Portland police sus­pect­ed Allen, who has tat­toos cov­er­ing his fore­head and cheeks, was involved in bank rob­beries. However, sur­veil­lance footage of the crime shows the actu­al rob­ber has no face tat­toos. None of the tellers who wit­nessed the inci­dent described the rob­ber with face tat­toos as well. Still, Allen was charged in con­nec­tion to the rob­bery. Investigators alleged­ly altered his mug shot using Photoshop, then pre­sent­ed it to the tellers with­out let­ting them know that it was altered. Some of the tellers picked Allen out of the pho­to array of five sim­i­lar-look­ing men and iden­ti­fied him as the robber.

What the police did has since caused out­rage, with some say­ing the police pho­to­shopped an inno­cent man’s face so they could just imme­di­ate­ly make an arrest with­out exert­ing much effort. The police offi­cers involved have yet to face any con­se­quence. It is also yet to be deter­mined if Allen’s rights were vio­lat­ed and if the pho­to­shopped evi­dence would be accept­ed in court. However, police offi­cers claimed that Allen could have actu­al­ly put on a make­up pri­or to rob­bing banks so they dig­i­tal­ly cov­ered his face tat­toos to keep the wit­ness­es from being “dis­tract­ed.”

“I basi­cal­ly paint­ed over the tat­toos,” police foren­sic crim­i­nal­ist Mark Weber tes­ti­fied. “Almost like apply­ing elec­tron­ic make­up.” Meanwhile, Jules Epstein, a law pro­fes­sor at Temple University and lead­ing nation­al author­i­ty on eye­wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny, said it is an inap­pro­pri­ate prac­tice. “It’s unbe­liev­able to me that police would ignore the fact that no teller has described a per­son with glar­ing tat­toos and make this man into a pos­si­ble sus­pect by cov­er­ing them up,” he told The Oregonian. “They’re increas­ing the risk of mis­tak­en iden­ti­ty.” https://​www​.black​news​.com/​n​e​w​s​/​p​o​r​t​l​a​n​d​-​p​o​l​i​c​e​-​p​h​o​t​o​s​h​o​p​p​e​d​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​m​a​n​-​t​y​r​o​n​e​-​l​a​m​o​n​t​-​a​l​l​e​n​-​m​u​g​s​h​ot/

A TV news anchor in Oklahoma City issued a tear­ful apol­o­gy to her Black co-host after she made a racist com­ment on air, say­ing he looked like a gorilla. 

During the local ABC station’s morn­ing news pro­gram last week, KOCO anchor Alex Housden, a white woman, capped off a seg­ment about a goril­la at the Oklahoma City Zoo by telling her Black co-anchor, Jason Hackett, that he resem­bled the pri­mate. The racist com­ment sparked out­rage among view­ers and went viral, and Housden made her on-air apol­o­gy the fol­low­ing day. 

“I want to apol­o­gize not only to my co-anchor, Jason, but to our entire com­mu­ni­ty,” she said through tears. “I said some­thing yes­ter­day that was incon­sid­er­ate, it was inap­pro­pri­ate and I hurt peo­ple. And I want you to know I under­stand how much I hurt you out there and how much I hurt you,” she added, turn­ing to Hackett. She told the anchor that she loved him, con­sid­ered him a best friend and knew what she said was wrong. 
“I do accept your apol­o­gy and I do appre­ci­ate your apol­o­gy,” Hackett respond­ed, adding that he con­sid­ers her a best friend too. “I do appre­ci­ate you and I do love you. All that being said … what [Alex] said yes­ter­day was wrong. It cut deep for me and it cut deep for a lot of you in the com­mu­ni­ty.” Hackett said he want­ed this to be a teach­able moment for everyone. 

“The les­son here is that words mat­ter,” he said. “We’re becom­ing a more diverse coun­try. … We have to under­stand the stereo­types and each other’s back­grounds and the words that hurt, the words that cut deep. And we have to find a way to replace those words with love and words of affir­ma­tion as well.” KOCO President Brent Hensley told HuffPost the sta­tion had no addi­tion­al state­ments to make about the “unfor­tu­nate inci­dent.”
Story orig­i­nat­ed here; https://​www​.huff​post​.com/​e​n​t​r​y​/​l​o​c​a​l​-​n​e​w​s​-​a​n​c​h​o​r​-​k​o​c​o​-​b​l​a​c​k​-​c​o​-​h​o​s​t​-​g​o​r​i​l​l​a​_​n​_​5​d​6​5​4​a​4​c​e​4​b​0​0​8​b​1​f​d​2​1​c​99c

As new data emerges that Police killings are the sixth lead­ing cause of death among young men in the United States, one can rea­son­ably expect that the con­ver­sa­tion will be shaped in a way that absolves the police depart­ments of respon­si­bil­i­ty.
Look for the cor­po­rate media and their talk­ing heads to begin the duplic­i­tous process (if at all) of pre­sent­ing this exis­ten­tial issue as one of jobs, hous­ing, drug-use and a pletho­ra of issues not ger­mane to the cen­tral point, which is police mur­der­ing black peo­ple and get­ting away with it.

According to the study pub­lished by the Proceedings of the National Academy of the Sciences.
Police killings which can include shoot­ings, chok­ing and oth­er uses of force are the sixth-lead­ing cause of death among men of all races ages 25 – 29.
The risk of being killed by the police is more pro­nounced for black men, who are 2.5 times more like­ly than white men to be killed by police, while black women are 1.4 times more like­ly than white women to be killed by police.

According to lead researcher Frank Edwards, an assis­tant pro­fes­sor at the School of Criminal Justice at Rutgers University, “the num­bers may be an under­count.” “While the killings of Michael Brown, 18, Charleena Lyles, 30, and oth­er black men and women at the hands of law enforce­ment have brought nation­al atten­tion to the role race plays in police vio­lence against Americans, researchers lack basic esti­mates of the preva­lence of police-involved deaths, in large part because of an absence of offi­cial and author­i­ta­tive data.” Said Edwards.

There is a dis­tinct rea­son that there are no Federal or state man­dates that police depart­ments across the coun­try have strict account­ing of the num­ber of peo­ple who died as a result of com­ing in con­tact with police.
The author­i­ties know that this issue of police vio­lence is real. However, it has large­ly affect­ed black and brown peo­ple, so what’s the fuss about?

The United States keeps records of every­thing, includ­ing how mice pro­cre­ate. That it does not see fit to have an accu­rate account­ing of the num­ber of peo­ple who die as a result of con­tact with police tells a star­tling tale of how the nation sees this prob­lem.
It leaves peo­ple who care about social jus­tice to con­clude that there is no will at any lev­el to reme­di­ate this problem.

There is a com­mon prac­tice in the United States to cre­ate diver­sion­ary sce­nar­ios for press­ing issues.
For exam­ple, the exis­ten­tial cri­sis of gun vio­lence and white suprema­cy are coined as men­tal health issues, rather than the seri­ous issue of neo-nazis, hatred, and the need to put in place guar­an­tees which would cat­e­go­rize and effec­tive­ly deal with home­grown ter­ror­ist groups, as they have done in nam­ing and deal­ing with so-called Muslim extrem­ism.
The cor­po­rate media is com­plic­it in shap­ing those fraud­u­lent diver­sion­ary nar­ra­tives as well. 
In debat­ing this issue, talk­ing heads of all col­ors and stripes have fall­en into the trap the cor­po­rate media has laid for pro­tect­ing police from accountability.

It should come as no sur­prise then, that almost 15 years after the FBI warned about the influx into law enforce­ment of Neo-Nazis and white suprema­cists. The coun­try has done noth­ing about it. Instead, it has tar­get­ed the black peo­ple demon­strat­ing for the right to exist.
It is a remark­able sce­nario tan­ta­mount to a sto­ry my friend“s wife told of her love for pork.
She had a meal of pork and rice and sub­se­quent­ly fell ill. The doc­tor attrib­uted the cause of her ill­ness to the [pork], and so she stopped eat­ing [rice].
James Comey, the then FBI Director, spoke to the nation’s police chiefs after Michael Brown was mur­dered in Ferguson Missouri by a White cop, Darren Wilson.
Comey talked about what he char­ac­ter­ized as the “Ferguson effect”.
In giv­ing that lec­ture, Comey said police offi­cers were afraid of doing their jobs, out of fear of what he called ” The Ferguson effect”.
The very FBI which warned years ago about the dan­gers white suprema­cists pos­es to the coun­try, went ahead and cre­at­ed a fraud­u­lent des­ig­na­tion for the black lives mat­ter activists who were demon­strat­ing against the killing of black peo­ple by police.

The FBI labeled them “black iden­ti­ty extrem­ists”, When chal­lenged in a com­mit­tee hear­ing in the con­gress by Congresswoman Karen Bass the new FBI Director Christopher Wray gave a con­vo­lut­ed response which nev­er ful­ly answered the con­gress­wom­an’s questions.

The FBI which now claims it does not have the means or the author­i­ty to inves­ti­gate white Terrorism, cer­tain­ly had the time to build out a mas­sive sur­veil­lance infra­struc­ture against Black lives mat­ter activists, vis­it­ing their homes and leav­ing busi­ness cards, and gen­er­al­ly harass­ing peo­ple who had just returned home from peace­ful­ly demon­strat­ing which is a guar­an­teed first amend­ment right.
In the mean­time, heav­i­ly armed white men are butcher­ing Black and Latino and oth­er minor­i­ty peo­ple and there is no mass sur­veil­lance of these groups, because accord­ing to the FBI they need new tools.
Instead of pay­ing atten­tion to the exis­ten­tial threat white extrem­ism pos­es to the United States, the FBI tar­get­ed black activists demon­strat­ing for their right to exist. 

The names of the mur­dered are far too many to doc­u­ment. Every year American police kill thou­sands of peo­ple, large­ly peo­ple of col­or. Neither the Federal Government, nor state and local author­i­ties see a need to have police depart­ments have any account­ing data of peo­ple who have died hav­ing come in con­tact with police.
Even a pig farmer knows how many of his pigs have died any giv­en year.
In America, the Government does not care enough because the peo­ple being gunned down and choked to death are “those peo­ple”, peo­ple who were dis­pos­able from the begin­ning of this experiment. 

Mike Beckles is a for­mer Jamaican police Detective cor­po­ral, a busi­ness own­er, avid researcher, and blog­ger. 
He is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog chatt​-​a​-box​.com. 
He’s also a con­trib­u­tor to sev­er­al web­sites.
You may sub­scribe to his blogs free of charge, or sub­scribe to his Youtube chan­nel @chatt-a-box, for the lat­est pod­cast all free to you of course.

From USA today

Police three times more likely to kill black men

If you’re a black man, you are three times more like­ly to be killed by police than a white man, accord­ing to a recent study pub­lished in the American Journal of Public Health. The study looked at all-male homi­cides report­ed in the last six years. Eight per­cent of them were police killings. And of the 6,300 total male homi­cides, near­ly 1,800 of them were black men. What’s more, is that this issue is preva­lent across the coun­try. There’s not a sin­gle place in the U.S. where the risk of a black man get­ting killed by police is less than dou­ble that of a white man. 

Video shows officer restraining child

After a Facebook video of a white police offi­cer force­ful­ly restrain­ing a black boy went viral, the Georgia Police Department released the offi­cer’s body cam­era video to pro­vide con­text in the midst of racial bias accu­sa­tions. The offi­cers were arrest­ing a domes­tic vio­lence sus­pect when the man’s 10-year-old son began scream­ing and cry­ing. The boy lunged at one of the offi­cers, caus­ing them to land on the patrol car, accord­ing to the police state­ment. The offi­cer then pinned the boy to the ground. Once the boy calmed down, the offi­cer let him up and allowed him to see his father in the back of the cop car. The inci­dent is cur­rent­ly under investigation. 

Teen flees bike ticket, gets hit by cop-car

A 16-year-old boy in Sacramento was run­ning from a bicy­cle vio­la­tion when he was hit by a patrol car Sunday night. 
Police attempt­ed to stop the boy for light­ing vio­la­tions on his bike, but he ran off. The offi­cers chased after him and called for back­up, and one of the addi­tion­al police cars struck the boy. He was cit­ed for resist­ing arrest but did­n’t suf­fer any life-threat­en­ing injuries. His fam­i­ly said they plan to take legal action. A woman claims she was also hit by the cop car dur­ing the col­li­sion, but police have not yet con­firmed this sec­ond incident.

A win for immigrants

Immigrants liv­ing in Orlando, Florida, with­out legal per­mis­sion no longer need to wor­ry about being deport­ed if they talk to the city’s police force. 

Orlando com­mis­sion­ers vot­ed on Monday to stop police offi­cers from ask­ing about the immi­gra­tion sta­tus of “law-abid­ing” cit­i­zens. Crime vic­tims and wit­ness­es, as well as low-lev­el traf­fic offend­ers, need not wor­ry about speak­ing to the police. Commissioner Tony Ortiz, who con­tributed to the res­o­lu­tion’s suc­cess, explained that this was not “sanc­tu­ary city” leg­is­la­tion, but one that allows immi­grants of good char­ac­ter to live in the coun­try peacefully.

Police officer forced out for racial slur

A Kentucky police depart­ment took dis­ci­pli­nary action after one of its offi­cers called a black teen a“wild ani­mal that needs to be put down” in a Facebook post. Former offi­cer Brian Smith was inves­ti­gat­ed by the Louisville Police Department after an attor­ney com­plained that Smith’s Facebook account dis­played “deep-seat­ed bias against minor­i­ty com­mu­ni­ties.” Chief Steven Conrad planned to fire Smith in January due to his Facebook posts, but ulti­mate­ly decid­ed to sus­pend him for 30 days with­out pay. Smith resigned from the depart­ment in April. 
And just today the NYPD police com­mis­sion­er fired Daniel Pantaleo the cop who mur­dered Eric Garner.

Many years ago I was at the Morgans Harbor Hotel and Marina on what I con­sid­ered a dream date with a beau­ti­ful slight­ly old­er accom­plished woman.
If my mem­o­ry serves me cor­rect­ly, the facil­i­ty had just under­gone a com­plete over­all.
It was my first return to Port Royal after hav­ing left there. I had spent months at the police train­ing facil­i­ty which was sit­u­at­ed there, but had not received any train­ing in Port Royal.
The gov­ern­ment had decid­ed to move police train­ing to Twickenham Park Saint Catherine.

It was a beau­ti­ful and warm Jamaican Saturday evening, with a light cool breeze waft­ing off the water. The place was buzzing with chat­ter as patrons min­gled and chat­ted with each oth­er amidst the clinks of cham­pagne glass­es.
From where we sat out­side under the stars, oth­er patrons chat­ted freely as they enjoyed the peace­ful beau­ty of the shim­mer­ing lights of the Kingston sky­line.
Seated next to us to one side under the umbrel­la was a group of young men who sound­ed like American tourists.
The small group of four were all male. They chat­ted­ed freely about the beau­ty and pos­si­bil­i­ties of Port Royal and the Kingston har­bor.
They were speak­ing quite loud­ly as some peo­ple tend to do when alco­hol is involved.
And so one of the group of young men (who were all white) loud­ly chimed in that he would like to own Port Royal and cut it off from the rest of Jamaica, he then com­menced to detail how he would deve­l­ope the place to suit himself.

I could­n’t help hear­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, there was no attempt to be dis­creet , and why should there be peo­ple were out enjoy­ing them­seves and hav­ing a good time. My date was obvi­ous­ly hear­ing the con­ver­sa­tion as well but her reac­tion was 180 degrees dif­fer­ent than my indif­fer­ence.
She was a woman fierce­ly loy­al to Jamaica she had trav­elled to the United States and had decid­ed that it was not a place in which she would want to put down roots.
She had pre­vi­ous­ly told me of an inci­dent in which she was shop­ping in a New York Department store and walk­ing to the door both hands occuied with shop­ping bags.
On approach­ing the exit door she said a white male turned away rather than open the door for her.
She nev­er for­got that inci­dent and the con­ver­sa­tion was enough to trig­ger a response to the con­ver­sa­tion beside us that shocked me as it must have shocked the young Americans and every­one with­in ear shot.
She lit into them as racist bitch­es who want­ed every­thing they see oth­ers have, want­ed to con­trol and own every­thing wher­ev­er they go..
Her total­ly unex­pect­ed and vis­cer­al response to what I thought was an inno­cent con­ver­sa­tion was shock­ing to me.
At that time in my 20’s the far­thest I had been out­side main­land Jamaica was indeed Port Royal.
I was no dum­my to racism, but I did not process the con­ver­sa­tion of the young men in the same prism that she did.
Her expo­sure to racism in America, was some­thing I was not exposed to and it had scarred her.

Several years lat­er, I emi­grat­ed to the United States. It was then that I changed my per­spec­tive regard­ing her response to that con­ver­sa­tion years ear­li­er.
Even though I can­not point to any spe­cif­ic acts of racism towards me per­son­al­ly, I became more and more alert­ed and sense­tive to the tox­ic under­cur­rent with­in the soci­ety.
Later I start­ed tak­ing a deep­er look at our his­to­ry, the way the laws are writ­ten and enforced and I began to form a view that though not vis­cer­al, was less acco­ma­dit­ing of my per­spec­tive at the time my friend ver­bal­ly attacked those young tourists.
The effects and prac­tices of hun­dreds of years of Racism are still in full effect in America, despite some veneers of improve­ment which are designed to pla­cate the world.
The truth of the mat­ter how­ev­er, is that Racism in America per­sists because it has been cod­i­fied into at all lev­els of the American leg­isla­tive food­chain.
Slavery was legal. Jim Crow was legal. Segregation was legal.The black codes dur­ing recon­struc­tion was legal A ban on inter­ra­cial mar­riage was legal. Lynching was legal. Police killing of unarmed black peo­ple is legal.
At every turn some politi­cians pay lip ser­vice to racism while seek­ing elect­ed office but they nev­er both­er to tak about the fact that racism per­sists because at every lev­el the igno­ble prac­tice has been cod­i­fied in the laws and sup­port­ed by leg­is­la­tores at all levels.

America’s refusal to aban­don the degen­er­a­cy of racism and the mind-numb­ing stu­pid­i­ty of white suprema­cy, has been evi­dent in its sup­port of the Apartheid régime in South Africa before it crum­bled under its own weight. It was evi­dent in the drop­ping of two atom bombs on Japan, even though the EuropeanGermans) had start­ed both world wars. It is evi­dent in its uncon­scionable sup­port for Israel, which is an apartheid régime.
Today, despite all of the talk, and the nar­ra­tive that the American peo­ple are bet­ter than this, the truth remains that they aren’t.
Professor Eddie Glaude Jr., the chair of Princeton’s Department of African American Studies, sat down with MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House” to dis­cuss the shoot­ing that killed 22 peo­ple in El Paso, Texas.
In an impas­sioned break­down of American racism Professor Glaude said :
“America’s not unique in its sins. As a coun­try, we’re not unique in our evils,” Glaude says in a 3‑minute clip from the seg­ment. “I think where we may be sin­gu­lar is our refusal to acknowl­edge them. And the leg­ends and myths we tell about our inher­ent good­ness, to hide and cov­er and con­ceal so that we can main­tain a kind of will­ful igno­rance that pro­tects our inno­cence.”

Citing the rise of the tea par­ty and how many Americans attrib­uted that to “eco­nom­ic pop­ulism” because they didn’t want to acknowl­edge that it was about race. But “social sci­en­tists were already writ­ing that what was dri­ving the tea par­ty were anx­i­eties about demo­graph­ic shifts,” he added. “That the coun­try was chang­ing, that they were see­ing these racial­ly ambigu­ous babies on Cheerios com­mer­cials, that the coun­try wasn’t quite feel­ing like it was a white nation any­more.” “People were scream­ing from the top of their lungs, ‘Yo, this is not just sim­ply eco­nom­ic pop­ulism. This is the ugly under­bel­ly of the coun­try,’” he said.

https://​mike​beck​les​.com/​8​57/

I agree with Glaude, but it was­n’t just social sci­en­tists who were scream­ing that this was not about eco­nom­ic anx­i­ety. Obscure blog­gers (like this writer) whom nobody knows, were also doc­u­ment­ing these events for pos­ter­i­ty and shout­ing for all who would lis­ten.
One does­n’t have to be an expert to real­ize that the sup­posed good­ness of America, is afig­ment of their imigi­na­tion. A veneer of lies designed to cov­er their shame.
The aver­age white in America cares more about a dog than they care about their black coun­try­men, and thats a fact.
Follow any con­ver­sa­tion on social media in which police mur­der an inno­cent African-American, and see for your­self, that whether we like to acknowl­edge it or not, most of these peo­ple are deplorable, and utter­ly irredeemable.

Any New Yorker who kills anoth­er unlaw­ful­ly, goes to prison. Not pros­e­cut­ing and con­vict­ing this mur­der­er, sends a strong mes­sage that cops are above the laws.

The New York City police com­mis­sion­er James O’Neill has final­ly fired mur­der­ous cop, Daniel Pantaleo who choked the life out of Eric Garner more than five years ago.
“The unin­tend­ed con­se­quences of Eric Garner’s death must have con­se­quences of its own,” O’Neill said at a news con­fer­ence at police head­quar­ters in Lower Manhattan. “It is clear that Daniel Pantaleo can no longer effec­tive­ly serve as a New York City police offi­cer.”
“Mr. Garner was somebody’s son, somebody’s dad. Everyone in the NYPD under­stands that,” O’Neill said. “He should have decid­ed against resist­ing arrest, but a man with a fam­i­ly lost his life and that is an irre­sistible tragedy.” Said O’Neill.

Here is the thing, every per­son being arrest­ed has a respon­si­bil­i­ty to sub­mit to the arrest and fight the case in court if he or she so choses, even if he or she believes whole­heart­ed­ly, that the arrest is wrong or unwar­rant­ed.
However, resist­ing arrest is not a crime pun­ish­able by death. Even if New York City and the State decid­ed to make resist­ing arrest a death penal­ty offense, I doubt seri­ous­ly that the police would have the right to exe­cute offend­ers on the spot.
That is what makes the actions of Daniel Pantaleo’s actions so egregious.

A fir­ing is not ade­quate redress for a bla­tant mur­der. Regardless of who you are, mur­der is mur­der. Police offi­cers must be held to high­er stan­dards, they are giv­en the pow­er of life and death over cit­i­zens. We must hold them to stricter stan­dards of account­abil­i­ty. As a for­mer police offi­cer I total­ly under­stand a cop mak­ing the wrong call in a split sec­ond sit­u­a­tion in which he thought his or some­one else’s life is in dan­ger.
This was dif­fer­ent, Daniel Pantaleo lit­er­al­ly choked the life out of a man who kept telling him and the gang of oth­er cops on to of him ‚“I can’t breathe”.
The police per­sist­ed in pil­ing on. Pantaleo nev­er relaxed his hold on the dying mans neck until he stopped breath­ing.
He mur­dered Eric Garner with cal­lous and bla­tant dis­re­gard for human life.
The respond­ing EMT techi­cians who arrived on the scene did noth­ing to aid mis­ter Garner. They were alleged­ly fired. 

DONOVAN’S COMPLICITY

Other than the oth­er cops who par­tic­i­pat­ed in the lynch­ing of mis­ter Garner, The then Staten Island District Attorney Daniel Donovan used his office to make absolute­ly sure that Pantaleo did not face jus­tice.
As the Huffingtonpost) point­ed out since the case occurred: In con­trast to the action of the Ferguson, Missouri pros­e­cu­tor in releas­ing all of the secret grand jury tes­ti­mo­ny in the police killing of Michael Brown, Staten Island District Attorney, Daniel Donovan (and now Congressman), on a motion by the NAACP, adamant­ly refused to make pub­lic any of the evi­dence he placed before the grand jury, or the rea­sons for giv­ing police wit­ness­es immu­ni­ty, shield­ing him­self under the cov­er of grand jury secre­cy.
Since then Donovan has been boot­ed out of the Congress by the vot­ers in Staten Island.
A NYPD judge rec­om­mend­ed fir­ing Pantaleo for using the banned choke­hold he did.
Incredibly, the much vaunt­ed Federal author­i­ties, under Trump’s Attorney General William Barr also failed to indict a sin­gle cop, even though the world wit­nessed the mur­der com­mit­ted in front of our eyes.
No doubt that deci­sion was tak­en by Barr who is well know to have said he has a zero tol­er­ance for any­one who resist police.
It seems clear that Under William Barrs Justice Department, peo­ple who resist cops aggres­sion, are fair game to become sta­tis­tics of police homicide.

This date in which 20 plus kid­napped Africans were brought to America is being com­mem­o­rat­ed in African American cir­cles as the begin­ning of slav­ery in America.
However, in an essay for the Washington Post, Eric Herschthal a post­doc­tor­al fel­low in African American and African stud­ies at The Ohio State University wrote; The arrival of those Angolans in 1619 has long served as the start­ing point of African American his­to­ry, even of racism itself. This year, the 400^th anniver­sary of their arrival, the date shows no signs of los­ing its promi­nence. Across the coun­try, sym­posiums are being held, exhi­bi­tions planned and books pub­lished. But overem­pha­siz­ing the date might, in fact, be dam­ag­ing to today’s fight for racial jus­tice.

Starting at 1619 means fore­ground­ing slav­ery and white dom­i­nance, eclips­ing the sto­ry of how Africans, both on the con­ti­nent and in the Americas, suc­cess­ful­ly resist­ed Europeans from the start. It also sug­gests a cer­tain time­less­ness to anti-black prej­u­dice, when in fact racism devel­oped over time, and was as much a con­se­quence of slav­ery as it was a cause of it. Finally, plac­ing the ori­gins of slav­ery in the South not only min­i­mizes racism’s reach — as if the South had a monop­oly on slav­ery and its jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, racism — but also deval­ues the impor­tance of Africa and the African dias­po­ra to black his­to­ry.
https://​www​.wash​ing​ton​post​.com/​o​u​t​l​o​o​k​/​2​0​1​9​/​0​2​/​1​9​/​w​h​a​t​-​w​e​-​g​e​t​-​w​r​o​n​g​-​a​b​o​u​t​-​r​o​o​t​s​-​s​l​a​v​e​r​y​-​a​m​e​r​i​ca/

What Herschthal did not men­tion in his Washington Post Essay, https://​abagond​.word​press​.com artic­u­lat­ed suc­cinct­ly what I per­son­al­ly believe is most impor­tant for us to start in order to estab­lish con­text on this sub­ject as well as to estab­lish the frame­work for the con­ver­sa­tion of American cit­i­zen­ship and maybe even reparations.

The Pilgrims were not even the first white peo­ple. There were white peo­ple already liv­ing in:

• Albany, New York
• Sante Fe, New Mexico
• St Augustine, Florida
• Jamestown, Virginia
• San Juan, Puerto Rico

There were already Jews in New Mexico, Filipinos had already arrived in California and there were blacks liv­ing in Virginia, Florida and Puerto Rico. People who would become Chicanos were already in the south-west. All here before the Pilgrims came over on the Mayflower. https://​abagond​.word​press​.com/​2​0​1​2​/​1​1​/​2​1​/​a​m​e​r​i​c​a​-​d​i​d​-​n​o​t​-​s​t​a​r​t​-​w​i​t​h​-​t​h​e​-​p​i​l​g​r​i​ms/
In writ­ing about Racism and social injus­tice in the wider Americas, and it’s per­va­sive intran­si­gence in the United States, I have con­sis­tent­ly argued that in order for the prop­er con­text to be estab­lished, there needs to be a once and for all debunk­ing of the myth that white Europeans dis­cov­ered the Americas.
The gen­e­sis of any intel­li­gent con­ver­sa­tion must be estab­lished on a base­line of facts, not on the non­sen­si­cal notion that Christopher Columbus dis­cov­ered lands on which exist­ed many dif­fer­ent races of peo­ple liv­ing, some for thou­sands of years.

The cen­tral tenet on which the con­tin­ued sense of white enti­tle­ment to America, is premised is the false per­cep­tion it har­bors of own­er­ship.
There is an irrefutable case to be made for black own­er­ship of America on the basis of their shed blood, rape, and oth­er crimes com­mit­ted against them.
There is the ever com­pelling case to be made for hun­dreds of years of servi­tude and enslave­ment for which African-Americans are yet to be com­pen­sat­ed.
But out­side of those two fun­da­men­tal­ly indis­putable claims, there is the lit­tle issue that before they got here, our ances­tors were long here.
One of the ques­tions I have always asked is why are African-Americans so pas­sive in the land their ances­tors slaved and died for?
Who would have more right to this land than black peo­ple I have con­sis­tent­ly inquired?
Why have African-Americans adopt­ed a pos­ture of fear and sec­ond class cit­i­zen­ship when they have as much right, and arguably more right than any­one else to be here? It is there that I believe this con­ver­sa­tion needs to begin.
It is fun­da­men­tal­ly impor­tant that when a bul­ly steps to you that you hold your ground and ensure that your space is nev­er vio­lat­ed.
That inalien­able right to exist as a full cit­i­zen does not infringe on the right of any­one who wants to exist peace­ably.
Nevertheless, it should be a warn­ing to those who would seek to impose bul­ly­ing tac­tics as a means of infring­ing on the rights of others.

By Dominique Mosbergen

No crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion will be launched into the actions of two white police offi­cers in Texas who led a hand­cuffed black man by a rope through the city of Galveston, state offi­cials said. The offi­cers, iden­ti­fied as P. Brosch and A. Smith, have report­ed­ly also returned to their jobs.
Brosch and Smith pro­voked out­rage ear­li­er this month after a pho­to of them rid­ing horse­back while lead­ing 43-year-old Donald Neely down a street cir­cu­lat­ed on social media. Neely had been arrest­ed on a mis­de­meanor tres­pass­ing charge on Aug. 3 — but, accord­ing to the Galveston Police Department, a trans­porta­tion unit had not been avail­able at the time to trans­port Neely to a police sta­tion so the offi­cers employed a “trained tech­nique” of using mount­ed hors­es to escort the man. 

In the face of pub­lic back­lash, Chief Vernon Hale apol­o­gized for the offi­cers’ behav­ior, say­ing that though the pair had used a tech­nique that’s a “best prac­tice in some sce­nar­ios, I believe our offi­cers showed poor judg­ment in this instance and could have wait­ed for a trans­port unit at the loca­tion of the arrest.” Hale added that his depart­ment had “imme­di­ate­ly changed the pol­i­cy to pre­vent the use of this tech­nique and will review all mount­ed train­ing and pro­ce­dures for more appro­pri­ate meth­ods.” The chief’s apol­o­gy and promise to end the prac­tice assuaged some crit­ics ― but oth­ers have con­tin­ued to call for the offi­cers to be fired or face dis­ci­pli­nary action. “What they did was real inhu­mane,” Neely’s broth­er, Andy Neely, told KPRC-TV. “They treat­ed my broth­er as if he was a dog.”

Adrienne Bell, a Democratic can­di­date run­ning for Congress in Texas’ 14^th District, said on Facebook ear­li­er this month that the inci­dent had led to wide­spread “anger, dis­gust and ques­tions from the com­mu­ni­ty.”
The Washington Post report­ed on Saturday that the two offi­cers had returned to work days after Neely’s arrest. A state probe had also con­clud­ed that Brosch and Smith would not face a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion for their actions, the paper not­ed. 
The Texas Ranger Division of the Texas Department of Public Safety, which con­duct­ed an inde­pen­dent probe into the inci­dent, said in a state­ment that “there was noth­ing” the offi­cers did “that war­rant­ed a crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion.”
Brosch and Smith “had not vio­lat­ed the law,” the divi­sion con­clud­ed.
A fam­i­ly lawyer said Neely’s sis­ter, Taranette Neely, didn’t have a reac­tion to the Texas Ranger deci­sion and was “await­ing the con­clu­sion of the full inves­ti­ga­tion,” accord­ing to ABC News. 
The Galveston County Sheriff’s Office is also con­duct­ing its own probe into the inci­dent, the sta­tion noted.