Posted on 11/26/2014 2:24:04 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Peaceful protests have been happening for over 100 days. But white folks only really pay attention if they fear they have something to lose. Smoke flares in their nostrils, because then they are confronted with the possibility of charred, burning, white flesh. No more water. The fire next time.
If I have to begin by convincing you that Black Lives Matter, we have all already lost, haven’t we? So let’s not begin there. Let’s begin at the end. At the end there is only Michael Brown Jr.’s dead body, no justice, and weeping and gnashing of teeth.
For his parents, there is only grief.
They are undone. We are undone. I am undone. This is what American democracy coming apart at the seams looks like. Our frayed, tattered edges are showing. The emperors are the only ones who can’t see it. Where can we begin so that we don’t end up here?
Is anyone else tired of wandering in this wilderness? Surely this land of broken promises isn’t what Dr. King had in mind for us. Hopefully, from the fiery furnace of Ferguson, the floating embers will spark and spread and blaze us a new trail – up out of this madness.
Did you expect me to call for peace? Did you expect me to condemn looting and property damage? Did you expect me to preach at the people about being constructive rather than destructive?
Peaceful protests have been happening for over 100 days. But white folks only really pay attention if they fear they have something to lose. Smoke flares in their nostrils, because then they are confronted with the possibility of charred, burning, white flesh. No more water. The fire next time.
I woke up in black skin this morning. Frustrated, because for the first time in a long time, I felt the weight, the scourge of this skin. Had visions of being able to unzip myself, climb out of myself, and lay aside this weight, but the woman who climbed out was darker still. Since black is beautiful, we are never supposed to admit that we are sometimes tempted to believe what white supremacy tells us to believe about ourselves. But you caught me in a moment of weakness.
Utterly undone. Put out trying to pull it together. Still trying to put together – piece together —all these pieces. Of “evidence.”
Many things are evident this morning.
Our black president says that first and foremost, we must “respect the rule of law.” I watch, as he says this, a split screen of unruly protesters smashing the windows of a police cruiser. It is evident what they think about “the system.”
It, too, is evident what the system thinks about us.
(Do you feel the struggle in these words? The utter inadequacy of them? The struggle to contain and train my rage on the proper (white) people, and not all of them? The challenge of trying to narrate black rage, and black pain, and black fear, and black freedom dreams deferred – again—in hopes that white folks would really understand? The resentment at my failure? The rage at my having to do so in the first place?)
Tupac famously asked “if there was a heaven for a gangsta.” I find myself hoping there’s a hell for white supremacists. But too many of them believe in Jesus. So fire and brimstone in Ferguson and beyond will have to suffice.
The attorneys for Michael Brown’s family appear on the news, admonishing us to be “dignified and disciplined.” I laugh, tears threatening the back of my eyes. I want to ask them if they really believe what they are saying.
There is no dignity in lying dead on scorching, hot pavement for four hours. That is evident. There are no disciplined acts of resistance that will restore dignity to Michael Brown’s life. Only justice can do that. Justice affirms that his life was worth protecting, that Darren Wilson, the person who took it, should be punished.
There will be no justice for Michael Brown, so there will be no surrogate acts of “dignity” from protesters.
Neither should we any longer submit to the disciplinary impulses of the “rule of law.” The rule of law wants to beat into us, through “discipline,” the belief that we –black people — would be animals but for its chastening rod of correction. The law stepped to a podium yesterday, under cover of night, to tell us that it reserves the right to slaughter black men with impunity, that it seeks to coerce through threat of force, our permission to do so.
To ask us to be “dignified and disciplined,” to ask us to “respect the rule of law” in the face of such a mockery of justice is to ask us to affirm the path to our own destruction.
Surely America knows black folks better than that.
Humans can only be sucker punched for so long. Humans can only have the life choked out of us for so long. Humans can only be kicked in the stomach while your foot is on our neck for so long. Humans can only be bullied for so long. One day we stagger to our feet, and you see reflected back to you the results of your own unresolved monstrousness.
I asked for a different beginning, hoping we wouldn’t end up here. But here we are — at the end again. Here we are – black people – yet again faced with the magnitude of our need and the inadequacy of our resources – trying to make ends meet. Trying to begin again.
A lot of emphasis added in her piece (visit site - if you care - for the full effect).
That day is coming.
Another RACIST professor TEACHING and getting paid for her RACISM.
Is she ASKING for the acrid smell of WHITE FLESH?
Stop Excusing Miss Cooper, the violence and lawlessness.
So many useful idiots. A protest that would do some good would be one that demanded US jobs for US citizens.
These fools want to do away with the presumption of innocence which keeps them from being sent outright to a reeducation camp in the future... Because mark my words, democrats do not intend to stop the genocide of blacks with mere abortion and homosexuality...
If they take this bait as a precedent, the justice system will completely destroy them at a whim because they are the “ undesirables”
Ghetto culture is inferior. It is about baby mamas and hos and drugs and gangs and welfare. Those who refuse to assimilate into what they deem "white" culture (which is really just American culture of honesty and hard work and family) will remain stuck in the ghetto and get no respect (though they will get justice of the sort that Michael Brown got).
Those people rioting in Ferguson are wrong when they conclude they are at war with an attitude and culture of white supremacy.
They are at war with reality.
You are spot on.
Deranged babbling.
I should have quit after I read Cooper’s repertoire at the cesspool of Rutger’s. I didn’t.
What a load of twisted, mewling, self-serving crap.
You totally missed the point, lady.
Race had NOTHING to do with this.
Not ONE word about criminality.
Not ONE word about familial/neighborhood breakdown.
Not ONE word about government subjugation.
Not ONE word about cutural and spiritual rot.
Maybe so, but I am becoming more and more convinced, that we can't coexist peacefully. I wish it were different, but sadly, I think it is not.
...says a person who cares not an iota about the approximately 8000 blacks murdered by other blacks every year, just the approximately 300 killed by whites.
When you only care about X lives when they are taken by Y, you are essentially stating that the lives of X have no intrinsic value.
Never should have written this. Not only should those who say and promote this be sent to prison, all law enforcement that doesn't do something about it needs to be put in prison with them.
I like the tack taken by the plaintiffs in CA that got tenure as we know it tossed in their school system: The tenure system left students with subpar teachers, and this violated their right to an education. THAT should do more for blacks (and everyone else) than these meaningless demonstrations that just serve to further ostracize blacks.
As long as we have a system where teachers pretend to teach and students pretend to learn, but in the end are unemployable and illiterate, expect young people (blacks in particular) to see no way to better themselves. One reason many blacks feel inferior to whites is that when they encounter them in schools or the workplace, they see many whites with such a better command of basic English; they realize that though they may have been the top student at Martin Shabazz High School, they have received less of an education than the “slow kids” at Anytown High in the ‘burbs...
Michael Brown attacked a police officer and attempted to wrest his gun from him. He was shot and killed in the process. Those are facts. All this lofty symbolism, attempting to evade the fundamental problem of behavior, is intended to make this woman and all black people feel alienated. It’s political. She’s being used to help destroy a society that has done a great deal to benefit her and others like her. She needs to step back and look dispassionately at what is actually happening without the political “black” filter skewing everything. She’s been taught that it’s “white” that’s skewing everything. Not so, and to continue to believe this will mean that she’ll never feel comfortable in her own skin because she’s accepted the manipulation that was intended to cause exactly that reaction.
Good God! Salon is a true cesspool of thinking and ideology. It is impossible to be rational with them.
Any bets that she’s also vehemently pro-’choice’? Does she object just as strongly to black babies being killed by white abortionists? Are abortions of black babies done by black abortionists OK?
Young black males are 3% of the population, and commit half the murders. Or to put it a different way, a young black male is 32 times as likely to be a poacher of human life as the rest of the population. Other violent crime stats are similar.
No more hiding the truth. No more excuses.
“I find myself hoping there’s a hell for white supremacists. But too many of them believe in Jesus. So fire and brimstone in Ferguson and beyond will have to suffice.”
This is punishing white supremacists? These feral animals have to live in the mess they’ve created; this unrest would stop the moment whites stopped coming to clean up the burned-out cars and destroyed businesses. Parts of Newark NJ have never been rebuilt since their riots nearly fifty years ago, and the population has never recovered to where it had been; white supremacists got exactly what they wanted: a preserve where blacks could safely be stored out of sight and out of mind, while the rest of America gets on with their lives.
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