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.
“Brittney Cooper, ...teaches Women’s and Gender Studies and Africana Studies at Rutgers”
Well, after the above I was tempted NOT to read the article.
...but just to prove conclusively my initial reaction was spot on, I did read the article.
...and one needed not go past Brittney Cooper, ...teaches
“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.”
Good point.
” Justice affirms that his life was worth protecting, that Darren Wilson, the person who took it, should be punished. “
As long as the race baiters and hate mongers are willing to spoon feed this sort of drivel to a willing (and complicit) cadre of professional victims, the nation will be trapped in whatever social dichotomy they espouse at any given moment.
Until Americans (of all stripes) decide to be a moral and upright people we will watch the continuing disintegration of this once grand experiment. The shining light on the hill will dim to darkness and the world will be the worse for that.
The politics of victimization will be, in large measure, responsible. And, the carpetbaggers who make their fortunes on the slightest of sleights will slink away to their island get-aways on the last jet out of Dodge City.
It’s not too late, I pray, to turn this tide. But yeoman’s work lies ahead. Starting with the coming general election in 2016.
In this season of Thanksgiving we should all remember those who have gone before us to make this nation the greatest to ever grace this earth, and consider those things we can all do to restore that greatness.
Reading that, it was easy to predict what would follow: drama at a high school freshman level. Students and parents are paying fortunes to attend universities and colleges with useless "studies" departments.
First things first, Michael Brown was a stupid, arrogant, violent banger who attacked a cop, and got what was coming to him. Put any kind of skin color you want on it, and it adds up to the same thing, not black lives, white lives, yellow or brown lives, but stupidity in motion. If black is the issue, it is because black is gang banger; black is violent. Black is nothing, if not self destructive, self pitying, outraged and militant. And black is determined to blame white, to make white pay, even though black makes black so bad.
It’s your black plantation. Get off of it.
Britney, your screed is an example of why you will never get anywhere.
Perhaps you should look at who you have been listening to, following, and voting for?
Perhaps it is time for you to quit being the person they expect you to be?
Isn't that sentence very informative?
Let us count the many ways that white folks hold black folks down vs the many ways black folks hold each other down. Mirror. Mirrors on the walls.....
Bravo
This essay makes as much sense as the markings on a piece of used toilet paper, and that’s about what it’s worth. It’s flushworthy.
A 12 year old black kid is shot down by police for carrying a toy gun in Ohio. An unarmed black man is shot by police in a housing project stairwell in New York City. A black man is shot by police while carrying a BB gun in an Ohio Walmart. An unarmed black man is shot by police in a Georgia while walking towards them. And for all this, it takes the justifiable shooting of a thug in Missouri to trigger “black rage and fear”? I just don’t get it.
A white cop shoots an attacking black youth, and the black community is so outraged that the white cop isn't indicted for murder that the black community burns down black-owned businesses.
Meanwhile, 3 people are dead and 15 others wounded in shootings in Chicago over the past weekend, and there are no protests at all.
I'm struggling with black rage, too.
Ghetto culture is the same in England as it is in America except that in England it is white inner city dependency and hopelessness inculcated by the socialist establishment. It is not a racially dependent phenomenon.
I believe 60% of black babies end in abortion.
Give me a break. Any black person in Murica can rise to the top.
1.) Stop using drugs and alcohol.
2.) Leave the ghetto and any black “victim” in the dust.
3.) Get a job.
4.) ?????????
5.) Profit.
White guilt will soon only be limited to the tiny minority of bleeding heart liberals who think these slugs are entitled because their ancestors were slaves 150 years ago. The day of reckoning will not be pleasant for the "Obamaphone Crowd". Then watch what happens when the "free stuff" evaporates.
“The hucksters who falsely accused Darren Wilson of a racially motivated “killing” won’t face justice, even though they have ruined his life and inspired monstrous race riots. The media should treat them as permanently discredited, but of course it won’t. Outlets will continue to give them platforms from which to pontificate on all the “changes” that should come from the controversy. Self-reflection will not be one of them, as they search for new outrages to stoke.
Most of their recommended changes amount to giving criminals a wider berth in society. It is impossible to see how police departments could conform to the demands of Al Sharpton and company unless they simply stopped arresting black criminals.
Almost all of the focus is on changing the police’s reaction to criminal behavior, not changing the behavior itself. Out of this mindset has come a culture that canonizes criminals and criminalizes cops.”..............
http://spectator.org/articles/61104/culture-lies
Always about race when its truly all about their own cultural failings. Always about “whitey” because they can’t muster up the courage to admit that their liberal/progressive agenda is killing entire minority communities. Always about race because it’s easier to blame someone else. Always about race because their black leaders are spineless, quaking at the thought they might have to tell their constituents that they are wrong.
IT’s ALWAYS ABOUT RACE!!!!!
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