The old site of harassment was your car. You were pulled over not on a DUI but a DWB-
driving while black. In some sort of sick downgrade to our state over the last
year we are now at a point where we should even fear walking. Eric Garner was choked
to death while simply standing. A 7 month pregnant woman was put in a chokehold
for grilling meat in front of her own house with her husband. And now a child,
Michael Brown, was walking to his grandmother when fatally shot by cops. At 18
years old, he was on the cusp of adulthood, a flower that never bloomed.
No one can say what life awaited him. One in three
black men in America end up in jail. One in millions ends up as the president. Does
a black president mean this will stop? Or is he simply a new face on a power
structure that condemns most of us to misery?
The Obama administration is arguably the most white
supremacist administration in decades. The obvious assumption
underneath every droning campaign is that some lives matter more than others.
White American lives matter more than brown lives in countries we cannot
pronounce. White American comfort via cheap oil to power their huge cars is more important than the comfort of millions fleeing war and destruction on foot all over the middle east. So much so no one seems to care even as America bombs wedding parties or drones 9 year olds in faraway lands. Yet, slowly but surely black people across America have been catching on to the true meaning of all of this beyond half baked excuses like "collateral damage". Blacks are
among the most vocal critics of the US imperial machine. The oppressive system
that combines crony capitalism, neo-colonialism, and financial fraud is
apparent to blacks whether they are working as it’s foot soldiers in the US
army where they serve disproprtionallly, or simply getting crushed underneath
it in the ghetto. Most whites are still having a moment like Dorothy in the
Wizard of Oz, before they pull the curtain. When the formerly middle class whites
of America pull the curtain, and discover the monstrous ideologies operating behind
the US, no one knows what they will do. Some whites may accept some moral shortcomings
as the only way they can imagine doing business, but they certainly will not
accept a system that now views most of them as expendable. They will not accept
a new world order in which small farmers work all day, yet cannot even feed
themselves by design. They will not accept an order in which women who study to
better themselves above traditionally low paid female jobs must turn to prostitution
in order to afford studying by design. They will not accept an order in which
nurses are put on less than fulltime shifts so their employers do not have to provide
them with healthcare by design. No one of any color, wants to live in a world
in which it is unclear if work is productive or counterproductive. How long can
we continue on this path before all Americans have had enough? Our current situation
is tenable only through force. There is a striking similarity between life in black
ghettoes and life under military occupation. The death of children is part of a
cruel calculated psychological warfare to force the status quo into our brains
as if it were inevitable. If we live in fear and shame, we become a weak
subjugated people.
The press has given attention to the recent spate of cop
killings of African Americans, but this reality has been going on for decades.
And suspiciously where there is now media noise about cop killings of blacks there is an eerie silence about police relations with Latino, Native American, Arab American and Asian American communities. The media attention cannot be attributed to slow news weeks. The media is part
of the corporate machinery. Perhaps these killings are sending us messages. The
message to me, as a black person, is that death awaits me if I ever step out of
line…so I can forget ever doing anything provocative or revolutionary. I should
feel lucky if I am simply allowed to exist. The message to white America is one
that reinforces their sense of racial superiority. They need to fear black
areas for they are obviously dangerous jungles.
How long until military drones
start flying over my neighborhood in the Bronx?
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