has got to be accountable. Because some fucks do hide behind a badge either to cover racism or to cover their asses.
But since I always play devil’s advocate, some if not most victims of police brutality are not always clean and cut nor are they as innocent as we want to believe. Even Rodney King was a repeated trouble maker before the cops wailed on him. Did his past make his beating justified no, but it didn’t help it either. Sometimes what we as bystanders may perceive as racial profiling is often times a cop’s lucky hunch. Some cops are honest and fair who simply get put into situations that give them moments to make life/death decisions & others honestly make shitty mistakes on duty but like the song says, “…Some of those that work forces are the same that burn crosses…”
So many slaughtered senselessly or approached with lethal force for no reason. All of this just a few days short of the year anniversary of Sandra Bland whose suspicious death was ruled as suicide or something while still in police custody. She was apprehended during a traffic stop & held for resisting arrest.
We posted memes & #hashtags to remind never to forget but here we are a year later posting, praying and protesting a system that has changed very little…At least at it’s core.
I wonder just how soon will we again forget…
Just makes me think about those little girls in Alabama that were bombed in a church in 1963. Had they instead lived to have children or grandchildren today…would they too have to bury them because of a racism that was once blatant isn’t so much anymore?
Until Next Time Kiddies…Shalom!
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