Chauvin Verdict

by with One Comment FeaturedRace RelationsSocial Issues

The Derek Chauvin verdict reveals the deep divide that remains in our country between races.

In a “post-racial” America (aka complete fiction for the foreseeable future), all citizens would look at the evidence and come to cold, rational, objective conclusions.

“These experts testified that the actions were not acceptable based on all current approved training and procedures. Thus, the latitude that being an officer of the law grants to the brave men and women who choose this dangerous profession is taken out of consideration. Consequently, this was a murder.”

There would be no talk of drugs in the victim’s system, insinuating a lesser person deserving of an unjust consequence.

There would be no talk of the angry or fearful White men with too much power having immunity from the consequences of his actions.

There would only be the facts (evidence), the presentation (the lawyers), and the conclusion (the jury). A decision would be made and it would ideally be very satisfactory for a large majority of the viewing audience *regardless of race.”

This person did something that constitutes murder from the definition that we have agreed upon in our collective society.

No larger context needed to pollute this very specific outcome:

“But if they convict this officer, then it means no police will ever be given the benefit of the doubt again.”

“But if he is not guilty, then police can act with impunity and continue to kill without due process.”

No. He is guilty or not guilty. Justice has prevailed to the best of its ability.

In the case of Derek Chauvin. He is guilty. Justice is served….

Professional Fear

by with One Comment CultureFeaturedRace Relations

Quick disclaimer… I’m a former police officer of the Baltimore City police department southwestern and central district. 

“If racism was a butcher, law enforcement is its cleaver.”

That’s not hyperbole, that’s American history. 

From enforcing fugitive slave laws to Jim Crow to today, the continual enforcement of draconian drug and financial laws were created with Black people as the target.

Black people have a rightful fear, not in the sense of being scared of the police officer as a person, but fearful as the police officer as the profession. And that their PROFESSION will give them credence over their life. 

I’ll repeat that. 

Black people have a fear of law enforcement not because they’re tough bad boys, hardly, because their word will have a say over our lives. Not because we’re wrong, but because we’re Black. 

This comes down to a very basic thing. Too many White police officers fear Black people. They see our skin color representing the need to be controlled and thus no regard or respect or life, which is evident by the terror they’ve inflicted on us over centuries. 

It’s that simple. 

Now, what’s to be done about it?

Well, this is not a call to remove law enforcement. No, but to have a proper relationship between citizens and police, we MUST recreate a balance of the people against policing powers. 

What are police powers?

Policing is a state and local issue. The federal government has little to do with it outside passing its own federal laws to be enforced and the occasional federal money and assistance to state and local law enforcement departments with strings attached. Police powers give officers the right to do everything from having their weapon issued to being able to tow your car and lock you up if you don’t sign a traffic ticket. That power also gives them the ability to do a criminal act, under the guise of policing, and go home and watch SportsCenter that evening while another person dies because of their lack of judgement. 

That’s a PROBLEM! And that’s THEE first problem of policing. No consequences! 

Without any true federal laws on the conduct of policing, each and every police department carries out the business of policing very differently. 

You see, there isn’t a federal statute or law or anything to protect citizens from the abuse of policing powers. There is no universal defense as a citizen against a law enforcement officer upon their interaction with you. 

This is not democratic. This is not due process. A police officers’ profession stops at a certain point, and their actions become the actions of a person, not a cop. And they should not be protected with their police powers. This is exactly what happened when Minnesota Cop Derek Chauvin murdered George Floyd, while Mr. Floyd laid defenseless and handcuffed. 

I guess that’s fear of life. (emoji shrug) 

You see, if I worked at an Applebee’s one of the Trump supporters wanted opened, I cannot beat up a rude guest or slap away someone’s food because they didn’t like it. All in the name of Applebee’s…. none of us have that luxury. 

No organization has the luxury of hiding the criminal acts of its members like the police. The job of police officers, to protect and serve, is essential to society… we get that. But what we will not do is allow them to use that as an excuse to reign terror on citizens. 

A federal law needs to be put in place to protect citizens in regard to their interactions with officers… essentially what an officer can and cannot do and say to you. The other is the swiftness of action against an officer when a criminal act has taken place. 

What Derek Chauvin did was murder. Chauvin went home that night. What Amber Guyger did, the woman who shot and killed Botham Jean in his own apartment in Dallas, that was murder. Guyger went home that night. 

Amber got off because of her profession, getting a ten-year sentence for killing a man in his own apartment is getting off. Chauvin will too. If the flames are to ever begin to settle, and tensions calmed, swift and immediate action is needed by our so-called leaders. Reformation of law enforcement is not an issue, but a crisis. A crisis our current leadership is woefully inept to handle. 

Similar Read: Conversation With a Black Man

Why Are We Scared?

by with One Comment CultureFeaturedRace Relations

[New Contributor]

White America, stop. Look in the mirror and ask yourself, why?

Why does it not bother me that African-Americans are not on equal footing? Why am I scared about the empowerment of Black communities? Why do I not care about the injustices committed against African-Americans? Why am I not scared driving down the street but Black people are?

These of course are all rhetorical questions, but the why has been built into us over generations of discrimination against people who look different than us. We have to look at these questions individually. Not regurgitate a company line that we get from the media or the people we associate with. We have to make these problems personal. Why?

I am the results of the seeds sown by some of the most influential Black men in my life… coaches, teammates, friends, brothers. My story cannot be told without mentioning these men.

White friends, enemies, and family do not be scared or nervous, come talk to me. Ask me questions about these men and what they mean to me. I will tell you about Osi Umenyiora, Justin Tuck, Micheal Strahan, George Falgout, Mathias Kiwanuka, Jason Pierre-Paul, Carl Hairston, Perry Fewell, Antonio Pierce, Barry Cofield, Fred Robbins, Kenny Onatolu. The list goes on and on.

Why are we scared?

Similar read from another NFL player: Dear Black Man

Can You Hear Me Now?

by with 2 Comments CultureFeaturedRace Relations

[New Contributor]

Remember the old Verizon catchphrase? Imagine if, you will, an entire country of disenfranchised African-Americans screaming that right now. Is anyone listening??  

Let me preface this with the fact that I am a White male. I know the privilege I was born into and I also know that simply based on my skin color I will NEVER know the level of anger felt by my African-American countrymen and women these last few days. Now that we have gotten that out of the way, I have one simple message to the masses protesting: “Burn this bitch down.”

If that sounds familiar to you, it should. Michael Brown’s stepfather uttered this phrase in 2014. Let me say that again for the racists in the back… TWO THOUSAND FOURTEEN. 

Here’s my point…

For all of you telling protesters that they are taking this too far, I would argue that they may not be taking it far enough. 6 years after Ferguson and the same shit keeps happening over and over and over again. When all the public outrage ends and the celebrities point their tweets in a different direction, the clock starts on the next injustice and the cycle repeats.

So I ask all of you (mostly White) people, what would you do?

You showed up to a government building with assault rifles because the government had the nerve to ask you to stay at home for the greater good. I shudder to think what would happen if suddenly the White race was consistently and intentionally targeted by cops for simply being White. So save your outrage. I say “burn that bitch down.” If you wanna hang your hat on the “Most cops are good” argument I say this: You’re right but there are enough bad ones that this brutality keeps happening, so I say “burn this bitch down’.” There are no more arguments to defend this behavior and if you have one, YOU’RE the problem. 

Can you hear me now??

Similar Read: Ahmaud Murdered… What’s Next? Who’s Next?

TRUMP’S HOME IS WHERE THE HATE IS

by with No Comment CultureFeatured

“Immigrants are the lifeblood of this country – we’re a nation of immigrants – and neither of us would be standing here today if it wasn’t.”  

“Clichés. There’s a point of saturation.”

At the beginning of T.C. Boyle’s premonitory fiction The Tortilla Curtain (1995), White American liberal humanist Delaney opposes his wife’s Kyra pejorative view of immigration. These words definitely sound like they were spoken yesterday during a White House press conference. They sound like something you can overhear in a bar, at a bus stop, in front of the school gate, at a family dinner party. They sound like something an American president whose grandparents were born in Europe and whose third wife holds a Slovenian passport would definitely not endorse. The only thing is that he actually does. In the eye of his devotees, Trump’s efforts to blackmail Sweden over the totally legal and justified incarceration of A$AP Rocky, professionally counselled by Kim Kardashian, undoubtedly contradict the groundless allegations of racism.  His nonsensical understanding of law, justice and freedom of speech is simply appalling.

How many times have people intimidated strangers to go back home if they weren’t happy with the way things are done in [insert any country, preferably dominated by a White population]? No criticism allowed, no awareness-raising on serious issues, no calling out inappropriate behaviours…  As a theoretical stranger, your dissident voice does not matter. Your opinion does not matter. Instead, your name, your skin colour, your mother tongue does. It’s not about who you are, where you were born or what you do, it’s about what you threaten and who you endanger. By raising their voices, Ilhan Omar, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib and Ayanna Pressley became scapegoats for the likes of fictional Kyra thinking in real life. And sadly, there are many, who like Kyra reckons that “everybody’s got a right to work and have a decent standard of living, but there’s just so many of them, they’ve overwhelmed us, the schools, the welfare, the prisons and now the streets.” 

Guess what? They’re overwhelming the Congress now. Except that they didn’t cross any border at night like coyotes, they were born free or given refuge and nationality lawfully. And they belong here as much as anyone who wants them to leave. 

“The more you give them the more they want, and the more of them there are,” says one of the characters in The Tortilla Curtain. Without a doubt, many immigrants took instead of waiting for something to be given to them. Ask Native Americans. Delaney sees Mexicans as migratory animals and the displacement, “made for war, for violence and killing, until one group had decimated the other and re-established its claim to the prime hunting, breeding or grazing grounds.” This is what Trump and his base are afraid of: losing their grounds to these women who fight for the greater good. The war they are anticipating is not to be made with bows and arrows, guns and swords on a battlefield. They instead feel like this herd of females is going to decimate their insubstantial White male domination over a nation of immigrants. Blows given with words. Fatal injuries caused by justice and equality. Carcasses of White patriarchy littering the land of the free. 

To be honest, I’m only half-surprised by the “go back home” comments. I expected them to be paired with “do the cooking and watch your kids” advice. This would have been completed the picture: these foreign, arrogant and silly women would have known where they truly belong: in the kitchen of some remote village in an underdeveloped country, cooking rice for their out-of-hand offspring. Well, that’s probably where Melania would be if it hadn’t been for her good looks and luck – although I’m not sure this is my definition of luck. In 2018, Melania herself complained she was “the most bullied person in the world” in an interview. Why wasn’t she encouraged by her dear husband to go back home after voicing her discontent with the way people treated her in the USA? That would have been sound advice, and also hopefully pretty effective. Nevertheless, she still hasn’t raised her voice to defend these women in the same situation as her. She may be stuck in the kitchen after all. 

On a personal level, as the mother of bi-national children who have only once ever set foot in the country where their father comes from, I’m bracing myself for the day someone tells them to go back home if they don’t like it here. They have only one home. They were born and are being raised to consider this home a safe place and the world their oyster. I’ll be glad whenever they come home because it is filled with compassion and love for others. Unlike Trump, our home is not where the hate is. 

Similar Read: Legal Attack on Women’s Right to Choose (How Did We Get There?)

Blonde Ambition: Is That All It Takes?

by with One Comment FeaturedGlobalPolitics

While the price of the pound sterling erodes faster than the Amazon basin, we see an appreciation in the values of middle-class white privilege, having horrible views and being totally incompetent. I am of course referring to Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro. We are no longer discussing right-wing politics as their views go beyond protectionism. Their policies are derived from laziness, convenience, self-interest and defiance of doing the right thing. So what exactly is going on in the world? How has it come to this in 2019?​

I want to impress upon you how Trump et al are not simply laughable misfortunes we can shrug our shoulders at. An eclipse of rationality and reality has overcome us with deep scars impending on our social and ecological history. Of course in the three nations, different forces are at play. In the USA, fatigue of being told ‘you need to do the right thing’. Brazil’s vote was swung by appealing to the public’s desperation. Boris bucks the trend in that he was elected by party peers when Theresa May stepped down. At first glance, Boris seems the most harmless in his glory-seeking buffoonery. But a ruthless liar can only mean potential ruin for Britain.​

We all know enough about Trump; but as a Brit, I feel a duty to inform the world of Boris’s incompetence. Despite being fired multiple times for dishonesty, Boris maintained his career as a journalist until entering politics. He then won an election to become Mayor of London. During which he failed to deliver on any of his responsibilities and betrayed promises. Most notorious of these lies is the promise of £350 million a week back into the U.K’s public healthcare system to win the Brexit campaign. This year, Boris was taken to court for these unsubstantiated lies but somehow left unscathed. Dishonourable mention for his 37 offensive public remarks including calling Black children of the commonwealth “flag-waving piccaninnies,” devout Muslim women walking “letterboxes,” likening gay marriage to bestiality and “f**k the families of 7/7″ bombings. ​

If you thought Boris was a farce, Bolsonaro says hold my caipirinha. His rainforest slaying is reported daily, this needs no introduction. He says Black people “are not even good for procreation” and should “go back to the zoo.” He said about an opposing female Congresswoman that she doesn’t even deserve to be raped. Recalling his earlier years on a public sector salary, he would spend his money on sex. So why would so many women and Black Brazilians vote for him? It is speculated that speaking to the electorate’s increasingly popular Catholic values and promises of a quick fix to the country’s crime and ailing economy won it for Bolsonaro. ​

An unsavoury but important question some of us are secretly asking: is White male privilege to blame here? Wealthy, supposedly educated White majority countries elect racist White men. In fact, a White man in Brazil has managed to deeply offend those of Afro-Caribbean descent yet astoundingly garnered the majority of their votes. Why are Trump, Johnson and Bolsonaro untouchable when they are awful human beings? Is it even fair to bring up the White male privilege cliché? Because let’s face it, if a person of colour or a woman held the same views they would not even be in the running, let alone be in office.

My answer to all the above is yes, because this generational phenomenon is the last ripple of imperialism and patriarchy. An act of revolt against liberalism is a revolt against today’s youth… a united youth who want to dissolve lines of socioeconomic class, race, gender identity, orientation and faith to work together. These values are a deep threat to old-world privilege. ​

We have reached shameful new heights for politics in the western world. I look forward to a future where any form of undeserving privilege is an artefact of our troubled history. I am confident that when generation X become the leaders of our world, they can turn some of it around. Let’s hope we haven’t lost the Amazon and our minds by then.

Similar Read: Fascism 101 

Albert Wilson

by with 2 Comments CultureFeaturedGen Z

“Whatever that is done in darkness will come to light.” This is a saying that I live by to keep myself from harboring hatred and resentment towards the unfairness that runs rampant in the quotidian. This isn’t foolproof by any means, as can be seen of the Albert Wilson rape trial. Did he do anything in darkness that warranted this level of retribution in the light?

The law was created to punish those who did wrong, and protect the ones who did right. How is it that now those who are wrong and who are right now have a certain appearance? How is it that retribution takes different forms depending on what the defendant looks like?

Brock Turner, a White man, raped an unconscious White woman behind a dumpster in 2015 and was convicted in 2016. There was hard evidence that proved these allegations to be facts. There were even witnesses of this assault. His retribution took the form of a six-month sentence. He served only three of those months because prison was detrimental to his young psyche. He was even allowed to have a cellphone during the time he was incarcerated.

Albert Wilson, a Black man, was accused of raping an underage White woman in his apartment in 2016 and was convicted in 2019. There wasn’t even evidence to call circumstantial. Unlike with Turner, semen was not found in or on the victim, and I use that term loosely here. The only DNA found on the victim was on her chest, where he kissed her. Wilson testified to having done sexual acts with the victim but did not have sexual intercourse. Hell, there is surveillance footage of the apartment complex, showing the consensual and mutual exchanges going into the building and coming out of the building five minutes later, not stumbling incoherence that the victim claimed. 

But when the White girl screams rape, it seems that our justice system does not stop to examine the evidence or lack thereof, ask the right questions to the right people, and get to the bottom of what happened. It didn’t matter to the all-White jury, most of whom were women, that there wasn’t any actual evidence to pin the proverbial tail on the donkey. It didn’t matter because the case boiled down to hearsay, and they only listened to the White voice.

The light’s retribution for what was not done in darkness is twelve years, and reportedly the “lightest sentence” issued for rape in Kansas. Wilson was sentenced to twelve years for a crime that there is no actual evidence saying that he committed. Where is the innocent until proven guilty? It seems that this kind of consideration is not colorblind, rather it sees color and discriminates accordingly.

If this case remains closed, Wilson might be on the fast track to joining the statistic of being a Black man wrongfully incarcerated via the lack of due diligence by the people who enforce these laws, meanwhile, White men like Turner are wrongfully freed.

We sweat the same sweat, bleed the same red blood, shed the same tears. While not all of us have melanin or the same amount of melanin, that should not determine how the law is enforced on us. The system is designed to protect, but the judges and the juries, they are the ones who turn it into a weapon. 

“No weapon formed against you shall prosper / And every tongue which rises against you in judgment / You shall condemn,” Isaiah 54:17. While everyone might not have the same faith, I think it can be said unanimously that these weapons are indeed prospering. The voices that rise against us, though we do condemn, we still fall.

What can we do? What we have been doing: raising our own voices. People have taken to Twitter to put out the word and raise awareness. The articles written by news platforms and the website www.freealbertwilson.com had been retweeted several hundreds of thousands of times.

At this time, that is all that we can do besides hope and pray for either an acquittal, like what Michael Rosfeld received, an appeal, a retrial, or complete exoneration. Unfortunately, it seems like our justice system will provide neither. 

Similar Read: Antwon Rose

Stop Giving Out Black Hall Passes

by with One Comment CultureDiversity & InclusionFeatured

Remember hall passes? I’m probably dating myself, but a hall pass was something needed in grade school to roam the halls during class time. I’m sure today there’s a hall pass tablet or something, but in the ancient days of the 1990s, we had handwritten hall passes which gave proof to any authoritative figure walking around to see we had a legitimate reason to be in the hallway.

A hall pass or a “pass” seems to always be given by Black people to those who have done blatant wrong against them or their people. On the latest episode of Oh That’s Racist, a few incidents have transpired, and as quickly as they became news people were defending the actions of the accused racists.

Stop! Please for the sake of decency and respect, stop defending wrong.

Liam Neeson

The English actor recently confessed that he wanted to seek revenge against ANY Black man after learning that a female friend of his was sexually assaulted. For the simpleton Hollywood crowd and fans of the “Taken” movie series stop defending him! 

His mentality lines up with the same psyche that escapes every other group of people in the world… except White men. And that psyche is to classify an entire group of people based on the acts of one. White men have done everything from running Ponzi schemes to the creation of domestic organizations that have burned homes, churches, and killed thousands of people including children… yet no one attributes that behavior as a cause to kill any White man. White men are judged as individuals, if at all. Never as an entire group of people. So no pass on this. 

Blackface

For the elected officials caught with pictures of themselves in blackface, there’s no such thing as “youthful” mistakes regarding your actions. A youthful mistake is signing up for an 8 AM class during your first semester at college. There’s nothing youthful about blackface. Nothing. There was never a time when blackface was an “innocuous” thing to have fun with. When these elected officials were younger they knew better and didn’t care. Why? See the previous paragraph. No pass again. 

Gucci Blackface

The blackface sweater Gucci attempted to promote and sell is a learning lesson for Black people who overvalue so-called “designer fashion.” First, the fact that an idea of a blackface sweater went from idea to drawing board to presentation to approval to production to promotion to the public, shows at no point in time did anyone with power within Gucci understand the historical context of blackface as highly problematic. That’s VERY telling. Secondly, yet another “designer fashion” brand has little to no respect for Black consumers, nor use for their cultural perspective, only their dollars. I hope this example encourages some Black people to stop placing such high values on material items and brands produced by companies and corporations that literally place no value on them as consumers. 

Class dismissed! 

Don Lemon… Domestic Terrorism and Revisionist History

by with No Comment CultureFeatured

A few weeks ago, CNN Host Don Lemmon inflamed the nation when he said, “The biggest threat in this country is White men.”  Well, he didn’t inflame the nation, mainly just Conservative White men, including President Trump.

Side note, writing President Trump still shocks me. It’s like early in the New Year when you haven’t gotten used to writing January yet. 

Anyway. 

The same people Don Lemmon inflamed with his comment are literally the same people who often say don’t talk about race, don’t talk about slavery, so no surprise there. The comment was NOT a comment against White men, it was against the White men who have been the chief architects for most of the recent domestic terror in this nation. While so many people dwelled on his comment, I think it’s important to note that White men have largely been responsible for the gross atrocities in our nation… specifically the genocide and damn near decimation of Native Americans, and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. As much as some people might not want to hear it or dispute it… that’s history. 

The surprise for me is the repeated attempts to push revisionist history and narratives that are completely false. Notions such as “the Civil War was over states rights,” or that slavery does not have deep roots in the minds of extremists. Extremists that have used their boisterous ways and power to influence others. In fact, not only have they minimized the wrongs of this nation, in many cases, they’ve attempted to suggest that said wrongs never occurred.

The storyline is simple… White Conservative/Republican men refuse to acknowledge that the lion share of mass shootings and serial killings in this country are carried out by hate groups and civil militias comprised of White men, or as some media outlets truthfully refer to them, White Supremacists. (Fact.) 

Revisionist history… really bad revisionist history… so bad, it reminds me of an episode on Martin in which Martin and Gina tell very different stories of how they first met. Each told their version of the story with extreme bias. The real truth of how they first met had to be told by a neutral party to avoid bias and blatant lies. It’s a very funny episode because it’s TV… not real life minimized to talking points by the extreme right regarding issues of humanity in this nation.