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.
When I was in college some black students decided that they weren’t getting enough attention paid to their concerns (IE, nobody was pandering to their racial syllabus) and so they demanded and forced a meeting of all the occupants of their dorm to hear their complaints.
When that didn’t result in an outpouring of white guilt, a portion of the upper floor of another dorm which was occupied by black students was spray painted with racist remarks—which, it later turned out, were painted by the black students themselves.
IOW, the only way these students knew to react with whites, was that whites were the oppressors and they were the oppressed. And if they didn’t find that in operation,
they had no other way to interact. They were lost.
She lives better than 99.5 % of the planet.
Note that his cohort concocted a story to implicate the LEO.
Darien didn’t concoct that fiction because of Micheal’s death and what he thought he saw while cowering behind a nearby car. The story was put together because the LEO was
(go ahead, you finish it...)
“White guilt will soon only be limited to the tiny minority of bleeding heart liberals who think “
THIS is something that many people miss (probably because it has been the dominant force since the 60’s)THIS is the trend.
This will never end...whole class of moochers who will never run out of demands to keep them from rioting......they understand nothing but force and that’s what they should be shown. Evidence and common sense means nothing to them because they want confrontation.
My black student’s statement is contradicted every day. But my black student’s statement is also believed on by far too many today, as well.
white folks only really pay attention if they fear they have something to lose
Do you stereotype whites much?
For his parents, there is only grief.
There should also be GUILT. The guilt of raising their son to be a thug.
the scourge of this skin
It’s not the scourge of the skin, it’s the choices you make.
black rage, and black pain, and black fear,
And one of the problems is you attempt to make everything about blackness.
Newflash! I don’t give a shit if you are black!! You ignorant woman. How about you raise your children to be good citizens and teach them to work for what they have and take personal responsibility for their own actions and choices?
no justice for Michael Brown
He got justice when he was shot for attempting to attack a police officer.
sucker punched for so long
Blacks are only sucker-punched by themselves and the garbage culture they choose to live.
If you want respect you need to give it. Or would that be counter to your “culture” and be seen as acting white? Piss off and go live in your utopia of Africa if you don’t like it. Blacks in the USA today should be thankful for slavery. If not for slavery they would still be living in huts and suffering from the mass despotism, disease and violence in Africa.
Add to that the cornucopia of government "assistance" available and work becomes something for eccentrics. Why work when you can get money for nothing? It becomes a "right" and rage ensues if that right is threatened.
IIf, instead of Negroes moving north it were again Irish flooding into Ellis Island when the War on Poverty and Welfare as Right began then it might well be the Irish rioting and demanding vengeance.
Evidence of thuggery means nothing to these people. They don’t want to look at, let alone fix, the real problems in their community. It’s much easier to cry racism and get free stuff in return from guilty Whites. That is what all this faux outrage is all about. Free stuff.
As long as there is manufactured racism like the Brown case she is able to keep her AA benefits and not have to perform. This is all about guilting whites into giving her special compensation.
Pray America is waking
Personal Responsibility is cryptonite to the race industry.
All these stories are meant to distract from that fact.
The funny thing is that they will only believe the narrative. The facts just irritate them.
Any attempt by an individual or group to move beyond tribalism into assimilation is countered with the accusation of acting "white" (or "colonial").
“If I have to begin by convincing you that Black Lives Matter, we have all already lost, “
White people aren’t the ones who need convincing. It’s countless YBMs who need convincing that ALL lives matter.
Now STFU and go make me a sammich.
L
Boo Hoo.
Most of us have had it up to here with “black suffering” and “white supremacy”.
Lock and load.
I am changing my view of blacks over this and Zimmerman.
This white boy’s give a $h1t level is not moving a millimeter, sorry.
Enough talk. All I can say is bring it.
Locked and loaded.
I’m waiting...
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