Much has happened in the past few days. The same summer that we were supposed to be celebrating the 50th anniversary of Freedom Summer, here we are again. Yet another Black teenager loses his life to the police. Michael Brown was unarmed, and shot ten times.
To say that this summer has been tense between the Black community and law enforcement would be a laughably inept understatement. From New York’s Eric Garner murder by police, to John Crawford III’s death over a bb gun in an Ohio Walmart, the police have been on a killing spree. The murder of Michael Brown, a teenager from Ferguson, Missouri has sparked outrage and rebellion from residents of this community. A gathering of unarmed residents was met with police in riot gear, tanks, and attack dogs. Instead of the intimidation being successful, some have taken to riots and looting.
After the riots began, then the woefully glib and predictable backlash came rushing in. It seems as though people who hadn’t much to say about the killing of an unarmed teenager all of a sudden found their tongue when Ferguson erupted. There were think pieces and memes abound about Black people destroying their “own community” and embarrassing themselves while simultaneously “staining” the memory of Michael Brown. Here is where the politics of respectability and Black behavior policing come in.
The problem with struggle is that it is often messy. It always has been. The prim and proper approach to every egregious injustice, regardless of what triggered it does little but moralize in a situation that shames those who participate. I am not saying that rioting is the answer, but it is a response of frustration to an unbearable situation- the murder of an unarmed teenager with impunity. It’s one thing to be a little late on the check in… but it’s a whole matter altogether to be tone deaf and focused on a side issue that is not the point. Property can be replaced. Life cannot. If you are more outraged about rioting and looting than Mike Brown’s murder, ask yourself why you value property over human life.
Secondly, this brings us to another point which has to be raised. You don’t get to tell oppressed people how to respond to their oppression. If you are setting the parameters of the available responses by those afflicted, than you don’t want struggle- you want controlled opposition. Apparently, there are different rules for those under assault. The police, who at the time of this writing are refusing to release the name of the officer who murdered Brown are closing ranks. They are threatening journalists, and pointing M-16’s at pregnant women. Yet, there is a call for calm from the residents.
If it was unclear, than it must be re-stated again- respectability will not save us. The police are behaving like a marauding army of intransigent racists. Surrendering, unarmed people are being blown away. Black people are fed up, just like any other group of people would be under such life threatening circumstances. Every 28 hours, a Black person is killed by police or vigilantes. Until this overarching problem is dealt with, moralizing about the destruction of property is beside the point.
-Marc W. Polite
thank you Marc. Necessary words. But, its every 28 hours, a Black man, woman or child is murdered … NONE of us are safe … not just Black men. <3 !
Thank you for that addition Thandi. You are absolutely right.
You Nailed it. I was crying after the execution of Mike Brown following all the savage brutality by police against grandmothers, fathers, pregnant mothers, and Black children in the communities of America.
I understood the frustration, just seeing the barbarianism by cops every day is oppression in every way and its spreading vertically. The world is looking at our police as insane and embarrassing.
You said a few words “Property can be replaced our Black children can not!
What is the PROPER policy and procedure to handle Black children being executed by police and demonized by the media?
BROWN WAS A CRIMINAL & A THUG:
The 6’ 4”, 292-pound Brown was unarmed!
GIVE ME A F–KING BREAK.
IF YOU HAD A DRUGGED OUT 6′ 4″ 300 POUND GORILLIA COMING AT YOU, WHAT THE F–K WOULD YOU DO?
Police: Before Shooting, Brown Robbed Store
Teen killed after cops responded to strong-arm theft
AUGUST 15–This is the Ferguson Police Department report that names Michael Brown as a suspect in a strong-arm robbery that occurred minutes before the Missouri teenager was shot dead last Saturday by an officer who had confronted him and a friend as they walked in the street.
The document was released this morning by police who also identified Officer Darren Wilson as the cop who killed the 18-year-old Brown.
According to the report, Brown and his friend Dorian Johnson, 22, are identified as suspects in the theft of a box of Swisher Sweets cigars (valued at $48.99) from a convenience mart. Cops were dispatched to the business in response to a call about “stealing in progress.”
As seen in store surveillance stills (seen above), the man identified by cops as Brown struggles with a worker who sought to lock the store before the men could leave with the stolen merchandise. The confrontation between Brown and the employee lasted about one minute, based on time-stamped videos.
According to the police report, the 6’ 4”, 292-pound Brown grabbed the worker by his shirt and subsequently pushed him into a display rack. As he headed for the door, Brown doubled back and advanced on the employee, “appearing to intimidate him. Brown then turns back around and walks out of camera view.”
Johnson, police say, will not be charged in connection with the felony robbery, and the report notes that the case has been “exceptionally cleared.” Johnson, who has been interviewed by FBI agents and local police, has admitted to investigators that he and Brown took the Swisher Sweets from the market, according to Freeman Bosley, Johnson’s lawyer.
Though police have redacted the name of the business where the robbery occurred, it appears to be the Ferguson Market & Liquor store on West Florissant Avenue. The store manager–whose name was also removed from the document–told responding officers that the suspects left the market and headed northbound on foot. Brown was shot to death on Canfield Drive at Cooper Creek Court, about half-a-mile northeast of the market.
Ferguson Police Department officials have not released any documents relating to Wilson’s killing of the unarmed Brown, who was shot multiple times. Nor have they revealed whether Wilson confronted Brown and Johnson in the course of his looking to identify suspects in the convenience store robbery. (5 pages)
RAP DON’T EDUCATE –
IT HELPS ERADCATE –
ITS MUSICAL AIDS
THE BLACK HOLOCAUST
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
author@johnwfountain.com
Last Modified: May 6, 2012
Imagine Soldier Field beyond capacity, brimming with 63,879 young African-American men, ages 18 to 24 — more than U.S. losses in the entire Vietnam conflict.
Imagine the University of Michigan’s football stadium — the largest in the U.S. — filled to its limit of 109,901 with black men, age 25 and older. Now add 28,223 more — together totaling more than U.S. deaths in World War I.
Picture two UIC Pavilions packed with 12,658 Trayvon Martins — black boys, ages 14 to 17 — nearly twice the number of U.S. lives lost in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now picture all of them dead. The national tally of black males 14 and older murdered in America from 1976 through 2005, according to U.S. Bureau of Justice statistics: 214,661.
The numbers tell only part of the story of this largely urban war, where the victims bear an uncanny resemblance to their killers. A war of brother against brother, filled with wanton and automatic gunfire, even in the light of day, on neighborhood streets, where little boys make mud pies, schoolgirls jump rope, where the innocent are caught in the crossfire, where the spirit of murder blows like the wind.
It is, so far, a ceaseless war in which guns are often the weapon of choice, and the finger on the trigger of the gun pointed at a black male is most often another black male’s.
The numbers alone are enough to make me cry — to wonder why — we as African Americans will march en masse over one slain by someone who is not black, and yet sit silent over the hundreds of thousands of us obliterated from this mortal world by someone black like us, like me. It is a numbing truth borne out by hard facts:
From 1980 through 2008, 93 percent of black victims were killed by blacks.
Translation: For every Trayvon Martin killed by someone not black, nine other blacks were murdered by someone black.
In 2005, — blacks — accounted for 13 percent of the U.S. population but 49 percent of all homicides. The numbers are staggering, the loss incomprehensible.
Add to the tally of black males 14 and older slain across the country from 1976 to 2005, another 29,335 (slain from 2006 to 2010), and their national body count rises to 243,996, representing 82 percent of all black homicides for that 35-year period. What also becomes clear is this: We too often have raised killers. And this war is claiming our sons.
But that’s still not the end of the story. Add to that number 51,892 black females ages 14 and older, plus five whose gender was not identifiable, and the total, not counting children, is 295,893 — more than the combined U.S. losses of World War I, the Vietnam, Korean and Mexican-American wars, the War of 1812 and the American Revolutionary War.
Is the blood of these sons and daughters somehow less American?
Two hundred ninety-five thousand eight hundred ninety-three . . .
Imagine the United Center, Wrigley Field, U.S. Cellular Field and Soldier Field nearly all filled simultaneously with black boys, girls, men and women. Now imagine that twice over. Now imagine them all dead.
As far as I can see, that’s at least 295,893 reasons to cry. And it is cause enough for reticent churches, for communities, for lackadaisical leaders, for all people — no matter our race, color or creed — to find the collective will and the moral resolve to stamp out this human rights atrocity occurring right under our noses.
Just imagine the human carnage and the toll to us all if we don’t.
I can’t. I won’t.
JOHN W. FOUNTAIN
THE AMERICAN NEGRO IS A HYPOCRITE – AL SHARPTON IS AN FBI INFORMANT!
JESSE JACKSON WAS THE “JUDAS GOAT” THAT WALKED MLK TO HIS DEATH!
LOUIS FARRAKHAN INSPIRED THE HIT ON MALCOLM X.
MALCOLM X WAS COLOR BLIND WHEN HE WENT TO MECCA – HE SAW NO BLACK SLAVES!
PROPHET MUHAMMAD WOULD EXCHANGE 2 BLACK SLAVES FOR 1 WHITE!
AMERICAN NEGROS ARE SO FAR UP THE WHITE MAN’S ASS, HE IS BEGINNING TO LOOK WHITE!
AMERICAN NEGROS NEED THE “RIGHT OF RETURN” JUST LIKE THE JEWS, SO THEY CAN GO BACK TO AFRICA!
SMALL PROBLEM – NO WELFARE OR FOOD STAMPS IN THE JUNGLE!
THEY WOULD SWIM BACK, THROUGH SHARK INFESTED WATERS, JUST TO BE WITH WHITEY AGAIN!
ONE BIT OF ADVICE – “SHUT THE F–K UP”!
ALL THE OTHER RACES IN AMERICA GOT OFF THEIR ASS & MADE SOMETHING OF THEMSELVES & THEY DID IT BY FAIR COMPETITION – NOT LIKE THE NEGRO & HIS “POSITIVE DISCRIMINATION” – HE ONLY NEEDS TO GET 30%, WHILE EVERYONE ELSE HAS TO GET 70%.
THE BLACK & HIS 3 Rs
RAPING!
RIOTING!
ROBBING!
You are a hypocrite “Larry”. You are the one spewing bigotry and baseless remarks.
You came to this site. Does this look like WND.com to you, jackhole? You don’t know Black history, which means you really don’t understand American history. Raping, rioting and robbing was at the foundation of this country. Your comment is a total fail.
I don’t know where you are getting your facts from, but you have it all wrong. Do your research, not from Stormfront, and try again.
Thanks Aleah for your comment.