I have been wanting to write this essay for more than a year, but every time I started, I just couldn't find the words. It's my thoughts about the recent killings of black Americans by police officers, and the current climate of fear, discrimination, and retaliation. After police officers were assassinated by lone black gunmen in Texas and Louisiana, vigils were here held in many communities, including my hometown. After our vigil, a reporter interviewed our police chief, who happens to be black, and who happens to lead a wonderful police force in the safest largest city in the country. He commented that Black Lives Matter is a radical hate group. Finally, I found some words to express my thoughts and emotions.
Africans were first abducted from their homes, ripped away from their families, for the purpose of becoming free labor for American colonists, 400 hundred years ago. They lived in servitude to white masters for 250 years until they were freed after the civil war. However, they did not enjoy life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness after emancipation; and some will argue, justifiably, that many descendants of African slaves do NOT, to this day, enjoy life, liberty or happiness.
Africans were first abducted from their homes, ripped away from their families, for the purpose of becoming free labor for American colonists, 400 hundred years ago. They lived in servitude to white masters for 250 years until they were freed after the civil war. However, they did not enjoy life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness after emancipation; and some will argue, justifiably, that many descendants of African slaves do NOT, to this day, enjoy life, liberty or happiness.
They were violently
captured, forced to slave markets in Africa, herded into cargo holds on ships,
enduring the prolonged journey across the ocean while shackled, with
insufficient food, or water, or toileting opportunities, surviving in their own
excrement and diseases. Upon arrival to
the new country, a land described in glowing terms by their white captors and
owners, they were again sold, often separated from their relatives and friends,
condemned to live a life of a slave.
They were subdued and subjugated by the lash of whip for 250 years,
generation after generation, working from sun up to sun down, day after day,
their entire lives.
Doom and drudgery was their
experience, for 250 years, under the whip of a white owner who felt justified
in maintaining the institution of slavery.
The dominant white society felt entitled to the free labor of slaves, it
was a God-given necessity to maintain a life of privilege. Slaves were
considered no better than beasts of burden who deserved a life of misery. The lash was the instrument of control,
slaves were whooped into submission, often into unconsciousness, and sometimes
to death.
Along came
emancipation. Suddenly free, with no
knowledge of the world outside of their owner’s land, with no education, with
no idea of what they may do with themselves, they were doomed to a future with
no promise. With emancipation came life
in abject poverty, without adequate housing, education, medicine, or nutrition
– they couldn’t afford it. For another 100 years they lived in a country
with laws that ensured they remained impoverished, that they continue to toil
with minimal reward for their labor, for the benefit of the white society.
After the civil war
ended, former confederate soldiers created the Klu Klux Klan, a group that
continues to exist in 2016. Their
mission was to withhold social and economic power from the former slaves. During those years, they were the common enemy. Everything that went wrong in the world was
their fault. Most of the God-fearing
Christians across the land felt justified in mistreating them. It became almost common practice to lynch
black Americans, and when it was done, it was done with impunity, and often by
Klansmen who wore a badge under their white hooded robes. Black hanging bodies reminded everyone of
their place in society.
After nearly 350 years of
slavery and economic servitude they began to seek out those God given rights
that the rest of the society enjoyed.
This would not be tolerated in America.
Protests were put down with clubs, horses, dogs, fire houses, laws, and
of course, by those wearing a badge. For
the first time, riot suppression techniques were caught on film and broadcast
on the evening news. Blacks gained some
modest measure of economic and social success over the succeeding decades, but
by and large, they lived in the economic outskirts of mainstream society. “Separate but equal” was a metric,
“segregation forever” was a battle cry.
The instrument of control had evolved, it was now the official power of
the badge that subdued them.
After the civil rights
movement, black Americans entered the workforce and some earned an
education. However, their participation
in society’s mainstream institutions was only marginal. After 350 years of no education or
employment, they lacked the wherewithal provide a modest life for
themselves. Public policies and social
programs have been enacted at all levels of government, but they cannot undo
400 years of slavery, servitude, share cropping, Jim Crowe, segregation,
separate but equal, and discrimination.
Hence, an overabundance of them live in poverty today, they under-perform
in educational measures, they are unemployed or underemployed, they have little
promise for a decent future and resign themselves to life on the fringe.
With little prospect for
the American dream or the pursuit of happiness, their life often includes
substance abuse and the crimes associated with it. Unable to afford those things that American
life requires, many lost hope and they languish in blighted neighborhoods while
an oblivious white society blames them for their plight. It is predictable that black Americans will
have more interaction with police officers.
(It would be a misnomer in this context to call them peace
officers.)
Because white America
blames them for drug infestations, crime, and violence, it has empowered modern
police agencies to be the instrument of control, replacing the lash and
lynchings of old. Where before,
indiscriminately, slave owners lashed blacks to death and the Klan lynched
them; today police officers shoot them with impunity. Grand juries fail to find fault in
“justifiable lethal force.” Judges fail
to find fault in the actions of police officers. Society does not recognize the notion that
sufficient force, less than lethal force, should be a yard stick with which to
measure legal action. Instead, a peace
officer empties his service weapon into a subdued black subject, at point blank
range, without consequence.
Americans remember the brutal
beating of Rodney King by a gang of thugs in police uniforms, it was an
extremely violent instance of police brutality, caught on tape. King was down, relatively subdued, but the
beating continued with no lack of regard for the pain and injury being
inflicted on a human being by the institution that is supposed to “protect and
serve” our society. The acquittal of
LAPD’s “finest” resulted in riots, as did acquittals in Ferguson and
Baltimore. Riots in Los Angeles were
more violent and more widespread than those in Ferguson and Baltimore, but were
less violent and widespread than the riots of the civil rights movement.
Considering the black
experience in this country, I think that their response to their captors,
owners, and oppressors has been predictable and yet rather passive. Nearly three decades passed between the civil
rights riots of the 60s and the Rodney King riots in 1992, and another 3
decades passed between the King riots and those of recent years. Not much has changed in America’s reaction
and response to ameliorate the problems that lead up to those riots, with one
notable exception. Rodney King was
physically and brutally beaten by police officers; today the current practice
is to not expend the energy to beat a black unarmed suspect, it so much easier
to simply empty loaded weapon on the suspect.
The consequence remains
the same. Enslave Africans, lash them
into oblivion, lynch them, beat them to a pulp, or shoot them, it doesn’t
matter, because black lives don’t matter.
When they didn’t “know their place” they were lynched. When they spoke out against oppression, they
were assassinated, remember Malcolm X and Dr. Martin Luther King. When blacks take to the streets to protest
discrimination their protests are quelled with violence. Even when engaged in petty crime like selling
cigarettes and CDs illegally, they are shot to death. White America delivers fatal punishment,
legally. It must be legal because those
who deliver the punishment are not prosecuted.
Grand juries acquit, because, after all, they are, well, black.
Only recently has there
been lethal retaliation against police officers by armed black men who
coincidentally have been trained to kill by the US military, have combat tours,
experience PTSD, and were loners up until their deaths. And as the Black Lives Matter movement has
gained attention, it has become, by some accounts, a “radical hate group.” This language of hatred is the new instrument
of control used by white America so it can continue to hate a segment of the
population that it created over 400 years ago.
It seems that the common goal is to continue to oppress blacks in
America, and it has continued to be so even under the administration of a black
President of the United States.
