THE BLACK AMERICAN MAN'S ELUSIVE AND INEXORABLE PURSUIT OF JUSTICE IN A COUNTRY BUILT UPON THE POWER OF HIS SOUL!
Not so very long ago Black American men were commonly brutally abducted, dismembered and murdered by people whom we would classify as sociopaths by today's standards. In most cases local police and goverment officials were perpetrators in these barbaric,criminal lynchings and used their influence and positions to ensure that justice would never be served for victims and their families. For this and many other reasons black men have always distrusted police and clearly with due cause; nothing has changed. During the O.J. Simpson trial, for example, one of the investigating officers Mark Furman was exposed for deliberately falsifying charges against black and latino men in innumerable cases but that evidence was blatantly suppressed and ignored by prosecuting officials who could easily have dropped the charges due to an irreconcilable corruption of the O.J. case. Instead they forged ahead as if Simpson was guilty by virtue of being a black male and to save face against the reprehensible Furman leak. In any rational, unbiased mind the Furman incident would have proved that the evidence had been illegally manipulated to tell a crime story which never occurred. Nothing has changed. Unfortunately not so long ago remains a haunting collage of todays and yesterdays, so near in fact that we do not have to huddle around our elders in order to hear accounts of lynchings. Modern day lynchings of black men still occur with startling frequency, nothing has changed. In the past, because black people were locked out of the power chain police in collusion with judges and other local government officials could manipulate reality by ignoring, falesifying or simply deleting the evidence. Black peoples already knew that justice would be denied them when they went to court, if there ever was a nominal investigation. Their expectations were never good especially if they challenged the police investigation or if one of the coconspiritors was connected to the police but they purservered often in fear of their own lives witnessing some of the most heartless and deliberate evil all supported by the local law enforcement. Generations of Black American men who survived those evil times before desegregation are still haunted by the resurgence of those racist practices of old. For over 3 centuries black men have been victimized by whatever rabble passed as policemen, judges and other law enforcement officials who ranged from bucolic vigilantes to corrupt local and federal officers alike. In America the black man has always been a fixed target at the end of a police weapon or gun! Nothing has changed...
Zoom-in to the case of Freddie Gray in the 300+ year old city of Baltimore Maryland. Here is a bizzarre case where black officers and government officials appear to be facilitating the very brand of historically institutionalized racism one would expect them to protect citizens against. Something has gone lamentably wrong here. To be sure, something has been going critically wrong here for quite a long time which is why citizens are in an uproar threatening to dismantle the city if justice is not properly served. The difference between Ferguson and Baltimore is that it is an old city that has used up its excuses with the black community. These folk care more about the sanctity of human life than whether a popular retail chain decides to leech the money out of its community in exchange for a handful of low-paying jobs. Not only do they understand the economic bottom line that these businesses exploit but they also understand that some other business will replace them picking up where the other left off. They also know that these retail establishments which are not owned by anyone in their community exist in large part as the residual of centuries of free slave labor enabling an economic advantage from which they have been and will continue to be perpetually denied. Nobody in that troubled community is ignorant of the fundimental facts and their anger follows the blatant disrespect that has been broadcast nationally and presented as truth when everyone knows it is otherwise! Yes, many of these people may be poor but they are not dumb and they still have something strong within them that makes them challenge bold-faced evil! Baltimore is a city where black entreprenours throve as early as the1700's and all during the 1800's into the mid-twentieth century. It is a city with a Black American mayor and unlike Ferguson many of the cities judges, and critical government officials, (including the poliece force), possessing the ability to reform policy are black. So let us ask how such a simple case has gone so radically awry? The answer of course is corruption and lies, by selling the community short and getting caught with their trousers down.
To begin with the trail was incorrectly focused on the assertion that Gray's fatal injury occurred in the police van when it was quite obvious he had been injured prior to being placed into the vehicle. Video footage depicted a physically crippled man being hoisted into the van clearly not in possession of his ability to control his lower body functions. He was already paralized. Prosecutors and media alike have stubbornly and one might add, criminally continued to ignore this very clear detail. Many believe that the story was altered because the arresting officers were not black. We have a plethora of data on the infamous "Rough Ride" including an eyewittness account by another man who was locked in the van at the time. That eyewittness published a startling story that contradicted police accounts. Only when unexpected footage of the rough ride surfaced were the police and media forced to admit to that awful episode. But it played into the initial police deception that Gray was injured in the van and so they rode it like a pony straight into the jaws of an unverifiable lie and the citizens and jurors on the first trial did not buy the lie! The police accounts, (all of which support the fact that professional policies were never followed), have been absorbed as if they were gospel in spite of the fact that a conflicting eyewittness account indicates Gray was not in control of his bodily functions while in the van as a result of having been parylized by police prior to the pivotol event. So once again Black American men are stultified whilst this lame but viscious old ruse plays itself out again gaining momentum as truth even though the obvious factor of common sense says otherwise! The moral of this sad story is that the law should be less focused on what it can prove or get away with and more focused on what actually occurred... the law has degenerated to a system that serves its most lucrative customers who happen to be criminals keeping law enforcement personnel in business. It has lost all sight of justice and is rudely startled and annoyed when people demand it!
It was no surprise that the first trial was declared a mistrial and rightfully so because that officer, though frightfully negligent did not kill Gray. His mistake was allowing the arresting officers to put Gray into the van rather than calling an ambulance to take the parylized civilian to a hospital where he might have survived. Had he shown the integrity to make that call things would have been quite different. Due to the grevious injuries inflicted upon Gray by the police prior to placing his crippled body into the van it was in their best interest to attempt to conceal their indiscretion by makeing it appear as if he was parylized by a rough ride in the van rather than at the criminal hands of officers sworn to protect public safety. Fortunately Baltimoreans did not buy this deception. The ploy was intended to psychologically transfer responsibility for Gray's condition to an inanimate vehicle rather than implicating the true perpetrators who happened to be sworn officers of the law.
In the old days before and during Jim Crow the circus that passed as law enforcement amounted to nothing short of absurd, humiliating lies and excuses intended to hurt black people and make them feel powerless. These intimidation tactics were acompanied by miraculously outrageous dissapearances of wittnesses and evidence including the manipulation and fabrication of evidence, etc., etc., etc. Black men didn't have a fighting chance at justice because the deck was already insurnountably stacked against them by centuries of rancid policy and undocumented illegal practices all aimed at disenfranchising them from their rights as citizens, humans and as men. Today Black American men are again pushing back against centuries of an old, established system of oppression. Like every other gain for our civil rights this one will be an all out battle but one we will ultimately win. To be sure the days of unchecked police violence against black men are coming to an end, these are the last bitter days of this ungodly practise. Body cameras are only the beginning of the new culture of police accountability, eventually officers will be relieved of all weapons which they do not need in order to maintain peace. Weapons are not for use against civilians and it is high time that we strike down the practise of managing citizens with deadly force for it is un-American. Like the other rights we have wrested from the fist of our oppressors through peaceful and rational means the end of police violence and the legalized lynching of black men will be another milestone in our quest for egalitarian harmony in a land built upon the free slave labor of our ancestors. Freedom alone can never repay the ensanguined debt owed to Black Americans! But Black American men have always been gentlemen about the entire bloody affair agreeing to let bygones be bygones so long as we are just left alone!
There is a profound differnce between racially motivated violence such as police violence against black men and the phenomenon of black on black crime but the two are also intimately related... both are the direct result of racism directed against black men! This racism comes from a single source external to the black man but focused on him through every aspect within his world through media, art, literature/language, history, music, science, mathematics, sexuality, religion, politics, law, and economics among others. In theory one might surmise that if you stop the single source of racism you inadvertantly stop its entire range of manifestations but as life would have it the problem and the equation defining it are just not that simple. So let us closely reexamine the problem. Oversimplification of this problem does not allow critical wounds caused by racism to be identified so healing efforts can be effectively administered . Hypercomplexity confuses the clear causes of racism to be isolated preventing a cure from being effectively administered. The cure to the cancer of racism must be a versatile medicene not so specialized that it fails to adapt to every condition and not too dilluted to effect a strong, decisice healing. We all know that the buy-in requires a critical and fundimental partnership between the primary races that have been historically at odds as well all of the broad spectrum of people's who have blessed this country with their presence over its long, difficult social evolution. The journey of racial conflict as well as brotherhood has grown between black and white men for centuries. Now is the time to finally come to a peaceful table because that is the way that civilised people solve problems. The black community must certainly organize and effectively leverage itself against racism as a crtical defense while we iron out our issues with inequality in America. As i said before, true freedom requires the buy-in of white,black, aboriginal, asian, Latino and other ethnic groups. We must ultimately become united not as seperate races of people competing for one country but as one diversity of people sharing one common interest. Yes, the black community must uplift itself in the end but to uplift itself only to find the same historical racial obsticles pitted against it would be a sad compromise to working diligently to also heal those racial wounds embedded into the evolution of the land in which both our ancestors are buried.
Because the black man is the underdog he must be the provocatour of justice and initiate the movement to racial healing. He must be the one predominantly situated in the trenches of justice and freedom. He must live an exemplary life of truth by example continually agitating his oppressors to see his vision of truth. All this while working diligently to occupy political offices and build his economic foundation so that when his pleas for justice are made they cannot be ignored... Whatever you do black men no matterhow small it is a good thing. Heal your differences with your brothers black, white and of all colors and move forward as a community, give up your anger and bitterness, let bygones be bygones... refoucus your energy on positive healing and brotherhood, kindness and compassion. With this freed-up space you can then begin the practical process of building yourself economically and intellectually expanding your success as charitable work in your community. Be the solution!
Not every policeman is bad. If there were no good policemen things would certainly be much worse but in a political climate where police relations are at their lowest, where the history of police violence against black men has redoubled it is clear that a substantial proportion of them, including other judicial officials are not acting in the best interest of justice. So we must make them act in our behalf! Due to the slow process of routing these aberrant personnel from our courts, police force, city councils and branches of government that manage child support and other services more black men will become victims of their trechery. Let's face it, it's a huge problem. Too many people are doing the wrong thing and it has to end immediately. I sympathize with those officers who are good and I hope they will chose to expose the evildoers among their colleagues. For black men there really is no other choice save to assume that every officer he encounter will be his potential oppressor! It may take a century or more before the evil done to black men can truly be erased from their cumulative psyche. Black men are tired of being murdered and abused, by officers of the law and they want to be left alone! Whether we kill ourselves is quite a different matter because that is our own private issue to be worked out amongst ourselves. Black on black crime is a hideous reality but when axaccerbated by the unnecessary, unholy overlay of police violence it creates a dead-end street of despair. We need the police to become community advocates to help black people rout out drugs, and crime so they can rebuild sustainable neighborhoods. We need our government agencies to help us reform welfare, prisons and child support among other issues. When the police prove they are not just another gun in the face of a black man they might begin to earn the trust and support they need to help clean up so many troubled communities...
The bottom line is this, U.S. police officers are hardly ostriches with their heads buried in a hole, they well know the current state of racism and police violence directed againt black men. They are embedded into the black community as deeply as anyone can be who does not live in it. The robustness of their resistance against reform indicates they are invested in their evil practices and have fortified themselves against positive and inevitable change. Adopting this position they fully understand they will never gain credibility with the black community and while standing behind a gun they do not feel as if they need it. It is a stalemate! Smart officers should already know that radical change is immanent. They anticipate a future when they are not permitted to carry firearms as defenders of peace and it is at that time that we will see a different brand of police, a humbler, more personable defender of humanity. Of course it will not be as simple as taking away their guns; minds must be changed. So the battle playing out on the streets of America between cops and black men is a much more complex war emanating from the higher echelons of our judicial and enforcement structure and it can only be changed by reforming policy and by fumigating at the highest ranks to remove the vermin from office. That is where our black think-tank will be needed to launch effective programs aimed at removing the wardens of these racist policies. In many ways the police are only pawns hired to do the dirty work which cannot absolve them from being willing agents. The main villains who have orchestrated this reprehensible movement are hidden from public disgust, it is now time to expose them! I know the line... black people are just trying to survive, they just want to be left alone... and as much as I agree I also say we have some hard work ahead of us after which, (having been successful), we can and will be left alone to pursue our rightful destinies...
The blood of our ancestors flows through this land so the spirit of this country is bound to our bodies and our souls. Our connection to this land is a beautiful and complex gift. In order to understand this gift black men must awaken from the malaise of their oppression redirecting this country toward a righteous path. Black men must correct the flawed but noble concept of freedom proposed by the founders of this nation. We must finish the and refine the great egalitarian experiment of America. Others have dropped the ball. Not just because our lives depend on it but because it is the necessary to move human history forward it is now our turn to take the initiative picking the ball up and carrying it forward in the final heat to freedom...
WRITTEN BY BIGDADDY BLUES
