It’s day three of Black History Month but, to be honest, it feels more like Black Suppression Month to me.
Yet another Black man, Tyre Nichols, was on his way home and in his neighborhood when he was pulled over by Memphis policemen. Now why it was necessary to have 5 or 6 cops at a traffic stop is beyond me. Five of the cops were themselves Black and part of a special force called Scorpions, a rather deadly name for those who are supposed to be the “good guys.” And just like so many times before, Nichols ended up dead.
I was surprised that the killer cops were Black. I’m used to killer cops being white. Well, after I read a bit about systemic racism in our society and in the police force, I came to understand that Blacks can be racist against other Blacks too. That comes from a lifelong experience of being made to feel inferior, less human, than whites. Disgusting and sad, but I do understand.
Not more than a day later, Los Angeles police went after a double amputee in a wheelchair. A stabbing victim had accused the man, Anthony Lowe, of assaulting him. When Lowe saw the group of cops coming for him, he got down off his wheelchair and ran as quickly as he could on his two stumps. He was tased repeatedly and then shot in his upper body ten times. The police claim they feared for their lives because they thought he still had his knife. Riiiight, feared for their lives my ass!
Today I was ready about a Black state legislator, Rep. Travis Nelson, in Oregon who was stoppedby white policemen twice in the last couple of days. He says he’s been stopped by police over 40 times since he began driving. He thinks the Oregon police may be biased. I think he’s right.
Just as when George Floyd was murdered in 2020, there have been protests and calls for the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act to be passed. That act passed the House twice and died in the Senate twice. The reason why it’s not passing is because the Act it would allow families of the victims to sue the killer cops. God forbid, say the Rethuglicans. And so, cops continue to kill Black men at traffic stops or Black women sound asleep in their homes (Like Breonna Taylor) invaded by cops going to the wrong place.
White supremacy reigns supreme and the Rethuglicans in Congress are working overtime to see that it stays that way.
The way to heal this country is for white people to face some ugly truths. First, there was slavery. There was the cruel theft of land and decimation of the Native American population. There was the unjust incarceration of Japanese Americans. These are horrendous things and white people don’t want to have to look at or learn about it. Americans refused to help Jewish refugees and many of them perished because we turned them away.
White people seem to think they’re the chosen ones; they’re the ones who must take charge of the inferior “others”. What they don’t recognize is that the Jesus of their faiths was Middle Eastern and not white. They don’t give credit where credit is due to the advanced civilizations of African and Asian countries. An investigation just uncovered a couple’s agenda to spread Nazi teachings to white children, and they’ve attracted thousands of parents.
If only these small, close-minded people were willing to learn about “others” and accept them as equals. We are never going to be united at this rate. Here is what will happen: open-minded people are appalled and tweet and complain and post for a few days. Then they move on to the “next thing” and forget about social/racial injustices until another Black man is killed at a traffic stop. Rinse and repeat.
There was an effort to introduce Advanced Placement African American Studies in Florida high schools. The A/P classes give high school students college credits while they learn from a rigorous program they take when they’re juniors or seniors. What a great idea, I thought. This A/P course was going to cover true history, not the white-washed watered down non-version you get in high school history or social studies.
But wait! “Woke” comes to Florida and dies there. Gov. Death Santis loves to brag about his “Anti-Woke” legislation. Therefore, the A/P course was rejected because it would cover topics that might hurt the feelings of white students. In Florida, we mustn’t have that. To appease Death Santis and the other Rethuglican legislators, the College Board watered down the A/P class, eliminating topics and the mention of people deemed offensive and too “woke”.
Crickets from the Floridians.
Are they OK with this then? Are they all racist, or are they too scared to speak up? And so, Fascism marches on. One article I read compares Death Santis to the Fascist Benito Mussolini from the WWII era.
Do people read? Do they think? Or is complacency the easy, comfortable way out of confronting the truths of our bad behavior toward “others”? In Germany, people were complacent and forgiving of Hitler’s awful policies because they felt comfortable—they had more money, more food, and more fun things to do. So, what if the Gestapo pushed a few Jews around and broke windows?
Here we go again, this time in the red states of America.
Red states have begun passing legislation to restrict voting rights of minorities. They haven’t come right out and claimed to be reviving Jim Crow laws. They hide behind redistricting and making it harder for people of color to vote.
The tRump leaning Supreme Court can totally turn our voting rights upside down. The Voting Acts Right that President Johnson signed into law almost 60 years ago has already been stripped down. SCOTUS tRumpers have shown that precedent doesn’t matter to them. If they can make it hard for people to vote and impossible for women to decide what to do with their bodies, why wouldn’t they go about dismantling other fundamental rights under the 14th Amendment?
Justice and the police clamp down hard on “regular” people, including whites and people of color. If any of us had done what tRump and legislators like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan, Kevin McCarthy, and others had done, we would all be languishing in jail. Not them. They not only continue to walk free, but they’re also still in office. Clearly, law and order doesn’t apply to them.
So, it doesn’t feel much like Black History Month this year. Books are banned. True history is forbidden to be taught. Black men and women are erased from history when their stories need to be told. It’s sickening.
But where is everyone? I know there are others who feel this way. Where are they? I’d like to find them. I don’t like to feel this way, that I’m in the dark, just talking to myself.
There was a voice and it said something moving and meaninful. It was Dan Rather's Race Matters.
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