It’s Difficult To Care About Your Pain When You Do Not Respect Me Enough To Acknowledge Mine.…

Lets cut to the chase and be done with the bull, the reason police and black people are having conflicts is not because black people are acting crazy when confronted or stopped by police. It is not because they do not know how to act either, it has nothing to do with police lack of training, it’s not about people getting off protest lines to apply for the $40.000 a year job Dallas police chief David Brown condescendingly wants blacks to apply for.
It’s about a systematic lack of respect that too many police officers have for the black community.

Lets set aside the num­ber of cops whom have been fired or oth­er­wise dis­ci­plined of late for tex­ting deroga­to­ry and pejo­ra­tive con­tent to each oth­er about black Americans. Lets also set aside the num­ber of them whom are active mem­bers of hate groups like the Klu Klux Klan , the Aryan broth­er­hood and the pletho­ra of oth­er Neo-Nazi white hate groups which are a dime a dozen across America. And lets just ignore the rage with which they tell black men that they are going to kill them before they do just that.
You tell me what exact­ly do we have left?

Dallas police chief David Brown who just hap­pen to wear black skin has him­self lost his own son to police bul­lets . With remark­able con­de­scen­sion Brown lec­tured pro­test­ers , telling them they should get off protest lines and apply to be cops . In his words “we are hir­ing “.
The very idea that Brown would sug­gest that join­ing the ranks of police depart­ments will fix the sys­tem­at­ic prob­lem of entrenched racial dis­par­i­ty demon­strates his woe­ful lack of depth and maybe even worse.
When a black man who hap­pen to lose his own son to police bul­lets can make those state­ments it demon­strates the uphill task the aver­age black in America faces against the tyran­ni­cal oppres­sion of bru­tal and bar­bar­ic killers in uni­form who pre­tend to be cops..
Of the 14,633 law enforce­ment agen­cies across the coun­ty and near­ly one mil­lion police offi­cers who staff those agen­cies there are some fine and exem­plary offi­cers , that does not need say­ing when­ev­er we broach the sub­ject of police wrongdoing.

What should not be allowed to stand how­ev­er is the con­stant chat­ter about the work offi­cers do to over­shad­ow the legit­i­mate cries for jus­tice against police bar­barism and tyranny.
It is illog­i­cal and immoral to argue about sup­port­ing law enforce­ment when there is a hun­dred years of unde­ni­able evi­dence that peo­ple of col­or are sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly bru­tal­ized and killed at the hands of police dis­pro­por­tion­ate to their num­bers in the society.
Fifty fours years ago Dr Martin Luther King said the great­est chal­lenge fac­ing black peo­ple in America was police abuse , today the great­est chal­lenge fac­ing black peo­ple in America is police abuse.
So what exact­ly has changed ?

We con­tin­ue to hear about the need to sup­port law-enforce­ment as if legit­i­mate con­cern and out­rage against police atroc­i­ties are tan­ta­mount to being anti-law enforcement.
It is a straw-man dis­trac­tion which is designed to deflect atten­tion from the real issue of police vio­lence against com­mu­ni­ties of color.
Many police offi­cers are black and Latino it is not about hat­ing law enforce­ment . People of col­or want police in their com­mu­ni­ties that is why they hire their fel­low cit­i­zens to do the job of pro­tect­ing them.
What has to change is the mis­guid­ed notion among many in the law enforce­ment com­mu­ni­ty that their role is an abstrac­tion divorced from the needs and dic­tates of the peo­ple they serve.
In essence police must see them­selves as ser­vants of all com­mu­ni­ties and not as agents of the state with a duty to keep cer­tain peo­ple in their place.

Communities of col­or must endeav­or to lift them­selves out of the morass of con­stant vic­tim-hood., Not so that they may live up to the stan­dards of oth­ers but that they as com­mu­ni­ties may not be defined by others.
Black com­mu­ni­ties can­not con­tin­ue to com­pete on a play­ing field on which the goal-posts are con­stant­ly moved to adhere to the needs of one team. It’s unten­able to com­pete on a play­ing field on which the ref­er­ees and the oppos­ing team are one and the same.
Blacks can­not con­tin­ue to shuf­fle up to fit into the spaces defined by oth­ers, or to make oth­ers com­fort­able. This is their damn coun­try too.
If only he did not have a crim­i­nal record.
If only he did not run.
If only he did not talk back.
If only he did not ask questions.
If only he did not pull out his wallet.
If only he was­n’t dri­ving with a bust­ed tail-light.
If only he said yes sir , no sir.
If only he showed def­er­ence and respect.
If only he was­n’t in that neighborhood.
If only she had put out the cig­a­rette when told to despite being in her own car.

Police offi­cers can­not say they are good cops when they refuse to speak out against the actions of their col­leagues even when they know they are wrong.
Clearly it must be evi­dent to all that when bad police offi­cers are allowed to do the things they do with­out con­se­quences it endan­gers all includ­ing good cops.
How can cer­tain cit­i­zens expect to be lis­tened to when they refuse to acknowl­edge the pain of others?
When you refuse to speak out about the pain and the indig­ni­ties suf­fered by your neigh­bor you refuse to acknowl­edge their humanity .
How can you expect them to appre­ci­ate your pain when you deny them their basic humanity.

There is a shock­ing pat­tern by police in America when it comes to their con­duct, they fun­da­men­tal­ly believe they should not be ques­tioned . It has become clear that they now har­bor a sense of grandios­i­ty which is utter­ly stunning.
Police advo­cates argue that police are there pro­tect­ing peo­ple even when they demon­strate against them. I am a lit­tle per­plexed at that line of reasoning .
Exactly what are they sup­posed to do? Aren’t police offi­cers paid to pro­tect the pub­lic who pay their salaries?
Are we to believe that police should have the right while on the pub­lic’s pay­roll to decide what they will and will not do?

After mem­bers of the Minnesota Lynx wore T‑shirts Saturday night demand­ing “change” fol­low­ing two police-involved shoot­ings of black men, four off-duty Minneapolis cops report­ed­ly decid­ed to quit their jobs as are­na secu­ri­ty guards.The WNBA play­ers sport­ed black warmup shirts before a game against the Dallas Wings at Target Center that said “Change Starts with Us — Justice and Accountability” on the front; the names of Alton Sterling and Philandro Castile were on the back, along with the Dallas Police Department shield and “Black Lives Matter.”

The atti­tudes of these cops is on open dis­play , the arro­gance and the sense of deity they feel ‚only goes to demon­strate to the world why there are so many instances of abuse and exces­sive force lev­eled against mem­bers of the pub­lic but more-so against mem­bers of the minor­i­ty community.
Even though they were not on the pub­lic pay­roll and are total­ly with­ing their rights to decide to do secu­ri­ty work or not , their actions are a mir­ror into how they think and to some extent the rea­son why they abuse citizens.
They sim­ply have a God com­plex, its one born of dis­re­spect, and a sense that they are not only above the laws but they are above being crit­i­cized and there­in lies the problem.
|