artwork by Jonathan Edwards / Website
It doesn't matter if Antonio Martin had a gun.
It doesn't matter if Eric Garner resisted arrest.
It doesn't matter if Michael Brown had his hands up.
All of this is much bigger than the Police and their version of the facts.
It's a hard truth for many of us to swallow that whether a "suspect" pulled a gun on an officer or not, the majority of our Black and Brown countrymen will most likely not believe the "official" police account of events. And why should they? Beyond the fact that Police have historically been found to falsify statements and plant evidence, we have also seen divisions within high profile departments such as SFPD, OPD, NYPD, and LAPD, literally operate as gangs, running rackets, guns and drugs.
But, does Law Enforcement have to be overtly criminal to be distrusted? The system after all is set up for officers to target people of color, especially in poorer communities. They are the low hanging fruit of "stop and frisk," "jump outs", and quotas, and they are the perceived "enemy" in the War on Drugs. In fact, this is not so different than how the majority of Muslims are mistakenly viewed as the enemy in our endless "War on Terror."
Yet in White America's eyes we often need the victim of Police violence to be a "perfect victim." As journalist Davey-D recently stated:
"We need a perfect victim, because anyone else is gonna be seen as deserving of being shot in the minds of the public… The police have corporate cheerleaders, more than 10 reality TV shows that have resulted in people believing they can do no wrong no matter what."
This fact rings truer now than ever before, as even when there is video of a Black man being choked to death it does not even hold enough weight to warrant a trial.
This is why it does not matter if Michael Brown had his hands up.
It does not matter if Eric Garner resisted arrest.
It does not matter if Antonio Martin had a gun.
It's bigger than the Police, it's the system as a whole that is corrupt.
Not that the Police and Police Departments do not deserve a ton of scrutiny and not that we shouldn't continue to push for more oversight, as well as changes in their approach to Policing communities of color. But to blame all of this on the Police misses the mark on the bigger picture. The Police are quite simply a tool of the system. They are not the "1%." They are part of the 99% that too often operates as foot soldiers for the agenda of the elite. The Police may indeed be "following orders" and in their own minds doing their job to the best of their ability and trying to go home to their families at night. But it is the system, corrupted to it's core, that employs and deploys them that is the larger problem. However, "the system," in a physical sense is often unseen, harder to quantify, and seemingly a much more difficult thing to understand, let alone target with protest. The Police may be the ones clicking the cuffs or pulling the trigger, but they are not the ones calling the shots on Capitol Hill and they are not the ones profiting in the Billions from locking people behind bars.
This is why many have said that although Michael Brown was killed by Darren Wilson, he was actually murdered by the system. I even recall someone sharply stating that Wilson may have pulled the trigger but that Brown was killed over 400 years ago. As crazy a concept as that might seem to many White people, when you look at the history of our country through an honest lens, the very cultural and economic fabric of our society has been sewn together and built upon by immensely powerful and racist structures.
This is why some of the best humans I've ever known, Black and Brown men with graduate degrees and beautiful families, cannot walk down the street without being profiled by strangers who pass them on the street (let alone officers). They are perceived as a threat (often subconsciously) by approaching Whites until they pass by and nothing happens. An instant sigh of relief, shared perhaps by both parties, as they each continue on with their day. Except that the process plays again over and over for these good men every day of their lives.
With this knowledge, it is no wonder that White Police officers in certain neighborhoods end up seeing young Black males as potential threats, let alone "Demons" with "Hulk-like" strength. Even if this vision is imaginary, when you have systems in place for generations that discriminate based on skin color in regards to housing, access to quality education and jobs, and then put into play policies that target and sentence people disparately, you remove the access to opportunity, you destroy hope, and thus eliminate the existence of peace and justice.
For example, Black America does not do drugs more frequently than White America, but for the past 40+ years they've been targeted and sentenced at an exponential rate in comparison. This "War" against drugs is actually a War on the Poor, the disenfranchised, and most viciously it has been waged against Black and Brown men. As Michelle Alexander has spoken, Jim Crow never really ended, it was simply redesigned. This redesign set forth a more crafty and disastrous path than the original Jim Crow, as it has unleashed an army of "Law Enforcement" on our nations most vulnerable human beings. The resulting forces have literally crippled family structures and thus entire communities by systematically locking millions of men behind bars, accelerating them forward into the system, serving to maintain high levels of self-inflicted violence as well as seemingly warranted Police violence. So, when 'Conservatives' are quick to chime in that "it starts in the home," they are partially correct, however they ignore the forces at play which have destroyed many of these homes. Unfortunately, it is very easy to quarterback on such issues with such definitive language, when one does so from a much more comfortable and unexamined position. This distance, is one big reason why there is often a total lack of empathy for the plight of the Black community. The other reason is generally more overt racism yet they often work together as one in the same.
Thus it has to be declared 'long overdue' for fair-minded White Americans to finally wake up and smell the proverbial coffee. Although 'WE' personally were not there hundreds of years ago putting slaves on ships, nor were we fighting for or against Slavery in the South, our denial that these grand inequities continue to exist today only works to further keep these prejudicial systems alive. Because even fair-minded folks become complicit when they see injustice but fail to speak out. Our silence is indeed violence. As MLK appropriately stated:
"Injustice anywhere, is a threat to justice everywhere. Therefore, no American can afford to be apathetic about the problem of racial justice. It is a problem that meets every man at his front door."
With that said, it is also important to note that there are millions of poor and working class Whites being duped by the same political and economic forces as Black and Brown, and at the end of the day it is only the color Green that the elite who control this country care about. Until we collectively begin to wake up to these facts and become true allies to our Black and Brown countrymen we only continue to divide America, and fail to deliver upon the promise of "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
#AllLivesMatter when #BlackLivesMatter
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