Maybe the "hands up - Don't shoot" touring company should have waited to use that chant a bit longer, because the city of North Miami, Florida has acted out the scenario without needing to force anything to fit.
In what seems a perfect example of "shoot first and refuse to answer questions later" two officers with rifles shot an unarmed, co-operative behavioral therapist from an assisted living facility who was trying to protect and retrieve an autistic resident who had run out into the street. His concern, as evidenced in the cell phone video was to protect the severely impaired autistic man in his care from the police who showed up armed for combat because a report of a "man with a gun."
While lying on the ground, hands in the air and trying to explain to the cops what was going on and that his patient was holding a toy truck, one of them let off a three round salvo, hitting Charles Kinsey, a black man. Asking the officer why he had just shot him (in the leg) the answer was "I don't know."
I don't know either. I don't know why an unarmed man with his hands in view and lying on the ground defenseless would be shot by any competent police officer. Is it that he was never trained to keep his finger off the damned trigger or that he's a cringing paranoid coward? It doesn't matter, to those that frame matters in our country for us, he must only have done this because he was a racist. Watch the video and you'll be as puzzled as I am and the man filming it was. "Why they shoot the black boy?" is heard on the recording?
Damned if I know, but we haven't heard the last of this, nor should we.
I saw this story early this morning. Disgusting indeed! Yet, I wonder if divisive politics has turned people into high contrast thinkers. Yes, high contrast as in all-or-nothing-thinking. An inability to see shades of grey between the black and the white. And an inability to hold two or more viewpoints at the same time inside their puny little minds.
ReplyDeleteThe analogue of all-or-nothing-thinking is magical thinking ... to make something utterly false suddenly become true just because Donald Trump said it, it must be true. After all, even an act of murder will not dissuade people from voting for a proto-fascist.
I read letters to the editor from grumpy old men whose angry thoughts suddenly turn true, just because they "thunk" it; and anyone who contradicts them is a "libtard" or a "libtunrd." And anyone who is a damn liberal is irrational, they claim. Words. Words. Words do not make truth appear ... presto ... from a cesspool of lies.
"Blacks lives matter" because our black friends and neighbors suffer this bullshit more than privileged white folks do. But in the universe of all-or-nothing-thinking," all lives matter" turns the focus of attention away from the black lives lost. "Blues lives matter" negates those instances when police violence disappears behind the blue wall of silence.
Damn sick of this shit, I am.
It's not that there's no attention being paid to police brutality toward black people. It's that conclusions and explanations are being handed out by people who are hardly disinterested or objective and are highly motivated to put a frame around everything.
DeleteBLM does not have any claim to speak for all Black people nor to discount the plight of any disadvantaged or oppressed people. The have no claim to speak for me or against me or about me as a member of a stereotype. Justice is not payback or revenge. I'm not going to abandon or degrade my moral standards of beliefs or principles to aid some group in their lust for the spotlight. Good objectives justify nothing. My dog's life matters and so does yours, the richest the poorest should be judged on other things than their genetics and there are many, many millions of poor hopeless members of other groups kept down by our society and their lives matter too. I believe in compassion and the sacredness thereof. It's quality is not strained.
Something is wrong with the way we train the police. You can't blame it all on racism. This one simply couldn't be trusted with firearms. I don't even know if he was white or black or Christian or Muslim or Hindu. It doesn't matter because he should have been able to separate any feelings he has from his actions. Why are they trained to arrive with guns drawn, why are they trained to scream hysterically knowing that it will only escalate and terrify and confuse? Should we just assume all white people are terrified of or hate other races and ehtnicities and pretend that's not racism?
I tire of the political and tendentious oversimplifications that constitutes the whole of public discourse and journalistic jabber.
If the purpose of anyone opposing prejudice and racism is to affect change, the practice of insulting, stereotyping and defaming other groups is not going to be effective. Talk to those millions of poor whites trapped in a society that's abandoned them and marginalized them about their "white privilege" and they'll go out and buy more guns. Tell them they deserve justice too and that all men are equal and they may listen.
"All lives matter!" "Blue lives MATTER!"
ReplyDeleteWho could have guessed that the shooting of police officers this week would prove to be such a self-affirming celebration of fear for republicans today?
Surely all human lives matter. But just maybe black and brown lives matter just a little bit less than white lives. Particularly if the white life in question is a blue life. We can assume that a blue life is somewhat safer when presented with an unusual situation involving another white life, or at least no one who is actually darker in pigment than their own skin. Worst case scenario, when presented with a police problem involving a black life, the black person dies. This is okay, because the officer can be acquitted of all charges.
Apparently it is always much safer to shoot first and ask questions later when there is a police situation involving a black life. One can't be too careful. Even if the black life is a caregiver for the mentally ill who is trying to help an institutionalized adult male who has escaped into the street to play with a Tonka truck. Even if said black life is lying on his back with his hands in the air, pleading with arriving officers not to shoot. Laying on his back telling them that there is no reason to shoot. If one of the officers goes ahead and shoots him anyway, he can always say, "I don't know why I shot that black life!" At least he did not shoot a white life unnecessarily.
So, if a blue life shoots a black life, it may be messy, but does not have long-term consequences except for the black life who was shot. But if a blue life accidentally shoots and kills a white life, this could lead to very serious problems.
My view is that even if the man on the ground is the most despicable individual in the world, there are no moral or legal grounds to shoot him while he poses no possible threat, is calmly trying to explain, and is obviously unarmed. I assume that if we are hiring and training men and women to do that job they are more than fully capable of thinking objectively and not be controlled by subliminal impulses.
ReplyDeleteI don't give a damn if a cop who stops me or arrests me or comes upon me in some disturbing circumstance if he has the brains and training not to shoot because he's hysterical with fear. We don't need saintly cops, we just need good ones.
Beyond that I think it's wrong to stuff circumstances into a mold. Each case is different. Black cops shoot black people too and apparently, in proportion to their population, Native Americans get more abuse from cops than anyone else. It's never as simple as the stage managers tell you it is.