Years
ago there was a little girl, she operated a lemonade and candy stand, her name
was Heaven Sutton. She isn’t with us anymore because she was gunned down in her
front yard. Now years later the names of
children killed by senseless gangland (or any form) violence in places like Chicago are too
numerous to name. Acen King, Ja'Quail Mansaw, Cylie and Caden McCullum, Payton Benson
Antonio Smith Jr., Tiana Ricks and Londyn Samuels are just a few, but you don’t know
their names or even know who they are.
They were never romanticized with hashtags like #remeberhername or
#sayhisname or #bringbackourgirls because although they were black there death's were
not sensational enough for the retro chic political narrative of the day.
If
they were killed by police or an idiotic white lunatic, they would be known and
remembered and we would cite their names with the likes of Oscar Grant, Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown. But they have
no value in the eyes and minds of social justice warriors because mentioning or
remembering their names does not help to enable their goals of getting rich off
of racial and identity politics and obtain fake fame by receiving television
air time for pretending to be “woke.”
The artificial pretense of the so-called woke culture is metastasizing like a cancer, especially with the election of Donald Trump.
It is as if black folk can only attend to complaining about him and
police shootings and nothing more. Not
the pathetic state of our inner cities. Or our failing government public schools or increasing rates of poverty (all of which by they have been
happening in places that have been run by democrats since the 1940s in most
cases and problems Trump had nothing to do with). The fake outrage at the election of Donald Trump that I have written about before will never manifest
into true honest civic outrage for real problems that confront us daily like
the deaths of the little children or the economic constraints I mentioned
previously.
These
same folk, especially the black ones will protest against Trump and his ban on
seven specific nations but were silent when Obama was bombing families of the
same innocent women and children in the same nations with his drone wars which
he dramatically increased when compared to George W. Bush after giving his 2009 Nobel Peace prize acceptance speech: wars that the former president conducted
with impunity in places like Somalia, Libya, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Syria that created his current migrant-refugee crisis to begin with. They are loud when they are
not allowed within the U.S. proper but were quiet when they were being slaughtered religiously on the orders of America’s first black president. It is
as if they say it is cool to kill them, I can get with that but it is a problem
when we try to improve criterion for entry to the U.S.
For
the life of me I cannot figure this out – being open to individual and personal
acquiesce to murder but opposed to none murderous acts to an option of personal
choice. Likewise, there was no outrage
when Obama stopped Iraqis from immigrating to the U.S. for 120 days. Clearly politics and not protest in the name
of basic dignity is hey problem or issue.
At
Berkeley we saw this in action. Incantations of divide and conquer. Destroying property and setting vehicles on fire has nothing to do with protest based on
what is called for to stand on the side of righteousness regarding human
dignity or else they would affirm the nonviolent approaches of Gandhi, King and
Mandela. This is all show and
mechanically contrived vexation. They do
not really care, they just want attention; and they do not seek change, rather
they only want to define what is acceptable or should be tolerated as meaning
you have to agree with me or else you are wrong and my speech is more important
than your speech. What I am paying attention too is more important than
anything else. But where were they before this?
For
example, cities and states all around the nation have been finding funds
available to deal with litigious actions that may be pending for illegal aliens
under asserted or proposed Trump planes to deal with the issue. You got black folk even out on the front
lines of this fictitious battle. Mind
you that for decades we have been trying to get the same cities and states to hire more public defenders for the many of our fellow men and women locked behind
bars but the response was always “we do not have the money for such.” Yet there
were none of these adamant protestors standing next to us when we made this
request but we stand with them. And all of a sudden places like LA can
magically come up with $10 million for this but no funds for additional public
defenders to defend people born in America.
It
is as if we are living in an alternate reality where all injustices are equal
when evidence dictates they are not.
There were only one specific people designated as slaves in America who
did not have a choice to come him but rather was forced to by a combination of
the Bible and the barrel of a gun. Still opaquely innocent and manipulated we
go along with the flow when it makes no logical senses and supersedes our own
collective interest. We hail the arrival
of Muslim immigrants without out the consideration of the fact that if they are terrorist, they will kill us too, and want to kill us too. Liberal or conservative they do not care,
they will set you on fire and chop your head off with the quickness for things
we call liberties (sexual orientation, wearing revealing clothing if you are a
woman, drinking alcohol, being a Christian or having an abortion).
That
they do like beating women and condemning homosexuals to death don’t outrage us,
nor what they believe. It is this myopia
that believes we are justified not to speak up on behalf of the children I
mentioned earlier because they do not meet our narrative. But don’t let it be an award show, or you
will have protest and outrage out the azz.
There would be #oscarssowhite or the recent #grammyssowhite because
Beyoncé didn’t win album of the year. This is an issue although WORLDWIDE the woman she lost too sold waaaaaaaay more albums than she did. Now let that sink in, cats are so mad that a millionaire didn’t win an award
while sitting in a room filled with other millionaires outfitted in $5,000 or more worth
of sartorial splendor, that they are willing to express emotional disdain. But let a two-year get shot in the head the
result of a gangland hit, and they won’t say jack. But it makes sense, after
all these rich Hollywood cats are oppressed too, with their body guards with
automatic weapons, drivers and walled-in mansions.
Have
we lost our way? Are we so caught up in self-absorbed mindless celebrity
twaddle that we can be eaisly paraded about like a puppet by presentations of what Juvenal
called “bread and circuses?” Do we even know what we are upset by, angered by or protesting against? I don’t think so and
I don’t think for those who are black, really have have any interest in
improving our conditions collectively as a people, if they were, they would
know of Lavontay White, Takiya Holmes or Kanari Gentry Bowers. Unfortunately
they don’t, they just know Beyoncé didn’t win a Grammy for Album of the year
and that it takes precedence above all else.
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