Thursday, July 7, 2016

Welcome Back To Amerikkka, My People

What is it about this nation that sees people who look like me so dangerous?

I don’t get it anymore. After 37 years of trying to understand it, I’m not quite ready to throw my hands up as much as I am ready to overthrow the system with 21 million of my black brothers and sisters or so.


Justice seems to be more Just Us day by day, news event after news event. Keep in mind we’re not even discussing the ones that do not make it to camera for the world to view or the unsolved cold cases where the sheriff’s department concluded the deaths as suicides.

We know what y’all did in Star City forty-something years ago.

Yeah, I see black figureheads daily in positions (President Obama, Attorney Generals Lynch and Holder, former Secretaries of State Powell and Rice, etc.) and yet it still doesn’t make a damn difference. I understand to crack the system it has to be perpetuated to an extent, but come on. This is beyond the pale. It’s like we have to repeat the same notable pattern seemingly every summer – as it has been the case for the past few years:  White “cop” feels threatened by black man, kills him; black family goes on press conference pleading for justice and praying for peace; countless marches, vigils, and packed churches demanding equality; judicial system which is built to protect him (see Florida, Missouri, and Louisiana) protects the murderer(s); charges are dropped; and life goes on. Of course, there are notable exceptions – see the Eric Harris case in Tulsa and the Jordan Davis one in Jacksonville, FL – but generally I’ve learned not to expect much.

Note I said “cop”, not police officer. The latter is highly respected and thanks for their tireless underappreciated efforts for safer communities. The former can eff themselves.


Just because I chose not to pursue a J.D. after undergrad does not mean I am foolish to the law. Besides, I would’ve gone into educational law and made my impact within district doctrines and policies. As I’ve reiterated in several posts, I needed to go to work back in 2002; getting my master’s was something else I sacrificed along the way as I was in dire need of income. I pray my daughter does not have to put her dreams on hold for financial reasons as I did fourteen years ago, but she knows she can do and be anything she wants to be.

Notice that neither of our candidates for POTUS has spoken out in this case. Their deafening silence speaks volumes of which clown gets my early-ballot vote sometime in October:  I’m apt to write in Barack Obama for a third term out of protest. The Revolution will not be televised because it is already here, and regardless of what conservative backlash attempts to arise from it, it is here to stay.

With Alton Serling, what could have been done differently?

Certainly the person who thought he had a gun has blood on his or her hands along with the two cops who put six bullets in him. Below is the video if you haven’t viewed it yet:


If that doesn’t anger or tear you up, then you have become one desensitized bastard and only God’s mercy can touch your blackened hearts.

Welcome to America where a black man cannot have a side hustle to provide for his family instead having to rely on the scraps of low wages our employers pay and the ensuing discrimination. If Eric Garner was choked for peddling loose cigarettes and Alton Serling was shot selling CDs, then who is to say that these are isolated incidents? While I’m considering selling barbecue plates from the Oklahoma Joe if I can ever get two consecutive days off from work again, what if someone in Bryant doesn’t care to see me making an extra couple of dollars? I’m doing this for the love of the craft, not the sheer dollar although it helps purchase more materials and validates the time put into smoking ribs, pork butts, briskets, and the like. Repeat after me:  I’m not getting rich doing this.

Who else can I blame for this climate? Our politicians and their lobbyists, particularly the NRA and right-wingers they own including BOTH of my home state’s senators as they militarize our nation with homegrown terrorists and battle ISIS simultaneously in the same vein they fought the Taliban a decade ago.

They still haven’t done anything about the Klan, but want to kill Muslims and already executed the Black Panthers and La Raza. They call Dylann Roof an isolated case yet generalize Chris Dorner, Michael Brown, Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, etc. as thugs. The Crips and Bloods do not have body counts resembling anything the uniformed Robocop in blue possess.

Taken from a different angle, it seems that gun ownership is truly the last bastion of white privilege, even over that of swimming pools thanks to recent legislation and the aforementioned statement about our political elites. What we as black Americans tend to forget is that the Civil Rights Movement had some heat involved:  even as Dr. King preached nonviolence, he owned a gun. Even beyond that, black men routinely protected their communities with weapons from racist mobs whom otherwise terrorized their neighborhoods just because they could.

We weren’t pansies then, and damn sure aren’t now. Maybe it’s time we show them.

It has been said that when our ancestors made it across the Great Passage from Africa, they lost everything only to be given religion. If so, then the slave owners clearly did not believe in the God that they beat into our enslaved great-great-grandparents and older [any African-American who can trace his or her genealogy to slavery is considered lucky. Me? I’ve only reached my own great-grandparents on both sides, and they were children during Reconstruction.]

Welcome to America, the home of opportunity for almost everyone.

You #AllLivesMatter people can go straight to hell in gasoline draws and gunpowder socks, especially those who try to downplay a black man’s death with “if he had said/done/dressed differently” and snide-ass judgmental comments that you gladly share on social media. You don’t want to acknowledge that the systemic racism is the cause of today’s animosity, just gloss over it as everything else. Your day of reckoning is coming.

Shit like this is the reason why I kiss my wife and daughter every chance I get because I don’t know if that thirteen-mile commute to work the night shift will be the last one. With that known fact, how can I live freely when I am one Haskell PD officer away from losing my life over something likely to be petty?

I’m sick of the hash tag memorials over something so senseless.

If you feel threatened by an educated 6’, 260 lb. black married father of one, then you have serious issues to resolve such as:  Why do I live or work here? Are my ideas of other people colored by what the media shows on television nightly? Matter of fact, take a look in the mirror and ask do I know anyone who does not look like me?

Lord willing and He says the same I am not going anywhere anytime soon.

If this is the best America has, then I am truly afraid for my toddler’s future.




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