What I Do About Slavery, And The Colored Race, I Do Because I Believe It Helps To Save The Union…

Donald Trump told Police to abuse the peo­ple they are arrest­ing, in a speech deliv­ered on New York’s Long Island in 2017.
Talking to a bunch of cheer­ing cops, he said Quote; When you guys put some­body in the car, and you’re pro­tect­ing their head, you know, the way you put their hand over?” Trump said, mim­ing an offi­cer’s phys­i­cal motion shield­ing a suspect’s head to keep it from bump­ing against the squad car.
“Like, don’t hit their head, and they just killed some­body — don’t hit their head,” Trump con­tin­ued. “I said, you can take the hand away, okay?”
The cops cheered even more rau­cous­ly, on being told that the new Administration sanc­tions police vio­lence and out­right sup­ports it.
Since then, regard­less of the heinous nature of the crime that police offi­cers com­mit against cit­i­zens, Donald Trump does not like,(Black cit­i­zens); rather than con­demn their crimes, he talks about uphold­ing law and order.
We are all con­ver­sant of the law and order code-speak; it has been used along with states’ rights, as a cud­gel to blud­geon those who speak out against state-spon­sored vio­lence against dis­en­fran­chised com­mu­ni­ties, à la the Black and Native American communities.

Sure he spoke out about the killing of George Floyd; who did­n’t? Those who did not speak out against George Floyd’s killing are self-iden­ti­fied as unwor­thy of my time or yours.
It was­n’t the first time that Donald Trump had indi­cat­ed to police that it was okay to abuse peo­ple, some of whom were even stu­pid enough to vote for him. (speak­ing of the so-called new­ly woke blacks, who are will­ing to shuck and jive their way back into slav­ery because some rap­per received a nice tax cut and tells them to).
African-American women, old and young, are the back­bone of the Democratic par­ty, and for good rea­son; the real­i­ty is that the Republican par­ty has been very hos­tile to African-Americans since President Lyndon Johnson signed the civ­il rights and vot­ing rights acts into law.
Doctor King famous­ly said he might have inte­grat­ed his peo­ple into a burn­ing build­ing; he spoke of white atti­tudes in gen­er­al when it comes to full cit­i­zen­ship with all of its respon­si­bil­i­ties and rights.
He lament­ed that white Americans were appalled at the beat­ing that peace­ful demon­stra­tors suf­fered at police’s hands-on bloody Sunday.
Still, when it came time for them to stand up and sup­port leg­is­la­tion to stop it, they backed away.
It is now 2020, and the entire world saw George Floyd, mur­dered, lit­er­al­ly on tele­vi­sion; they have seen the police killing of count­less oth­er African Americans, and sure, mil­lions turned out to reg­is­ter their out­rage, but when it comes time to insti­tute mean­ing full change to end the mad­ness of police act­ing out­side the laws, white Republicans en masse, and many Democrats backed away from tak­ing action.
Even the Democratic Presidential can­di­date claims that he does not want to defund the police. Which means that he does not under­stand what defund the police means, or has­n’t both­ered to care to know, although he owes his polit­i­cal sur­vival to African-Americans.
Defunding the police means using parts of the incred­i­bly bloat­ed police bud­gets to change the sys­tems that breed crime in under­served com­mu­ni­ties. It means pro­vid­ing the same ser­vices to black com­mu­ni­ties than white com­mu­ni­ties take for granted.
It means end­ing the mass mil­i­ta­riza­tion of police depart­ments. When you give a man a ham­mer, every­thing he sees becomes a nail.

Trump is rumored to be doing well in the polls among younger African-American men. One Polling firm Rasmussen, report­ed that 46% of young black men sup­port Donald Trump.
Many of these men have nev­er been able to make good deci­sions for them­selves, so I total­ly under­stand how they could sup­port a con-artiste like Trump. The very same Trump who was sued by the gov­ern­ment and penal­ized for not rent­ing to Blacks.
Yes, the very same Trump who took out full-page ads call­ing for the death penal­ty for the so-called cen­tral park five. That same Donald Trump, who still insists that they are guilty after indis­putable evi­dence of their inno­cence, has been unearthed.
The same man who called every black per­son he hates low IQ, and berates them with all kinds of pejo­ra­tives that his lit­tle low-IQ brain can con­jure up.
The same Donald Trump who berates black ath­letes who kneel against police bru­tal­i­ty, label­ing them “sons of bitches.”
So grant­ed that there’s one scin­til­la of truth in that polling, what is the basis for that support?
Is it Stockholm syn­drome? It could be, but I doubt it.

Here is what it is. You may won­der at my dis­dain at some of the recent­ly *woke* black peo­ple who are all over social media try­ing to influ­ence oth­ers when they them­selves haven’t both­ered to acquaint them­selves ful­ly with the facts, or before try­ing to become influencers.
An old Jamaica say­ing, is that one fool makes many.” I am not refer­ring to any­one as fools; I am sim­ply try­ing to show how one unwit­ting per­son can dis­sem­i­nate false infor­ma­tion and how dan­ger­ous its con­se­quences can be on the gullible and unin­formed. Much of that seems to be hap­pen­ing on social media plat­forms. In fact, many of those shar­ing the dis­in­for­ma­tion are unwit­ting pawns who copy and share false infor­ma­tion they did not even both­er to verify.
On the oth­er hand, a lot of younger African-American men who have suf­fered at the hands of police abuse, who have been vic­tim­ized by the sys­tem are being told that Joe Biden is the author of the 90s crime bill that result­ed in mass-incar­cer­a­tion of many of them and mem­bers of their families.
Biden has owned his part in the crime Bill; nev­er­the­less, the entire Congressional Black Caucus called for the crime bill, Black Clergy called for the Crime Bill.
Joe Biden is no more respon­si­ble for the crime bill than he is for police using the crime bill to exact vengeance on an entire race of people.
Neither is he respon­si­ble for the preda­to­ry young black men who are lit­er­al­ly killing their own kind as if they want to exter­mi­nate their own race.

Oh, by the way, if you are mad that some­one refers to mur­der­ers who kill six of one wom­an’s sons in gang feuds, or shoots up a park, killing black chil­dren as super-preda­tors, you are part of the problem.
They are super preda­tors who deserve to have the prison placed on top of their sor­ry asses.
Don’t ever con­flate the immoral pol­i­cy of mass-incar­cer­a­tion with super preda­to­ry mur­der­ers, who hap­pen to be black.
These are two dif­fer­ent issues.
If you are mad that Senator Kamala Harris, as a pros­e­cu­tor vig­or­ous­ly pros­e­cut­ed vio­lent felons, some of who hap­pened to be black, you are a part of the prob­lem; you and Trump belong togeth­er, so go vote for him.
The History of the two polit­i­cal par­ties and Blacks in America has been mixed.
Abraham Lincoln did sign the Emancipation Declaration through the 13^th Amendment. Still, he signed a flawed doc­u­ment that allows slav­ery to con­tin­ue to this day if an enslaved per­son com­mits a felony and is convicted.
How shame­ful is it that the world’s old­est Democracy would con­tin­ue to hold onto such despi­ca­ble relics attached to its own Constitution?
Abraham Lincoln had no moral con­vic­tion about end­ing slav­ery. To Lincoln, end­ing slav­ery was a means to an end.
To the recent­ly woke who con­tin­ues to tout the Republican par­ty on that basis that it was a Republican who freed the slaves, Lincoln’s let­ter to New York Publisher Horace Greely.

Hon. Horace Greely: Executive Mansion,
Dear Sir Washington, August 22, 1862.

I have just read yours of the 19^th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any state­ments, or assump­tions of fact, which I may know to be erro­neous, I do not, now and here, con­tro­vert them. If there be in it any infer­ences which I may believe to be false­ly drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be per­cept­able in it an impa­tient and dic­ta­to­r­i­al tone, I waive it in def­er­ence to an old friend, whose heart I have always sup­posed to be right.

As to the pol­i­cy I “seem to be pur­su­ing” as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the short­est way under the Constitution. The soon­er the nation­al author­i­ty can be restored; the near­er the Union will be “the Union as it was.” If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slav­ery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slav­ery, I do not agree with them. My para­mount object in this strug­gle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slav­ery. If I could save the Union with­out free­ing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by free­ing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by free­ing some and leav­ing oth­ers alone I would also do that. What I do about slav­ery, and the col­ored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I for­bear, I for­bear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less when­ev­er I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more when­ev­er I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to cor­rect errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stat­ed my pur­pose accord­ing to my view of offi­cial duty; and I intend no mod­i­fi­ca­tion of my oft-expressed per­son­al wish that all men every where could be free. Yours,

A. LINCOLN

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer police Detective cor­po­ral, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, he is a black achiev­er hon­oree, and pub­lish­er of the blog mike​beck​les​.com. 
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