The Race Issue !

Many on the Right Wing in America are hav­ing a disin­gen­u­ous con­ver­sa­tion on race, even as polls show they would rather not have a race conversation.

I under­stand how they would not want to face their conscience.

After all we have a black President,what more do these Negroes want?

What I find inter­est­ing, as they point the fin­ger at black crimes in America’s cities, they are com­plete­ly obliv­i­ous to the four fin­gers point­ing back at themselves.

Two right-wing hater mer­chants. Bill O’Reilly and Sean Hannity:

Listening to these brain-dead racists talk, you would think there are no black peo­ple in America’s jails. So for the record let me just quick­ly add my two cents to this debate. African Americans make up rough­ly 12% of the American pop­u­la­tion. Yes approx­i­mate­ly 12 out of every 100 peo­ple in America are black. Over 50% of America’s pris­on­ers are .….? Yes, right again, you guessed it , black. So more than half of all the peo­ple in America’s pris­ons are black.… So to the talk­ing head frauds who talk about black crimes, take a look at these num­bers when you talk about black crimes.

Blacks do not nec­es­sar­i­ly com­mit more crimes than whites. There are a pletho­ra of issues which must be con­sid­ered when we talk about black crime. 1) blacks gets pros­e­cut­ed expo­nen­tial­ly more for com­mit­ting the same offense as whites. 2) when con­vict­ed blacks are like­ly to get longer and harsh­er pun­ish­ment than whites who com­mit sim­i­lar offences. There is data to show that most crimes are com­mit­ted intra-racial­ly , mean­ing whites com­mit crimes against whites, blacks com­mit crimes against blacks, sel­dom does crim­i­nals cross racial lines. Also crime and crim­i­nal­i­ty are played up in black com­mu­ni­ties and down­played in white com­mu­ni­ties to give the impres­sion whites are not com­mit­ting crimes in cer­tain com­mu­ni­ties. Some mem­bers of the NYPD are now com­ing for­ward and speak­ing out about the depart­men­t’s tac­tics on stop and frisk, fudg­ing of num­bers and under­re­port­ing of crimes com­mit­ted in cer­tain white neigh­bor­hoods . If we believe there is insti­tu­tion­al­ized racist and abhor­rent prac­tices with­in the NYPD, what do you think is hap­pen­ing in some of the small­er town Police depart­ments all over the coun­try? Is it any won­der so many blacks and Latinos are either locked up, or, are in some way tied up in the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem? This does not even begin to include the social and insti­tu­tion­al built-in ills, which are intrin­si­cal­ly a part of the sys­tem. No, this is not an excuse, it is a fact. So lets add some con­text to the con­ver­sa­tion, so we may move on to hav­ing a seri­ous debate on what hap­pened in Sanford Florida and all over America with black peo­ple and black men in particular.

JZ:

Now that we cleared the air on that, lets have a con­ver­sa­tion on race in America with­out the dis­trac­tions. I can­not let my white friends off the hook sim­ply because their sen­si­bil­i­ties are offend­ed. With that said, black America must take respon­si­bil­i­ty for it’s own plight, 37 mil­lion peo­ple is a whole lot of peo­ple, when you walk around with your pants hang­ing off your ass, using drugs, not going to school, yet father­ing chil­dren out of wed-lock with mul­ti­ple women, guess what?

They take your vot­ing rights because you don’t use it to keep them in line. They lock you away for crimes you haven’t com­mit­ted, when they chose not to kill you. They talk about you as if you are incon­se­quen­tial, because you actu­al­ly are. When they mar­ket to you sim­ply because you are a peo­ple who are only about con­sumerism . When you spend every last dime you have on cheap tacky shiny objects, mak­ing peo­ple who hate you rot­ten rich, mak­ing them even rich­er when they dis­re­spect and debase you , telling you they nev­er cre­at­ed their prod­uct for you, after you had already made them filthy rich beyond their wildest dreams.

Yes you are incon­se­quen­tial when you do not start busi­ness­es, you do not sup­port black busi­ness­es, you do not have pride of cit­i­zen­ship. No pride in your com­mu­ni­ty, do not demand equal ser­vices for the tax­es you pay. When you claim run-down neigh­bor­hoods as your own, even as they take your tax­es to the sub­urbs and exurbs to make schools, fire police and oth­er ser­vices bet­ter for those liv­ing there. Yes you make your­self incon­se­quen­tial when you do not take care of the chil­dren you par­ent, leav­ing them to the charge of the state and a bur­den to those who pay tax­es.(The lat­ter not con­fined sole­ly to blacks)

http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​W​i​k​r​v​8​1​F​h3I

Black America must make a change as the late Tupac Shakur said , and that change must begin with us, we can­not demand respect when we do not do the things which elic­it respect and awe. The prob­lems plagu­ing black America are not new, they have been here for hun­dreds of years. Many argue they are going away with each gen­er­a­tion, they say things are get­ting bet­ter. Are they real­ly get­ting bet­ter, are the actions of the Supreme Court in gut­ting the 1965 vot­ing Rights Act symp­to­matic of pos­i­tive change? Are the state actions aimed at vot­er sup­pres­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tive of pos­i­tive change? Are the con­tin­ued expan­sion of the prison indus­tri­al com­plex and the clos­ing of schools in black neigh­bor­hoods pos­i­tive and if so pos­i­tive for whom?

Some enter­tain­ers have now come for­ward and are let­ting their voic­es be heard, using their celebri­ty to bring atten­tion to the plight of black America. Rapper Sean Carter (JZ) had this to say.

“If you ask the ques­tions, ask your­self the ques­tions, ‘Didn’t Trayvon have the right to stand his ground?,’ ” he explains. “He was being chased. He fought back. He may have won. That does­n’t mean he’s a crim­i­nal. He won. If you chase me and you try to attack me and I defend myself, how can I be in the wrong? How is that right?” This guy went to get Skittles and go back and watch the All-Star game. He had plans,” the rap­per added. “He had no inten­tions of rob­bing any­one’s homes.”

I don’t know if the killing of young Trayvon Martin will awak­en black America to the per­ilous sit­u­a­tion it is in, time will tell.