I watched the Last Word with Lawrence O’Donnell on
MSNBC last night [13th Jan. 2015], he addressed the fact that there are
no “legitimate” national counts of citizens killed by law enforcement. The piece is called “Tracking Deadly Force”[1]
with Rep. Steve Cohen who is pushing legislation to track these fatal events
taking the lives of many American citizens and more specifically, African
Americans.
Many of us are armchair witnesses
to these killings with some of us participating in peaceful protests. In spite of and despite #Blacklivesmatter,
the silence from those who are quick to tout and espouse the mantra of “right-to-life”
is deafening. Also deafening is the
silence of the many ministers/pastors/priests that had no problem shouting
about their immense dislike to all things of the LGBT community. Here’s the kicker, both groups claim [faux]
religious indignation when they pursue their alleged grievances. While the hypocrisy of both groups is nothing
new, they should be called out on it. Well said is this quote by Edmund Burke “Nothing
is so fatal to religion as indifference.”
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a man of the cloth who saw the injustices;
not only for African Americans but for every poor citizen as well. The victory
of the Civil Rights Movement was not only in the oratory skills of Dr. King and
the determination of he and his supporters; it was also in the inclusion of
religious leaders from every religion, race and ethnicity standing with him to
let this country know that this man was not alone and they all stood on
religious principles. Many American
citizens died attempting to bring some form of equality to the lives of African
Americans. As a very flawed Born-Again Christian, it hurts me to realize that those
who allege obedience to Christian values purposely deny the fact that we are
told more than once in the New Testament that Heavenly Father is no respecter
of persons. If our Creator does not care
about skin color or what is in one’s bank account, how dare anyone of us live
contrary to that? I don’t cry much but
the death of Michael Brown caused a reaction in me that had the tears flowing.
Is it because I am the mother of two African American males; because this is
just a continued pattern in the emasculation of males of color; because so many
Christians have said nothing of the injustices; or because it affected my
spirit in a way that I had no control of? I don’t know, all I know is that it
is an evil when we allow the lives of anyone to be arbitrarily determined by
those who are supposed to enforce the law. When this arbitration is focused on a
particular racial group, this historically continued pattern borders on
genocide. In the refusal to charge officers especially when the victim was
unarmed and/or the criminal justice system; those who remain silent are supporting
legally sanctioned killings and incarcerations. We have more citizens
incarcerated than countries that imprison their political opponents and
dissidents.
Is crime an issue in
African American communities? Of course it is but why? National and local
politics do not take the time to invest in the communities who need it most due
to wrong thinking. The American society
is Dr. Frankenstein creating (and re-creating) the ugliness they blame on the
residents of these communities that border on Third World living. “The world we have created is a product of
our thinking; it cannot be changed without changing our thinking” (Albert
Einstein) but far too many refuse to change their way of thinking. It’s easier
to think in the terms that “those” people deserve what they get without taking responsibility
for creating the environment. This
racial animus can be seen in the fact that within poorer communities, schools
cannot afford new textbooks[2],
teachers have to use other means to procure the necessary items to teach their
students[3],
and most disturbing is that teachers in these schools are paid less than their
counterparts in the suburbs[4]. How can anyone stand up for “life” while
quietly aiding in the denial of life and living to the descendants of the
African slaves who helped many Caucasian families become wealthy? “At the heart
of racism is the religious assertion that GOD made a creative mistake when He
brought some people into being” (Frederich Otto Hertz) and this is the
foundation for the total disregard of Black lives.
