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defrogI hadn’t planned to write anything else about Ferguson. But I was kind of waiting for someone to find a way to blame all of this on Presidente Obama somehow.
Fox News did not let me down.
And now of course Ferguson isn’t the only place where grand juries are letting white cops who kill unarmed black people go free.
Which probably means the Cleveland cop who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice has nothing to worry about. Or that Phoenix cop who shot a black guy while he was reaching for a bottle of pills.
Because it’s not their fault, you see. It is Obama’s fault those people are dead now. Race relations were great until Obama started saying they weren’t. And if he had created jobs, everyone wouldn’t be so angry about cops killing unarmed black people.
Or something.
It’s depressing how many people I know on Facebook who point to these grand jury decisions – and that Fox News bit – as some kind of proof that (1) it’s okay for cops to shoot unarmed people and (2) cops aren’t racist, and the only racists in America are black people calling white cops racist. As far as they’re concerned, the system works, and police have to deal with dangerous people all the time, and by the way Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Rumain Brisbon were criminals, and that’s why they had to die for crimes involving tobacco products and (allegedly) drugs. And hey, they’d still be alive if they’d gone along quietly like white people do when they get rumbled by the fuzz. And as for Tamir Rice, hey, kids shouldn’t play with guns around cops.
Which is easy to say when the victim isn’t a member of your family.
No one’s actually saying that, of course. Not verbatim. But that’s the overall message I’m getting here – the victims aren’t nearly as important as the fact that white cops killing unarmed black people isn't racist and the grand jury decisions prove that, so yr wrong to keep saying it’s racist.
Okay, the rule of law is important, and sure, innocent until proven guilty, and yes, the police have a very difficult job, etc. I get all that. I also get that no one likes being called a racist, individually or as a group – to include the police. But I don’t believe those points cancel out the bigger picture here, which everyone is either missing or refusing to acknowledge.
The fact remains that you ultimately have one group of people (mostly low-income black people) saying, “Look, this is the reality we have to live with every day and we’re pretty upset about that,” and another group of people (mostly middle/upper class white people) telling them, “No it isn’t, and even if it is, it’s yr own fault, so stop blaming us. And by the way, we’re not racist, therefore racism is not a problem, therefore you must be making it up.”
And I just don’t think that’s the proper response. I’m also not really convinced that it’s up to the majority ethnic group in a given country (in the case of America, white people) to tell the minority ethnic groups what counts as racism and what doesn’t.
And frankly, trying to blame all of this on Obama is just lazy buck-passing and a cheap shot. It’s also insulting.
Obviously I’m oversimplifying this. There are blacks who side with the police and whites who side with Brown, Garner, et al. That’s clearly confusing to a lot of people.
But you what else is confusing? How a cop can choke a guy to death on camera and be cleared of any wrongdoing. Or how Darren Wilson can walk free despite telling a story that only makes sense if you believe that Michael Brown’s response to being told to get on the sidewalk was to attack the cop, something no one really does unless they’re on PCP or insane (and Brown was neither).
No wonder African-Americans are on the streets protesting. They’ve endured a couple of centuries of racism in America to the point that they were only guaranteed civil rights at the national level for the last 50 years (and they still had to fight for them in the Southern states for at least another ten). Many of them still have to deal with discrimination in some form or other in a way that makes upward mobility more difficult for them than white people. Their relationship with the police is also profoundly different than white people. And they’re being asked to accept very improbable stories that vindicate the killing of unarmed people who weren’t committing any crimes that justified lethal force. And they don’t even get the benefit of a public trial that might actually answer some unanswered questions that really need answering.
So the least we could do is stop blaming the victims and trying to score political points and just listen to these people for a minute.
I can’t breathe,
This is dF
Fox News did not let me down.
And now of course Ferguson isn’t the only place where grand juries are letting white cops who kill unarmed black people go free.
Which probably means the Cleveland cop who shot 12-year-old Tamir Rice has nothing to worry about. Or that Phoenix cop who shot a black guy while he was reaching for a bottle of pills.
Because it’s not their fault, you see. It is Obama’s fault those people are dead now. Race relations were great until Obama started saying they weren’t. And if he had created jobs, everyone wouldn’t be so angry about cops killing unarmed black people.
Or something.
It’s depressing how many people I know on Facebook who point to these grand jury decisions – and that Fox News bit – as some kind of proof that (1) it’s okay for cops to shoot unarmed people and (2) cops aren’t racist, and the only racists in America are black people calling white cops racist. As far as they’re concerned, the system works, and police have to deal with dangerous people all the time, and by the way Mike Brown, Eric Garner and Rumain Brisbon were criminals, and that’s why they had to die for crimes involving tobacco products and (allegedly) drugs. And hey, they’d still be alive if they’d gone along quietly like white people do when they get rumbled by the fuzz. And as for Tamir Rice, hey, kids shouldn’t play with guns around cops.
Which is easy to say when the victim isn’t a member of your family.
No one’s actually saying that, of course. Not verbatim. But that’s the overall message I’m getting here – the victims aren’t nearly as important as the fact that white cops killing unarmed black people isn't racist and the grand jury decisions prove that, so yr wrong to keep saying it’s racist.
Okay, the rule of law is important, and sure, innocent until proven guilty, and yes, the police have a very difficult job, etc. I get all that. I also get that no one likes being called a racist, individually or as a group – to include the police. But I don’t believe those points cancel out the bigger picture here, which everyone is either missing or refusing to acknowledge.
The fact remains that you ultimately have one group of people (mostly low-income black people) saying, “Look, this is the reality we have to live with every day and we’re pretty upset about that,” and another group of people (mostly middle/upper class white people) telling them, “No it isn’t, and even if it is, it’s yr own fault, so stop blaming us. And by the way, we’re not racist, therefore racism is not a problem, therefore you must be making it up.”
And I just don’t think that’s the proper response. I’m also not really convinced that it’s up to the majority ethnic group in a given country (in the case of America, white people) to tell the minority ethnic groups what counts as racism and what doesn’t.
And frankly, trying to blame all of this on Obama is just lazy buck-passing and a cheap shot. It’s also insulting.
Obviously I’m oversimplifying this. There are blacks who side with the police and whites who side with Brown, Garner, et al. That’s clearly confusing to a lot of people.
But you what else is confusing? How a cop can choke a guy to death on camera and be cleared of any wrongdoing. Or how Darren Wilson can walk free despite telling a story that only makes sense if you believe that Michael Brown’s response to being told to get on the sidewalk was to attack the cop, something no one really does unless they’re on PCP or insane (and Brown was neither).
No wonder African-Americans are on the streets protesting. They’ve endured a couple of centuries of racism in America to the point that they were only guaranteed civil rights at the national level for the last 50 years (and they still had to fight for them in the Southern states for at least another ten). Many of them still have to deal with discrimination in some form or other in a way that makes upward mobility more difficult for them than white people. Their relationship with the police is also profoundly different than white people. And they’re being asked to accept very improbable stories that vindicate the killing of unarmed people who weren’t committing any crimes that justified lethal force. And they don’t even get the benefit of a public trial that might actually answer some unanswered questions that really need answering.
So the least we could do is stop blaming the victims and trying to score political points and just listen to these people for a minute.
I can’t breathe,
This is dF
