Here’s the thing:
It should be evident by now that people like the woman who called the police on a Black man in Central Park, or the man in Minneapolis who threatened to call the police on Black men working out in a gym, are not the exceptions but a horrible and unspoken rule.
Their acting like they didn’t know about a White Entitlement is nonsense, otherwise, they wouldn’t have threatened the men in the first place.
They both knew exactly what they were doing, did it with passion, fake tears, and malice. Their after-the-fact apologies were not real apologies at all, but a confession that acknowledged their status and had no problems with using it.
We should all Thank Christian Cooper and the young men in Minnesota for recording these events. As Will Smith once said, “racism isn’t getting worse, it is getting filmed.”
What we are seeing is a mentality that has driven this nation for four centuries, being so clear that it required special laws to grant basic human rights to people who should never have needed such a measure.
It is a mentality that followed the “shocking” election of a Black citizen to the highest office in the nation with an openly racist man who rose to political prominence by challenging the legitimacy and birth of the man he replaced.
It is a mentality that blames the dead and exonerates their murderers. And don’t get me started about how jailing people for filing false police reports will have a “chilling effect” on people reporting on real wrongdoing. The fake report is the wrongdoing.
White Supremacist Ideology – let’s call it what it is — is a creation of people who chose that designation for themselves, then created a legal, scientific, and social framework to normalize it. It is an Ideology that must be destroyed by those who continue to see themselves as so defined rejecting the very definition and embracing a true humanity.
There is no such thing in nature as White, Brown, Red, Yellow, Black. And we are all living with the fallout of an abomination of a worldview that values color over character.
This is an ideology that no person of color can “fix.” We didn’t create it, and our talking about it is not what makes the issue “divisive.” Doing nothing about it is.
As we continue to bury more of our sons and daughters, murdered by the police, I am reminded of Freddie Gray here in Baltimore, and all of the other “Freddie Grays” that we have lost or nearly lost.
I am beyond outraged. That emotional response was used up years ago. I am beyond sadness, beyond grief, beyond shock. Even beyond hate.
White Supremacist America has repeatedly shown me what and who it is. It seems to be in no hurry to change itself, comforting itself by sending out “thoughts and prayers,” or advice on how to “comply,” how to comport one’s self when approached by police officers, how to demand to know why we have been detained — advice that, if used by me on a Monday would mean funeral arrangements being made on a Tuesday.
As I have said over and over again, this brutal mentality informs every interaction — from who gets profiled, to who gets into college, to who gets hired, to who gets fired, to who dies.
Enough.
As it turns out, Colin Kaepernick was right. And regardless of what you think of him as an entertainer, he sacrificed that career to give a voice to the voiceless, to raise an issue that too many of his critics still try to ignore.
Are you listening now? Or are you still hung up on his Castro t-shirt, big afro, and passer rating?
We are beyond merely talking about this. I don’t want your guilt, and while thoughts and prayers are wonderful, said feelings need the force of action to make them more than convenient catchphrases.
Enough.
I am sick and tired of being sick and tired.
This needs to stop, White America.
You need to stop.
James Michael Brodie is a Baltimore-based writer, journalist, and author. His books include “Created Equal: The Lives and Ideas of Black American Innovators” and “Sweet Words So Brave: The Story of African American Literature.” A University of Colorado graduate in English, Brodie’s current project is a collection of personal narratives titled “The Black and Gold Project.”
It’s so good to see you here, Michael. I hope you never stop writing — no matter how tempting it may be in some dark moments to give it up.
I haven’t been able to spend as much time as I would have liked here on the Planet myself, since I’ve been tied up for over two and a half years in a court battle to get guardianship of my nearly 98 year old father. Although this sounds like a totally off topic digression, I have to admit that the whole experience has been an eye opening one when it comes to human rights. There was one family member who (for reasons that still aren’t clear) decided she did not want me to be my father’s guardian — even though he had said in writing back in 2016 (and also verbally) that he wanted me to have that job should the need arise.
The method she chose to block my guardianship application was to weaponize laws and law enforcement against me. She contacted the county Adult Protective Services with completely fabricated stories of abuse and neglect. She also contacted the police department with false stories of theft by me from my dad’s apartment. As an RN and a person with no criminal record all this was new to me. I was called in, interviewed, investigated (including bank accounts) — not once, but three times. For the first time I knew (in a very toned down way) what it felt like to have the sense that a whole network of systems that were supposed to be there to protect innocent people had seemingly swung around and turned itself against me. The question of charging her with having made false reports was never even considered, to my amazement.
It felt so futile to keep saying: “But… but… I didn’t DO any of these things!” Doesn’t every guilty person say the same thing? Frustration, anger, confusion… yes, all of the above. I saw in a whole new way — and even then, in a much less threatening way — what some of my brothers and sisters experience on a daily basis.
I was fortunate. I was able to get an attorney and was eventually cleared of all those false charges. I eventually even got guardianship. But to have that hanging over my head for over two years took a real toll — on both my physical and emotional health. What must it be to cope with that kind of unfairness for a lifetime? Is it any wonder that people of color suffer from hypertension and have higher death rates from COVID-19?
Enlightening was hardly the word for the whole experience. And my level of consciousness was further raised by the birth of the first Black male child in our family just about a year ago. I — perhaps smugly — had thought that I was a pretty “woke” individual before that, but I have since been educated. When I hold this little guy in my arms — watching his bright, happy eyes and sweet smile — I have such mixed feelings of love — combined with near panic when I think of his future.
I’ve cried more than once when I consider that in just a little over a decade, he will be an adolescent Black male. With all that that entails. Can we change this country fast enough to make his future brighter, safer? I don’t know. And that scares me so much. It’s hard to put it into words.
Enough. We have to do better.
Good to see you, James!
I read a quote on the internet, can’t remember who said it but it was something to the effect of, “To those who have lived with entitlement, equality is seen as losing their rights.”
Being born into entitlement creates a blindness at first. Kids only know the life they’re living as the way things are and are supposed to be. For those who mentally mature and gain the ability of perspective, what they took for granted when they were young gives way to the painful reality of racism and entitlement.
For those who remain immature, selfish and insecure about their own inadequacy, holding onto the entitlement they realize their skin color gave them, is a desperate and necessary life preserver.
The corruption in our institutions is so rooted in this.
Today, Trump freaked out and yelled at governors to be more violent and oppressive towards black people who are protesting…which they are doing because a black man was murdered by white authorities who were being more violent and oppressive. This looks like nothing more than a desire to double down on racism and turn up the flames of a race war.
I think for the most part, most of White America may be racist to one degree or another. However, most are not consciously racist, in the back of their minds is a sense of “us and them” but they would not say or do demeaning things towards people of color and don’t act against them. But others may vote for someone like Trump and rationalize that they’re doing it for economic reasons or to shake up the system while deep down, they’re not overlooking his racism but connecting with it.
Action is what’s needed at this point but it’s hard to imagine any profound action without national leadership and commitment. Governors and mayors can take substantial steps and should be pushed to do so, like cleansing police forces of racists/white nationalists, that should be some low-hanging fruit.
But the institutional changes needed in the country need a President leading them. So while I agree that things need to be done now, until and unless we throw a racist like Trump out of power, I can’t see how anything gets done nationally.
We have to win the 2020 election and put Biden in Trump’s place. And we need to use the election campaign to press Biden, who is already on this page in almost every way, to prepare racial equality, police reform and economic injustice policies between now and Inauguration Day 2021 so he can hit the ground running to implement them ASAP (in a hopefully Democratically-controlled Congress).
Trump may think that white people, after seeing the looting and fires and chaos, may be driven to him, looking for an authoritarian to rescue them from those evil black people. But I think a majority of Americans are now convicted about how horrible Trump is and instead see his lack of leadership and responsibility as hurting him more.
Hiding in his bunker when any other president would be making national addresses, threatening to have the military begin slaughtering Americans when any other president would be trying to bring peace and calm the situation. His delusion that this is helping him will come crashing down on him in about 5 months.
The protests are resonating around the world, happening in Berlin, London, all over the world. It has hit a powerful chord, the rebellion against injustice, racism and oppression. The people of the U.S. and of the world seem ready for a big change to come to confront and prevail over these evils.
But things always move slower than they should because hateful creatures of the status quo, like Trump, stand in their way.
I think a Biden Admin could make big strides in all of these areas, pushed by an activated public. So while I hope state and local authorities step up in the meantime, taking down the personification of white privilege and racism, Donald Trump and replacing him with someone who is responsive to the people, which I think Biden would be, needs to be a top priority.
AdLib, it’s great to see you again, my friend. I do apologize for being away so long. Planned to step away from this. But life had other plans…
I was looking to make sense of why I am driven to share and write. My wife Emma and I talked about it.
I told her that I do so for the same reason my 75 year old uncle, a doctor and man whose name I carry, sees Covid-19 patients every day.
“It’s what I signed up for,” the former Vietnam War Marine told me without hesitation.
Then I understood. When I write, when I report, when I record our history, I am honoring a contract I signed a long time ago.
To not do what I am doing now, even if it means no one sees a word of it, would be soul crushing.
Our story must be told and told by us. That’s a promise I made. That is what I signed up for…
And you do it very well! Your uncle was a wise men, we sign up to dedicate our selves to what we believe in. Even when it gets to be a bit much, even when we feel we’ve done our part, more than we needed to, we still find ourselves in moments like this, returning to what we committed to all those years ago.
Very nice to have your wisdom, perspective and insights here to enlighten, my friend!
Thank you, my friend. I am trying to hold the emotions together. It’s hard right now. But I am a person of faith, and it helps keep me grounded. I hope you and your family are safe during these challenging days…
Premeditation is not always about a time interval. If you had time to make a plan and enact it, and did, then that’s premeditation and then some.
Okay, now there’s something very important in the second published picture from the murder scene. What occasioned the three officers to kneel on Mr. Floyd at the exact same time, and after Mr. Floyd was unresponsive, and seconds short of death?
Are they executing the ‘coup de grace,’ and insuring that he is dead? And why the bizarre fixated stares? Why is the fourth officer obviously coaching? Or, “counting?”
I wonder if there’s any significance to the placement of their knees, or the duration, unremitting, of the lethal hold.
Was this indeed an execution? Is it not then clearly premeditation, and First Degree Murder? Times four!
Never Again! I said that after Medgar. I was defiant then. I am only ashamed now. Of my racist country, and my failure to change that. I was with you then, and I am still with you, to my last breath. But, strength fails, and night closes in. May our lord Jesus Christ keep you from harm. Peace.
There seems to be an effort to pin the death on the victim, arguing that he was high and in poor health — which would transfer the “murder” into an “accident.”
This is frightening…
Thank you for the love,my friend. I offer the same to you. Stay safe.