The Root's Damon Young is Wrong: Straight Black Men are not oppressive patriarchs!

Damon Young, previously of Very Smart Brothas, now of The Root wrote a poorly argued, badly reasoned and completely fact free post which claimed, "Black straight men are the white people of the black community". By this strained metaphor, he apparently meant to say that black straight men are the evil patriarchs of the black community who are oppressing heterosexual black women and black gays of either gender. Young writes many posts like this. It is his calling card. This particular one stood out to me not just because of its usual simple mindededness and lack of empirical data but from the sheer bile towards black men shown by someone who is a black man himself. Progressive black people are often quick to see the self-hate when it is on display by someone who is on the right like Jason Riley or Sheriff Clarke. The left, particularly its feminist circles, can have just as much anti-black male animus. But assessing our privilege (or lack thereof) on these facts considers only our relationship with whiteness and with America. Intraracially, however, our relationship to and with black women is not unlike whiteness’s relationship to us. In fact, it’s eerily similar. We’re the ones for whom the first black president created an entire initiative to assist and uplift. We’re the ones whose beatings and deaths at the hands of the police galvanize the community in a way that the beatings and sexual assaults and deaths that those same police inflict upon black women do not. We’re the ones whose mistreatment inspired a boycott of the NFL despite the NFL’s long history of mishandling and outright ignoring far worse crimes against black women. 

We are the ones who get the biggest seat at the table and the biggest piece of chicken at the table despite making the smallest contribution to the meal. And nowhere is this more evident than when considering the collective danger we pose to black women and our collective lack of willingness to accept and make amends for that truth.

It gets worse after that.

Disrespecting the President is Fine..if the President Is Black: Jemele Hill, Donald Trump and Barack Obama

You may have heard that ESPN personality and Detroit native Jemele Hill ran into some controversy when she recently tweeted that President Donald Trump was a white supremacist, which is a big part of why he was elected. Now if you are an employee as opposed to the owner of the means of production you always run a risk of losing your job if you say something political. Your statements could mess up your employer's revenue flow or associate your employer with beliefs that your employer does not hold. That's just the way it goes. So it was one thing when various conservatives and racists crawled out of the woodwork to attack Hill. That was to be expected. What was a little different though was that the White House, through its oleaginous spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said that Hill's tweets were fireable offenses. The level of hypocrisy here is just off the charts. Now there is a larger issue, which I may address a little later when I have more time, about people's social media statements, heartfelt, stupid, inappropriate or otherwise getting them in trouble with the public or their employer. There's a lot of that going around right now. It's seemingly almost every day! But like I said, I have no time to write on that at present.

But let's remember that Donald Trump was (is??) a prominent member of the birther movement. He argued that President Obama wasn't American. He also called President Obama a racist. Can you imagine the conservative response if the Obama White House had publicly called for Trump to lose business opportunities or be fired from The Apprentice because of his racist or stupid statements? Additionally the people who are currently screaming about the need to fire, censor, or censure Hill are mostly the same people who are also screaming about the need for free speech to include conservative and/or racist viewpoints. In short like a lot of people they believe in "Free Speech for me, but not for thee".

Trump Supporters

As we have discussed previously I do not think that every last single person who voted for Donald Trump as President is a snarling Neanderthal racist. Although it is tempting to think so sometimes, if that were really the case then people who did not and do not support Trump would be giving up on the possibility of ever convincing Trump supporters to vote for non-racist candidates. And given that Presidential elections are decided by winning a majority of state electoral votes and not by winning the raw majority of voters, a Democratic Presidential candidate must figure out how to at least staunch the Democratic vote losses among whites, particularly in the Midwest and South and maximize voter turnout among Blacks and Hispanics Often those goals seem to be impossible to reach at the same time. The problem is that some unknowable portion of the people who voted for Trump indeed are snarling Neanderthal racists or nihilists who are perfectly happy to drill holes in the hull of the ship and drown as long as their hated liberal rivals also drown with them. 

Neither of these types can be reached by reasoned debate or political horse trading. And on some level it's dangerous to try. After all their issues are not so much political as they are cultural and racial. They do not really accept the legitimacy of the political system or the legitimacy of non-white citizenship. I was reminded of these two subgroups of Trump voters by two separate incidents.The first involved a North Carolina Klan Leader, Chris Barker.

Trump Supporter, Foreigners and Housing Discrimination

The libertarian or traditionalist conservative would say that this is a white man's country that a man ought to have the right to do as he pleases with his own property. Although that is indeed an important value there are other values and goals which society has decided are equally important or even more important than the right to control your own property in every aspect. One of those values is anti-discrimination. 

There are limits on how the state or even private entities can treat you based on immutable characteristics such as your race, age, sex, nationality and occasionally even religion or sexuality or sexual identity. The law has been trending that way for at least the past seventy years or so. Why? Because there are unfortunately a lot of people who, given half a chance, would indeed discriminate against their fellow Americans or others based on some or all of the traits I just mentioned. One such man is Iraq war vet and former shady used car dealer, James Prater, a Mason, Michigan resident who has decided to put his house up for sale. There's just one caveat. Mr. Prater doesn't want to sell to anyone who is not a true blue American. Apparently he has a special dislike for people of Middle Eastern or South Asian descent. But rather than leave it up to the individual to figure out if they were sufficiently non-Middle Eastern/South Asian Prater decided to make it easy for everyone by stating "No foreigners". Nice and simple.

Justine Damond Shooting

One of the most predictable occurrences in life is that many people simply do not understand or empathize with certain situations until it happens to them. People who privately sneer at "checkerboard" babies may change their tune when their child marries someone of a different race and they receive mixed grandchildren. People who make gay jokes often stop when their brother or sister comes out to them over Thanksgiving dinner. And people who support lifetime limits on insurance or medical settlements start singing a different tune when a drunk driver leaves them either paralyzed or in unending pain for the rest of their life, but the insurance company only provides a piddling payout that will be spent in less than a year. When people who look a certain way have problems with heroin or prescription pill addiction the media depicts them as sympathetic fellow citizens who need help and understanding. They certainly aren't subhuman inner city junkies who need to be locked up en masse. This is unfortunately the way that some people are built. Many of us can't empathize with those in pain unless those people look like us or are us. The latest example of this is taking place in the media reactions to the Justine Damond shooting. Justine Damond was a Caucasian Australian woman who called the Minneapolis Police Department to report what she thought was a possible sexual assault in the area.

As Damond was either talking to or approaching the police, possibly leaning through the driver's window or close to the driver's window, the passenger in the police car, Officer Mohammad Noor, a Somali-American, shot her through the driver's door, killing her. Supposedly both police officers had their body cameras off, which was against policy. More information is coming out on Noor and some previous complaints about him or issues that he has.

Black Woman Tourist Thrown Down Steps in Amsterdam

People place different values on time and its importance. One person may get very upset if a friend or family member who promised to pick them up from the airport is ten minutes late. Another person may not understand why their boss is seething when they consistently arrive to work two hours after what the manager considers to be an acceptable starting time. Sometimes these differences may be culturally or environmentally based, but even among people who share the exact same cultural and familial background there may be very disparate attitudes towards time. Of course time is money. 

Many people who evince cavalier attitudes towards other people's expectations of punctuality will often take a different viewpoint if their employer or customer decides to pay them late or less than what was agreed. So it goes. Ideally expectations about time and money should be worked out before you enter into a formal contract with someone. Because when there is a disagreement or misunderstanding about time and money more serious unpleasantness can arise. All sorts of prejudices and hatreds can come to the forefront. This shocking footage shows the moment a tourist was brutally pushed down a flight of stairs by an AirBnB landlord who could be facing charges of attempted murder. The push was the culmination of an argument that took place on Saturday afternoon in the Dutch capital of Amsterdam between four tourists who had rented the flat and the landlord.

According to local media, the tourists should have left the house at 11am but at 1pm, they were still not ready to leave. The impatient landlord then became angry at the group and decided to take matters into his own hands. The footage shows the man shouting 'out, out' as he chucks the clothes and suitcases of the women out of the flat and down the stairs. One women is heard saying 'don't be emotional' as she complains about the landlord chucking her stuff out the flat unceremoniously.

Jason Whitlock Attacks Lebron James And Reveals His Ignorance

You may have missed it but a few weeks back someone wrote racial slurs on Cleveland Cavaliers small forward LeBron James' offseason Brentwood home. As far as I know the perpetrator hasn't been identified. Thanks to a demanding Day Job I didn't have a chance to write on it when it occurred. As you might imagine, as anyone would have been, James was upset about the violation of his home.

On the eve of his seventh straight NBA Finals, Cleveland Cavaliers superstar LeBron James’ Los Angeles-area offseason home was vandalized with a racial slur, according to multiple reports. Los Angeles Police Department detectives are investigating an alleged hate crime after someone spray-painted the N-word on the front gate of James’ house in Brentwood, Calif. TMZ Sports first reported the incident, which has since been confirmed by the LAPD through the local NBC affiliate. Police were called to the home around 7 a.m. local time, and the racially charged graffiti was painted over within hours of its discovery, according to reports. 

Kathy Griffin, Ted Nugent, Free Speech and Double Standards

I never found Kathy Griffin to be very funny. But I'm not in her primary target audience. Everyone has their own sense of humor. So when I saw the photograph of her holding a replica of Donald Trump's severed head I didn't find it amusing. I thought that the picture from the video was in bad taste and not funny. I thought it was an excellent example of how the Trump Presidency has unhinged some people. I also thought that it wouldn't be long before there would be a backlash. The thing I've noticed about the Right after all these years is that they have no problem dishing it out. They're really good at that. But taking it? No that's not what they do. Suddenly they turn into sensitive little snowflakes. The very same people who were angered about the Griffin picture were evidently laughing it up when Ted Nugent told Obama to suck on his machine gun, called Hillary Clinton a "toxic c***" , called Obama a subhuman mongrel or said that if Obama were re-elected that he (Nugent) would be either dead or in jail (because you know what he'd have to do). Trump didn't have a problem with Nugent's statements. He invited him to the White House. Of course when you came to prominence peddling racist birther stories, why would you have a problem with a racist like Ted Nugent? Birds of a feather.

The same people bemoaning the ugliness shown to Trump apparently had no issue at all with President Obama being burned or hanged in effigy, being called every single sort of racial slur imaginable, being called a skinny ghetto crackhead, being threatened with assassination, having Senators pray for his death or obviously getting the monthly run of the mill monkey-ape-gorilla comparisons. That was all just fine with conservatives. They had no problem making incredibly ugly hateful and threatening statements about President Obama, his wife, his daughters, his mother, his father and anyone associated with him. But when someone of a different political faction plays in the same dirty sewer conservatives have a problem? What changed? I have little use for selective outrage. 

Miss Black Texas and Racist Road Rage

There's so much shit in Texas, I'm bound to step in some
Goin' back to Dallas, take my razor and my gun
If there are people lookin' for trouble, sure gonna give 'em some
I load up my revolver, sharpen up my knife
Some redneck messin' with me man, I'm bound to have his life
Down to Dallas, take my razor and my gun
Man, people there lookin' for trouble, sure gonna give 'em some

"Dallas" Johnny Winter

American segregation wasn't just the attempted physical separation of blacks from whites. It was the zealously enforced rule that black people were inferior and had no right to contradict whites, talk back to whites, displease whites, complain about being cheated by whites, testify against whites or do anything that would set their will against any white person, regardless of age, gender, status, right or wrong.To do otherwise would be to be considered "uppity". And to be considered uppity meant that a black person ran the high risk of assault or worse by local outraged whites, often with the tacit assistance or open cooperation of law enforcement. Supposedly the changes which took place in the 1950s and 1960s put an end to that sort of foolishness. But unfortunately racism doesn't just go away because the law changes. There are still a lot of white people who really do hate black people. 

And when that hate is combined with a badge and a gun, bad things can happen. Recently in Texas (and why am I not surprised about this) a white police chief and his friends behaved as if this were 1917 and not 2017. 

Confederacy Redux

Recently, in the South people have begun removing some noted Confederate monuments from places of honor.  There are so many of these though that it would take forever to do it. Some US federal institutions are named after Confederates. It's important to remember that the Civil War was started by Southern white supremacists who feared that Northern whites were insufficiently dedicated to the twin causes of black slavery and white supremacy. So the South tried to break apart from the United States. The South started the bloodiest war ever experienced by the United States. Ironically, in their desire to defend and expand their right to own, whip, rape, exploit and murder black people, the Confederacy ineptly but fortunately brought about slavery's demise earlier than otherwise would have been the case. 

With the exception of the honest white supremacist, many present day defenders of Confederate monuments, flags and namesakes do not like to admit what it is they are actually defending. The United States is not a white man's country. Black people actually do have rights that white men and women must respect. And despite Kris Kobach's best efforts Black people get to vote. How about that? All of this was anathema to Confederates, then and now. For Confederates blacks were slaves. Period. End of story. There was a Supreme Court decision which established that blacks had no rights whites needed to respect. How much more clear does someone need to be. At its core the Civil War wasn't about tariffs or balance of powers between the Federal government and states. It was about enslavement and exclusion. This isn't a modern revisionist idea.

Blissfully unencumbered by any political niceties, after all they were about to start shooting people, Confederate politicians detailed for posterity their purpose in seceding. If we weren't living in a post-truth society this evidence would prevent particularly malevolent or obtuse people from arguing that the Civil War from the South's POV wasn't about slavery and white supremacy.

Texas Cop Kills Black Child

You might ask yourself why some white cops are so quick to use deadly force against unarmed Black men and boys. You then might ask yourself how long it would take the cops to arrest a non-police officer who fired shots into a police car that was moving away from him. And after you pondered those questions you might wonder if the system would indict a cop who killed a child for no reason at all or if the jury would convict such a cop or if the judge would give such a cop the same punishment that he or she would grant to any other similarly situated criminal. But this is 2017 America so if you're honest with yourself you probably already know the answer to those questions. But hope springs eternal. We shall see what happens to Balch Springs Police Officer Roy Oliver who, upon responding to reports of a disturbance at a house party, shot dead an unarmed 15 year old black boy, honor student Jordan Edwards, who was a passenger in a car that was leaving the location. Oliver and/or his police department initially *misspoke* (lied) and claimed that the car was backing up aggressively towards the officer. But apparently the video shows otherwise. The police department has since fired Oliver, who of course is trying to get his job back. At the time of this writing there hasn't been any arrest of Oliver. It's important to point out that Jordan Edwards was killed in front of his brothers who were also jailed for absolutely no reason. Imagine, as a child, watching your sibling die in front of your eyes, killed by the very people who are sworn to "protect" you. What sort of issues are you going to have throughout life?

Bill O'Reilly Fired From Fox News

Apparently because of a combination of spousal pressure, bad publicity, and advertising losses Fox News owners Rupert Murdoch and his sons Lachlan and James decided to let go of long time employee and number one cable news host Bill O'Reilly. O'Reilly had a long history of sexual harassment settlements. The New York Times recently ran a story detailing that the settlement amounts and number of settlements were higher than was publicly known. Bill O'Reilly took a previously scheduled vacation. Unfortunately for him this was right around the time of the Times story and new allegations of sexual approaches by former Fox news personalities or other associates. Faced with the loss of advertising revenue from departing companies, all of this O'Reilly mess was apparently too much for Murdoch and sons, who told Bill O'Reilly not to come back from his vacation. As Smokey might say, you have to be a stupid muyerfuyer to get fired on your day off. 
O'Reilly is a stupid muyerfuyer in many ways. He's also a very racist one. What's ironic about advertisers and O'Reilly's employer parting ways with him now over sexual harassment allegations is that O'Reilly has a very long history of making covertly and overtly racist comments. This is not just a question of people being too sensitive to someone born in a world that's for good or bad now gone. It's much more than that.

Illegal Immigration and Discrimination Against Black Americans

With Donald Trump's election there has been a sharp shift in interior and border enforcement against unlawfully resident foreign nationals (illegal immigrants). Per Trump's directives, most of the people detained so far by ICE have been people with felony records and/or previously existing orders of removal. Many people, American or not, fiercely oppose the new Administration's policy changes. Some folks demand that there be not a single more deportation. Others have dropped their pretenses and now insist that the US have open borders. Scarcely a day goes by without one of the major newspapers of record (New York Times, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, etc) featuring a story, editorial or column decrying the possible removal of illegal immigrants. Some people have drawn analogies between deportations and the US enslavement of Africans or the Holocaust. There have been multiple demonstrations and even a few disturbances here or there. But many people have overlooked the impact that illegal immigration can have on American citizens. This is a story from December of 2016 but it's still quite timely in my view. 

A group of African-American men filed a lawsuit Tuesday in Chicago federal court alleging systematic discrimination by a temporary staffing agency and several of its clients they say passed over black applicants in favor of Hispanic workers. The alleged discrimination took place at MVP Staffing's Cicero branch office, which the lawsuit claims was directed by clients not to send African-American workers to their companies for assignments.
Those wishes allegedly were communicated using code words, according to testimony from former dispatchers and on-site representatives given in prior cases and attached to the filing as evidence. For example, according to the lawsuit, "guapos," which translates to pretty boys, would be used to refer to African-Americans to suggest they don't want to do dirty work. The terms "feos" (translated to mean "dirty ones")," "bilingues" (bilinguals) and "los que escuchan La Ley" (referring to people who listen to Spanish-language radio station La Ley) were used to refer to Hispanic laborers, the lawsuit alleges.

Rap Music and Race

If you don't like rap music or more precisely certain types of rap music does that mean that you don't like Black people. Well it might. But as a pure question of logic of course disliking rap music doesn't mean you are a racist. One of the things that is funny about modern life is how thoroughly and completely many people came to associate rap music as the sole music which young black people were permitted to enjoy while still being "authentically" black. The flip side of this expectation is of course how fiercely some black people defend any attack on any type of rap music as being a a racist attack on all black people. Well maybe. Maybe not. I was moved to write about this because of a relatively recent incident in Houston, Texas in which the white female owner of a famed local club declined to book two rap acts because she found their lyrics offensive from both a gender and racial perspective. She also went on to make a few uncharitable comments about the type of people who came out to enjoy such music. She said that she would continue to book other types of rap music but of course by then the cat was out of the bag. Some comedians and musicians said that they would boycott the club because they felt unwelcome or that the owner was racist.

Street Harassment in Detroit and Confederate Thuggery in Georgia

There has been a lot of ink written about street harassment, which is usually defined as looking at a woman in a way she doesn't like or saying something to her that she doesn't appreciate. For what it's worth I think that for some this is a real problem though I don't think it warrants the heavy hand of state intervention. There are just some people who don't know how to act because they weren't raised right at home. Absent them putting hands on someone or making actual threats to harm a person I think that the police should have more important things to do than arrest men who use bad or insulting pickup lines. Free speech and all that, yada, yada, yada. Well recently in the city of Detroit a woman apparently felt she was street harassed because someone remarked on the size of her posterior. This lady evidently took offense. But rather than engage in a short frank discussion of why she didn't appreciate the remarks or simply remove herself from the area where such untoward language was in use, this lady and/or her friend allegedly decided to take the law into their own hands. And in her world the penalty for such disrespect for her gluteus maximus was death. The only issue, well beside the whole "I'm going to kill you because I don't like what you said to me" thingie was that the shooters apparently killed a child (teenager) who didn't make the comment in the first place. Reginald Rose-Robinson just happened to have the bad luck to be in the general area. He may or may not have laughed. And now he's dead. Michigan doesn't have a death penalty. And even in states that still have the death penalty I don't think you can receive the death penalty for laughing at a bad joke or ugly comment that someone else makes. 

Detroit police are looking for a female suspect who shot a teenager to death Friday night on Detroit's west side. The woman thought the 17-year-old made a comment about her backside inside a party store. A car she was in pulled up to Robinson and his friends outside and fatally shot him in the head at 6:30 p.m. across from the Zoom gas station at Plymouth and Meyers. Two women walked into the store when a man they didn't know, made his remark. Somebody said 'Damn, she has a big booty' and we all started laughing," said Christopher, a friend of Robinson's. "That person (left), she looked and I guess she thought it was us."

The two women drove up to the boys in a dark sedan a block away and opened fire.

Black Woman in Texas Brutalized By Police

I don't really know what to say about this story which recently took place in Forth Worth Texas. A white police officer insulted and arrested a black mother who was trying to make a complaint that a white man had assaulted her seven year old child. This story is a poignant example of white supremacy. This is really no different than what would have taken place in 1925. The only difference is that in 1925 no black person in Texas would have been under the slightest illusion that the police were obligated to respond to their calls for assistance and/or possibly arrest a white assailant. We've talked incessantly about retraining police or protesting or making police live in the areas they serve or hiring more black police or demilitarizing the police or having civilian review boards or so forth and so on. Those are all good ideas as far as they go but as we saw with the Michael Slager mistrial in South Carolina none of things mean a goddamn thing if the jury pool refuses to convict. And while convicting a truly guilty cop for abusing or killing a citizen is of course a good thing, it's infinitely better for the citizen not to be abused or killed by cops in the first place. As cops justifiably have no fear of sanctions for bad behavior from the justice system or their departments or their unions the only thing that will give bad police pause from committing wrongs upon citizens is if citizens start shooting them in the head. It is not normal for anyone to expect that American citizens should tolerate this sort of thing.This country was born in violent revolution from outrage over much lighter offenses.Other revolutions have started from anger over police brutality. The system has failed. 

Rudyard Kipling: The Stranger

The British intellectual and Nobel Prize in Literature winner Rudyard Kipling for most of his life was an unabashed pro-imperialist and pro-colonialist who apparently never really gave serious thought to the idea that people, especially non-white people, shouldn't be ruled by their betters, by which he usually meant English whites or at least whites of Anglo-Saxon stock. Kipling had little confidence in the abilities of people outside of that group to rule themselves. He extended this skepticism to the Irish, being an ardent foe of Irish home rule. Kipling justified British rule over the Irish by using the same tropes and dodges that Europeans used to justify their rule over Asians and Africans. It was only later in life after his son was killed in WWI that Kipling may have begun to rethink some of his more jingoistic views.Even though Kipling was criticized in his time and ours for some of his more reactionary ideas, few people ever questioned his literary talent or his devotion to his country. The recent terrorist incidents in Germany, France, Belgium, the UK and elsewhere in Europe which were primarily committed by recently arrived non-Europeans reminded me of Kipling's poem "The Stranger". It's Kipling at his most nationalistic. I'm not a huge fan of this poem. It has a smug tone. All the same regardless of whether you think this piece is a stirring paean to nationalism or an ugly screed to race hatred I think it's important to realize that nationalism and its uglier cousins of xenophobia and racism aren't going away anytime soon. "The Stranger" touches something real in this world. Nationalism isn't automatically an evil thing. There are limits to how many immigrants any country can accept, particularly if the cultures of the immigrant and his destination country are very different. This is especially the case in Europe, where most of the countries have been ethnic homelands of one kind or another instead of open source states like the USA. Theoretically anyone on the planet can become an American. That has never been the case with most other countries. To be a German or an Ethiopian is a statement of bloodlines and ethnicity just as much as it is a statement of geographic origin. 

Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby Kills Terence Crutcher

On September 16, 2016 Tulsa Police Officer Betty Shelby shot and killed one U.S. citizen named Terence Crutcher. Mr. Crutcher was unarmed. He had no gun on his person or in his vehicle. His vehicle had stalled or broken down. There were no warrants for Mr. Crutcher's arrest. Police did not apparently render any assistance to Mr. Crutcher. They evidently did not put out any hazard lights, offer him a jump, help move the vehicle off the road, try to determine the problem with the vehicle, or call for a tow truck or roadside assistance. These are the things that most citizens who are having car trouble would expect the police to do. After all police are supposed to serve and protect. Unfortunately Mr. Crutcher was a black man. The police immediately saw him as a threat. In no short time after their arrival the police are yelling things at Mr. Crutcher and have him surrounded. Mr. Crutcher has his hands up. A police officer in a helicopter says that Mr. Crutcher "looks like a bad dude". And shortly after that two police officers almost simultaneously tase and shoot Mr. Crutcher. The police don't even bother to tend to the dying man's wounds but instead let him bleed out. They appeared to be more concerned with making sure that Officer Shelby was emotionally okay. Shelby has not been arrested or charged yet. I'm not being fashionably cynical when I write that I will be surprised if she does goes to trial. Her attorney is of course reaching for the tried and true tactic of claiming fear of the "big black man". Quite often this is a literal get out of jail card for white police officers. As many people on twitter have pointed out at this point if someone doesn't understand that there is a problem with police use of force against black people, disproportionately black men and boys, then they don't want to know. Most people will have car trouble at some point in our lives. Imagine running into someone who is so consumed with fear and hatred of you that there is literally nothing you can say or do that will not be interpreted as a threat. Well Mr. Crutcher didn't have to imagine that scenario. He was a Black man in America. He knew the deal. He kept his hands up even though he'd committed no crime. And he still died.


The usual suspects are already lining up to defend the police and claim that if only Crutcher had done x, y, and z then he'd still be alive. Whatever. This is the pure essence of racism-the ignorant unreasoning and unconstrained loathing of blackness. Shelby and company constructed a threat in their minds that did not exist and then acted on it. If you are so racist that blackness itself is a deadly threat then you shouldn't have the authority of the state or be able to carry weapons. This is not a training problem. This is a consequences problem. For the record you can watch the videos below. So far the people who were blasting Colin Kaepernick for his protest about police killings and brutality haven't had too much to say. Mr. Crutcher's family and their attorney speak in the last video.

Attorneys and Family Press Conference Video

Colin Kaepernick and the National Anthem

If you have paid any attention to the news over the past two weeks you've seen that San Francisco Forty-Niners (former starting and now backup) quarterback Colin Kaepernick has attracted both praise and scorn for his act of refusing to stand for the National Anthem. Kaepernick is taking a stand so to speak to express his dismay at the status of black Americans and more specifically at the treatment of black Americans by the police. Kaepernick has mostly been met with outrage although he is starting to get more support (cautious and enthusiastic) from some of his fellow professional athletes outside of football, inside of football, and amateur brethren. And obviously since this is America a great deal of that criticism that Kaepernick has faced has been racialized. This has not just come from the usual conservative racists. People on both sides of the color line have questioned Kaepernick's self-described race, claiming that because he is biracial and relatively light skinned, he's not really black. People have called him ungrateful, ignorant, spoiled, entitled and all of the usual insults that accrue to someone who is going against the perceived grain. Those were the "nice" insults hurled by people who still needed to maintain public plausible deniability of their racism. Many people on twitter and blogs and website comment sections weren't restrained by such considerations and immediately reached for the tried and true racial slurs. Other people, including one pastor(!), just let their inner authoritarian come out to play and suggested shooting those people who didn't stand for the National Anthem. I didn't write on this earlier both because time to write has been at a premium of late thanks to a demanding Day Job and because I thought other people (including some of my blog partners) had pretty much already said everything worthwhile on the issue. Still, driving home a few days earlier listening to the condescending and clueless well known local radio host and writer Mitch Albom opine again on the issue as well as reading some other tweets I realized that maybe I did have something to write about this after all.

The most important thing to keep in mind is that for all intents and purposes Black Americans have legally been full citizens for a very short period of time in America. Until 1865 most Blacks in America were enslaved. Free or not, no blacks had any rights that a white person needed to respect. There was a Supreme Court decision making this crystal clear. Slavery ended in 1865. From 1865-1876 there was a halting and abortive attempt to redress the wrongs of slavery and extend full citizenship to blacks. This process was met with massive white resistance and terrorism. From the 1870s up until the 1960s Black Americans were effective non-citizens by force of law or threat of violence. It was only in the 1950s and 1960s that gradually and haltingly the most important laws that had enshrined black inferiority were removed or overturned. This also provoked massive white backlash in certain quarters, not just the South either. And although the law can make a bright line distinction as to what is no longer allowed the law can't automatically change what's in people's hearts and minds. You probably know all of this already. But I repeat it here to emphasize that for the majority of our country's history black people were non-citizens, either by law or by custom. As comedian Chris Rock said for Black people America is like a uncle who molested you as a child but later paid for your college education. There's a painful history there that can't be ignored or whitewashed. So it seems a little presumptuous to criticize any black person who doesn't ignore that history, particularly when as Kaepernick points out, some of the same ugly stuff that was in history books is still going on today. 

Next, there has never been a protest or movement for black progress that the majority of white people have supported from its inception. Black agitators who are recognized and admired today by some politicians or media talking heads are usually conveniently old or dead. When these agitators were alive, young and raising a fuss they weren't very popular with the mainstream. The criticisms that Kaepernick, and by extension any protester, faces are par for the course any time a black person speaks out about something he or she doesn't like. This is in in sharp contrast to a white person like Donald Trump. Trump has risen to prominence claiming that America is going to hell in a hand basket and is turning into a third world country. Somehow it's ok for Trump and his ilk to point out what they see wrong in this country but if a black person should do the same they're wrong or being divisive? Really? A police department with a history of racist comments and questionable use of force incidents by officers thinks that Kaepernick should apologize to them???? What sort of upside down world do we live in? Kaepernick is standing in a long line of black athletes such as Paul Robeson, Jim Brown, Muhammad Ali, Arthur Ashe, Althea Gibson, Jackie Robinson and many others who have spoken up about the injustice they've seen or faced. After all in 1972, using language which is similar to what Kaepernick used recently, the military veteran and baseball legend Jackie Robinson explained why he felt he could not sing the National Anthem or salute the flag. Was he a spoiled punk, as Sarah Palin claimed of Kaepernick? And contrary to Kaepernick's critics his net worth doesn't and shouldn't prevent him from speaking up. The fact that he and some others are willing to lose money for their stands should at least make some folks realize that there are serious questions here. The people who slam Kaepernick and other athletes as being disrespectful to military veterans do not speak for veterans. There are some veterans who support Kaepernick's right to protest and/or agree with his points.

This is unacceptable. You should be proud to be an American. Especially on 9/11 when we should support each other. https://t.co/qFozwaH9Bu

— Kate Upton (@KateUpton) September 11, 2016

Pride in being an American is not contingent upon standing for the anthem. As Kate Upton and Mitch Albom show, some people just don't get this. I doubt they ever will because they are self-evidently ignorant of this country's history and apparently indifferent to some current events. They can afford to be so because they don't have to worry about being harassed or brutalized by the police. They don't have to deal with trying to purchase a home and being steered away from the area they prefer. They don't have to accept living in a segregated community where properties either appreciate very slowly or depreciate over time because the larger community rejects people with their skin tone. They don't have to try to beg someone to try to rent lodgings to them or pick them up in a taxi. Their community doesn't have an unemployment rate twice that of the larger group's. If they are unfortunate enough to get caught up in the justice system they won't receive longer sentences for no other reason than their race. These things go on whether it is 9-11 or not. If you're nowhere to be found on these issues 364 days a year then I don't think you have the right to get upset when someone brings them up, even if it is 9-11. Cops are shooting black people dead and walking away clean. I must have missed Upton's or Albom's or Palin's outrage on those incidents. What I find unacceptable, to paraphrase Upton, is that the people who murdered John Crawford and Tamir Rice weren't even indicted. If you are angrier about some players declining to stand for the Star Spangled Banner than you are about a nationwide justice system that routinely produces such results something is wrong with your moral compass. What Upton and Albom and others don't seem to get is that protest by the very definition doesn't require their approval or sign off. All these conservatives who claim to be against "political correctness" sure do seem to have their own pc that that they are eager to enforce on everyone. Rather than write any more on this I think it would be useful to listen to Shannon Sharpe, former NFL star, give his take on the larger issue. No one has all the answers. But I have no use for anyone who tells Kaepernick or anyone else that they either must stand for the National Anthem (written by a slave owner who mocked black people btw) or should leave the country. Black people have been in America longer than most whites, after all. Perhaps the people insulting Kaepernick should go to another country?

Philando Castile, Dallas, and Blowback

On July 6th, in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, local police stopped a car driven by school cook Philando Castile. Castile was a black man. Also in the car was Castile's girlfriend Lavish Reynolds and Reynolds' four year old daughter. According to Reynolds the police demanded that Castile produce his license and registration. Although I'm not sure he was legally required to do so Castile allegedly informed the officers that he was a licensed gun permit holder and had his weapon with him.  An officer, allegedly Jeronimo Yanez, then shot Castile multiple times as Castile reached for his paperwork as directed. The police yell and and freak out as Castile slumps in his seat, dying. Reynolds was prescient and calm enough (with guns pointed at her and her daughter) to livestream the post-shooting events to Facebook. You can watch it here if you want to do so. The police ordered Reynolds out of the car. They handcuffed and detained her. Reynolds broke down later. To literally give the devil his due we don't see the events that occurred before the shooting. But we do know that Castile was legally entitled to have his gun. We don't know when and why the officers unholstered their guns. The lawyer for Yanez stated that the traffic stop was initiated because Castile resembled a robbery suspect because of his "wide nose". Reynolds stated that they were told they were stopped because of a malfunctioning tail light. But that doesn't really matter. Castile is just as dead. His crime? Being black and following instructions. Problematic doesn't even begin to describe this. Because Castile had no felony record the normal post death smears to his reputation won't be as easy to do. However the lowlifes who do things like that are even now poring over Castille's and Reynolds' social media accounts to find something to justify Castille's death. Some mental midgets were stating that Reynolds must have stolen her cigarettes. 

I would love to believe that if I just did A, B and C then I and people who look like me would be safe from police violence. But that's just not the case. You can have a pristine record, be entirely innocent, follow the officer's instructions (legal or not) to the letter and still wind up insulted, brutalized, humiliated or dead. Police initiate negative contact with black people, especially black men, at higher rates than they do with white people. If you are black the officer is more likely to search you or your vehicle, regardless of probable cause or reasonable suspicion. Anything other than instantaneous abject compliance can cause the officer to resort to deadly violence. And as Castile and Reynolds found out, even compliance isn't enough. 

These incidents would be bad enough if officers who broke the law or violated departmental regulations were punished when the evidence supports punishment. But generally speaking they aren't. A cop can be caught on video unlawfully beating or killing someone, but it's still a good bet that s/he won't be charged. It's a big deal if an officer even loses his job. Officers are rarely charged and even more rarely convicted of crimes against black citizens. Local district attorneys work with police and greatly value that relationship. The FBI isn't any better because it investigates itself and to my "great surprise" (LOL)  always finds shootings by FBI agents to be justified. Judges are often former district attorneys. Black people are underrepresented in jury pools. Segregated housing tracts and deformed voting registration patterns produce jury pools which are not only whiter on average than the country's population but also may lack first hand experience with police who are not the Officer Friendly stereotype. Officers can, as is their right, avoid jury trials. And if all that fails and against all odds a police officer somehow finds himself on trial he can pull out his ace card and say "I feared for my life." That pretty much trumps everything. Going to prison for murder or manslaughter is not a normal outcome for killer cops.

This is a problem. It's not just that police commit needless violence against black citizens. It's that too many people of all races have come to believe that the justice system won't or can't do anything about it. The reason we have a justice system is so people won't take the law into their own hands. But it appears that police are above justice. So what is the logical next step once you have the firm belief that the justice system can't be fixed or reformed? It's violence. It's what we saw in Dallas on July 7th when an Army Reserve Afghan war veteran, one Micah Xavier Johnson, allegedly murdered five white police officers. Supposedly his rationale for doing that was because, like many other black people he was upset about the cycle of black death at the hands of police. Johnson felt justified in reaching out and sharing this pain. People tend to get very upset when anyone points that out. People say violence is never the answer and so on. Well, let's be real.This country was founded on violent revolution. The Founding Fathers didn't engage in sit-ins, talk about loving and forgiving their enemies or claim that God would make everything ok at some unspecified future date. They started shooting the British. They continued shooting the British until the British decided that keeping the American colonies wasn't worth it. This country expanded via application of superior violence against the indigenous inhabitants. If you live in the US you live in a country that had one of the most successful genocidal conquests in history. Many of the very same people who are demanding we weep for the cops murdered in Dallas will turn around and claim that the elimination of Native Americans is nothing to be ashamed of. Stuff happens, you know. Slavery was only ended via violence. Our movies, books and other entertainment constantly lionize the hero who takes matters into his own hands defeats or kills his enemies. There is a fundamental strain in American politics and culture to dismiss people who can't or won't fight back. It's seen as weakness and viewed with contempt. Very few people in any position of power have any respect for the man who follows Jesus' advice during the Sermon on the Mount to "resist not evil." and "turn the other cheek." Maybe we'd all be better off if we did heed such words but the truth of the matter is that as Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin (H. Rap Brown) pointed out a long time ago, "Violence is as American as cherry pie". If you won't stand up for yourself in this world no body else will. It's only when Black people turn to violence that the larger society's outrage over violence becomes palpable. We actually have someone suing the President and other black men for inciting racial hatred. Think about this for a moment. People on the right have called the President and his family monkeys and apes and subhuman and everything but a child of God. They have prayed for the President's death, depicted his death and threatened his life. They've claimed that he's not American. They've said nasty things about his mother. Many have it made it crystal clear via vile jokes and plain direct statements that they hate black people. Now some fellow travelers of these yahoos are suing the President for inciting racism. If this wasn't so serious you'd just have to laugh.

I could condemn people who kill innocent police officers and police officers who kill innocent civilians but too often many police in this country refuse to acknowledge that there even is such a thing as an innocent black civilian. There are just blacks they haven't gotten around to frisking or arresting yet. Some police shoot first and ask questions later. While politicians and police are falling over themselves to share their sympathies for the murdered police officers in Dallas, you will never see an outpouring of police support for murdered black citizens. The best you might get is a bland statement about process. Often you'll get callous indifference. At worst you see jokes, glee and even celebration. Politicians, district attorneys and media pundits will sneer that the murdered black citizen's family is only out for money. Some will claim that hey this dead black (wo)man was no angel. So if this country in 2016 is still unwilling to charge and convict police officers who kill black citizens then it should prepare itself for more Micah Johnsons. There's only so much that people can take before they finally realize that they aren't the only ones who can bleed. Everybody bleeds. If we want to stop more shooting of police officers then we need to stop police shooting of black civilians. We're at a crossroads in American society. We've tried retraining police, marching, praying, boycotting, begging, pleading etc to no avail. This is not about individual good or bad cops. This is about a systemic institutional framework that views black people, especially black men and boys, as threats to be monitored or eliminated. This is a problem which impacts all black people, regardless of class, wealth, status, sexuality, gender, political stance or other characteristics. Conservative South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, with whom I disagree probably 75% of the time has stories to tell of being racially profiled and harassed, even as an elected official. How do we fix all of this? I don't know. Black people were never supposed to be citizens in this country. But I do know that we can't have any more Tamir Rices or Aiyana Stanley-Jones. I have loved ones in New York and other cities with aggressive combative police. If something happened to them and a police officer walked free I would be hard pressed to sing kumbyah. I love my kin just as much as the family members of the slain officers in Dallas loved theirs.

This is not 1920s America. You'd be foolish to believe that. I don't live in the same world my great-grandparents inhabited. But there's still too much today that would be bitterly familiar to them in terms of police behavior and the larger society's refusal to hold police accountable. Typically, conservatives have sought to blame the messenger, though there are a few conservatives who recognize that there's a problem and have some ideas about what to do next. As NFL quarterback Colin Kaepernick wrote, "This is what lynchings look like in 2016".  Either we rebuild the system to reduce the possibility of police violence and punish unlawful police violence as severely as we do that of other citizens or we all get guns and start shooting back. No one wins but black people won't be bleeding alone.