If you start to feel uneasy or triggered by any parts of this entry, stop reading. I don’t care about your feelings. I don’t want your apologies, thoughts and prayers. I don’t want your hashtags (#BlackLivesMatter, #AllLivesMatter, #BlackoutTuesday) and the disingenuous virtue signaling. You can take your “honest conversations” on race, and the “peace and unity” drivel and go away.
No amount of money donated will smooth things over, nor will corporations, art centers, and stores sending out long messages about how “disturbing” the events of the past two weeks have been. “Woke capitalism” is repulsive.
They don’t move the needle for me.
If you want to know what the “angry black man” with a focus and a point to make sounds like through words, you’re going to read it.
Now…with that said….
This is a race war.
If you’re looking for an emotional reaction from me about the murders of Ahmad Aubrey, Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, and George Floyd, as well as Taylor’s boyfriend Kenneth Williams who was injured, you’re not getting one.
Emotions are not part of my DNA.
These were not “racially-charged incidents” as mainstream media continue to refer to them as. That’s a bald faced lie. They were murdered. Clear and simple. No need for an investigation. Everyone saw the video.
Videos don’t lie.
This was first degree premeditated murder. This warrants the death penalty.
In Black America, this is murder. In White America, the media, and every place else, they are too scared to say is was murder. The media didn’t want to “trigger” their comfortable well off viewers by calling it a cold-blooded murder.
If you think that the race riots of 1967 and 1968 was rough, I hope that this one will make it uncomfortable as hell. The demonstrations after Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and other police-related murders has failed to deliver the warning that if these heinous act of assault of non-violent blacks continue, something serious would get your attention while living in your white-bread, faux colorblind world in the suburbs and gentrified condos.
America has been on a long-running murder spree since breaking away from Britain in 1776. If this country isn’t invading small countries, starting insurrections, and dividing countries up, they’re committing the identical appalling act that the Nazi Party did in Germany prior to and during World War II: genocide of a group of people.
Murder doesn’t take a day off during a pandemic.
Rather than learn from history, we’re all on a STEM kick, while binge watching reality television shows, hate watching on CNN and Fox News, and blindly thinking that we live in a “post-racial” society.
White America, including non-black groups, no longer have the right to speak or comment about race as it pertains to Black America. Black America as in the black people who were decedents of slaves who were imprisoned and used as free labor in the South.
You loss your ” privilege” to speak on racial issues as it applies to Black America. It should have been ripped away from you years ago, but my grandparents and parents’ generation was just happy about “being accepted” in American society. The worst thing Black Americans did after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. was settling for less. “As long as it’s not as bad as it was before, we’re fine. Let’s hold hands and sing ‘We Shall Overcome’.”
Take this big “L” and lick your wounds.
Black America will control the message of what we demand and want going forward. No one will speak on our behalf. We will do that. as Black Americans.
We’re focusing completing the task that was left undone. The full measure of what is owed to Black America (financial reparations, not an apology, meekly asked for by Jonathan Capehart), force policies to level the economic playing field, to name a few specific goals. Oh, about that “we want justice” line? I’ll spell it out in specific terms, in case it gets lost in the noise: justice to Black Americans is punishment. Not reforms or diversity training. First degree premeditated murder. How these prosecutors and judges do not charge police officers for first degree murder in unprovoked act of murder is one everyone should be banging on.
Justice means punishment. I am specific with this statement. Black America wants punishment, not a hug, empty slogans, and faux outrage.
Punishment.
The criminal justice system and law enforcement were never relevant in the black community. They have not credibility and respect among Black America. This is a permanent. Playing hoops, giving out “bro” hugs, and kneeling down in support of the demonstrators will not earn that trust back.
As I wrote to one state lawmaker, “There is no amount of reform to correct unnecessary force, community policing, and criminal justice reform that will resolve this matter, or the past incidents over the past four centuries. Serious question: how is reforming LEOs through sensitivity training, diversity training, having picnics or whatever is going to make a LEO change his mindset and become a better officer?”
The state senator wants to propose criminal justice reform. We don’t need “reforms”. We have the laws on the books to use. Use them for everyone. That includes the police state.
The point of that sentence is simple: you can’t change someone’s mindset and attitude. In the matter of LEO’s, no one breaks that long blue line.
Black America, it is long overdue for us to control the narrative of who we are, what we stand for, and our well-being. The media, politicians, ministers, and these “allies” will no longer tell us to calm down and show peace to our fellow man. Our fellow man expects us to be docile while they continue to beat Black America up with their weapons. We will not come in peace anymore.
We don’t have allies. We have groups that want to get involved. That is nice, but as we’ve seen with Black Lives Matter and other initiatives created by Black Americans, outside groups and people hijack the message and change the narrative, so that our (black) voices are drowned out by non-black voices who think it is their God given right to get involved. There is no Black and Brown coalition. Brown people (Hispanics) gets detained or deported back home. Black people gets gunned down or physically apprehended by police, “wannabe cops”, goons, and Neanderthals. We don’t get to go “home”. Our home is jail or the morgue.
This guy got it all wrong. My reply to his tweet pissed him off. These young blacks Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen X out here rioting and protesting will not be told to go home and play nice. Nor will they go to the ballot box and “fall in line”, as this angry white liberal guy tweeted at me during the primaries in March. He can take his “Millennials and Gen Z are whiny punks” line and blow it out of his ass. Millennials are not perfect. They have their conundrums. But as you see on the television screen, laptops, and tablets, they suffer from no fools and will not accept this level of violence against humans, namely black people.
The message from these young warriors (not rioters): It’s the death penalty or life without parole for the police state. Nothing less than that. A third degree murder charge is a joke. The police is not absolved from facing murder charges. In Minneapolis, Louisville, Indianapolis, those police departments should be charged for murder. Yet, the district attorneys in those cities hem and haw, trying to find some way to either not charge them or file lesser charges.
If they are not brought up on charges, face trial, and convicted, expect what you see on television to continue throughout the summer….like 1968.
Nah, man. It is white vs. black. In fact, it’s everyone vs. black.
This is a race war.
At the beginning of his first term, former President Barack Obama said that we’re living in a “post-racial” society when he was in office. This is the same man, who, four weeks ago gave an online “graduation” speech. Not one time did he mention Breonna Taylor’s death and the arrest of her boyfriend, Kenneth Williams, who was protecting her from the Louisville police. She was gunned down in her home earlier that week.
There is no such thing as a “post-racial” America, Mr. Ex-President.
America, we were never “united”. We were never “together”. We tolerate each other long enough to get by.
As a black man, I watch and observe the environment around me. Over the last five years, I started to see a growing number of Black Americans voicing their displeasure of the political system, the rise of police-related slayings, and the dismissal of economic justice by the media, elected officials, and business sectors.
Blood isn’t just on law enforcement’s hands. That blood is on prosecutors’, judges’, and politicians clothes.
“Politics have no relation to morals.” – Machiavelli
In 2018, Congress passed the Blue Lives Matter law, after the high profile deaths of Brown, Gray, and Castille. It was passed 328-35. Notice the number of Democrats who sided with Republicans in voting to pass the law. Who was minority leader? Nancy Pelosi. John Lewis, Bobby Rush, and the late Elijah Cummings were three of the 29 members of the Congressional Black Caucus who were in favor of the bill, despite the killings of Brown, Gray, and Castille. An Iowa connection, for you locals, Dave Loebsack voted yes. How many black representatives voted against it? 11. Blue Lives Matter essentially gave police more leeway in flexing their muscles and be embolden to continue the practice of harassing blacks.
But that is not all what the Democrats and Republicans have done to signal to Black America “we really don’t care about you. We pretend that we do. We really don’t.” Remember those the 1986 Anti Drug bill? The one that created the 100:1 disparity between cocaine and crack cocaine? How about the 1994 Crime Bill (aka “Biden’s Law” as Biden loves to gloss it as)? How about the Grayson Amendment? The Amendment to halt the Pentagon’s 1033 program that funneled billions of dollars in military weapons and gear to local police departments. Three hundred fifty five members of Congress voted down the amendment, thus continuing the program to send weapons and gear to police departments from the military.
That gave police more ammunition and resources, that in part, emboldened their flexing of their powers. Congress has endorsed their support of LEOs for a long time. The laws that were mentioned bolstered their loyalty to corrupt lawlessness by those who are sworn to protect the citizens.
Elected officials loves spouting about how tragic and senseless these police brutality cases are, and yet in 2018, they sided with LEO’s by making it a federal hate crime to attack or shoot at an officer.
Let me repeat that. A hate crime.
Do you mean to say that someone who is armed needs to be protected more than an unarmed citizen who poses no threat?
I don’t expect Theresa Greenfield, Cheri Bustos, Marianne Miller-Meeks or Abby Finknauer to be pressed into demanding that police officers be charged for first degree murder of citizens. They’ll give the “thoughts and prayers” and “we need to seek justice” line, but they’re out campaigning for the “regular Iowan”. The “regular Iowan” sounds like “salt of the earth, honest white Iowans” to me.
Politicians don’t give a damn about black people until they need votes to win an election. Votes are earned, not given away. Black America have given too much away and have received little back. So no, Joe Biden, we don’t owe you a damn vote. We don’t owe anyone on both sides a vote.
And we sure as hell will not be voting, because we’ll be out in the streets fighting.
My pointed attack is towards the so-called black elected officials, the Congressional Black Caucus in particular, for siding with white Democrats and Republicans on policies that has done the black community more harm and destruction to an already crumbling and deteriorating black community infrastructure. Just because you have the same skin color as I do, I don’t automatically feel that you’re going to be the best person for the black community.
Spare me the symbolic hashtags, messages, etc. That is ineffective. White America doesn’t care much about the systemic, institutional, and economic racism Black America faces until they visually see it. If they have to read it, they skip over it like a Facebook post.
Being upset about surface (words being said or written) racism is hollow. The real racism has been ingrained in housing, workplace, and business.
White people feel compelled to speak out, as long as they don’t lose their status in “polite” society. If they speak out against something they know is wrong, they risk losing a business, sponsorships, cast out by family, or getting kicked out of the local country club. Speaking out is the easiest thing to do. But what is the point of speaking out when you don’t give out specific demands like “Police officers should face first degree murder” and not “We must stop racism.”
Racism never takes an hour off. Murders never take a day off. Misogyny never takes a week off. Bad things never take a holiday off. These things will exist tomorrow, the next day, and when you take your last breath. People need to start getting used to this reality, if they haven’t already.
Everyone is shocked and horrified…again. I’m not. This is part of my life. Having my head on a swivel is automatic. If I’m not worried about my health, income, and returning to work, I’m watching out for myself. Many times I’ve went home early from an event or meeting up with friends because they can do certain things that I can’t do or I don’t feel comfortable doing.
American society, and the world in general, are hell bent in eradicating anything that brings shame upon them. We need to change that thinking. By admitting that atrocities, wars, discrimination never takes a day off, the better we are in being honest with ourselves as individuals. No, we’re not going have a “honest conversation” about race. No one wants to reveal their true feelings and their mindset. No one wants to be labeled as a “racist”. As I said, racists are honest. Those who can’t come to grips will be left behind. I have no patience for them. We was never united in America. We only tolerate each other.
Expect the number of guns permits to increase in the black community. If armed white people can willfully and intentionally gun down unarmed black men and women, then black people have the right to bear arms. This isn’t a NRA issue. This is a logical decision for us. If Black America can’t trust the authorities to protect us because they and others are attacking us, then we should be able to arm and to protect ourselves.
People are saying that “this is sad” when they comment on the numerous and growing protests in various cities across the nation. It’s not “sad”. Emmitt Till wasn’t a sad story. Medgar Evers wasn’t a sad story. Michael Brown, Philander Castille, Breonna Taylor, and other slain black people are not “sad.” If it was sad, then their murders would have never happened in the first place.
This is why black people, mostly millenials and Gen Z will not go to the polls, no matter what P Diddy, John Legend, and Chrissy Teigen say on MTV. The hijacking and co-opting of Colin Kaepernick’s mission became evident in 2014. Old white military veterans taking a knee, NFL football players taking a knee one week, then standing for the national anthem the following week. They couldn’t spare to lost their paychecks.
Taking a knee wasn’t about the national anthem, or the flag. Yet, five years after it happened, people continue to use that as an irrational rationale. The reason he did it was to show his displeasure for the continued psyche of white power and the ability to flex their muscles through violence towards Black Americans. But as rapper/actor Ice-T pointed out, taking a knee wasn’t enough to make a statement. A riot is when the citizens who are distressed and disadvantaged voice their opposition to being treated like peasants.
By the way, has anyone seen Kaep? Has he posted a tweet? Or is Nike doing all of his PR work for him? Bro, we stuck up for you. It’s time for you to return the favor and support the black community, the same community that you expressed your concerns about. You’re not a sacred cow. You initiated this. Get involved. Every day you stay silent, Colin, the less demonstrators will care about your symbolism. Unpopular take? Yep. But one that needs to be said.
How many of those uber “woke” people would have had a problem with Kaepernick not voting in 2016? That was, in my view, the most important statement he made.
Attitudes towards society and how we go about our lives is constantly changing. That’s what happened in the late 60’s. Racial unrest, Vietnam, and other major events caused our parents’ generation to push back and change the course of history. This time around, it’s our parents who are resisting the changes. The issues of the 60’s hasn’t changed: race relations and war.
America goes to war on every continent on earth…and they continue a war against Black America.
I am not scared of racist people. I know who they are. They don’t hide it. People who display their intolerance are, in my opinion, the most honest people on this planet. They have nothing to hide.
The most dangerous racists are the so-called liberal leaning white people who go out of their way to say they’re not racist, but when you press them on what is it exactly they are against specifically as it relates to racial issues, they get defensive and blow their top at you. I don’t trust most white people, specifically white Democrats and Republicans who are working on the same side: genocide. There are a few white people I know. I know them well enough to know who they are. I get along with them. They know what lines not to cross, and I in return. Everyone else I come into contact with? A pat on the head for being a good boy, empty word salad, ghosting, and privately hoping you go away.
Just because you immerse yourself in the black community, that doesn’t give you the licence to speak about black people.
Bomani Jones was right. It’s about us….but it’s not for us, when the conversation is about black people. The 2016 election between Trump and Clinton was evident.
For the law enforcement officers, the ones who do their job with humanity, you have an uncomfortable choice to make. You know some of your colleagues are should not be in a uniform. If you find out that you have a dirty cop, are you willing to risk your status to rat them out? Or are you going to stay silent until your fellow officer rouge and harm black citizens for, well, being black? Save your kneeling with the protestors in the break room. It is disingenuous and it shows.
I am going to stop here. I have more to write about, but that will be another long commentary.
The police officers in Louisville, Indianapolis, and Minneapolis who took part in the intentional murders of Breonna Taylor, Sean Reed, and George Floyd are to be charged with first degree capital murder.
The punishment is what we are rioting for. The death penalty of life in prison without parole.
We’re not holding hands and asking for peace. I’m not asking for peace. Punish the bastards and those who help keep them out of jail: prosecutors, judges, and politicians, along with their elite donor classes from both political parties. Those who continue to support these factions, buckle up.
Black America is going to make this very uncomfortable for you. If black people can’t be comfortable in the world they live in, especially in America, then everyone should not be comfortable.
Civility Is Not Dead...Yet 