(formerly titled “Its about more than Mike Brown or Darren Wilson.”)
by Glenn Littrell
These incidents are not occurring just because someone filmed the event. They are being exposed because for the first time the average citizen is capable of capturing evidence of the event. It is a double-edged sword that can provide proof of both culpability and innocence in situations that in the past would never have seen the light of exposure. Because prejudices and bias would have rendered one party or the other as untrustworthy.
These incidents are not just now occurring. They have been occurring for decades, but we are just now realizing through technology that they are just the tip of the iceberg. They reflect a systemic problem that has been too long ignored. Hopefully the group that will be most liberated by the exposure of the ‘bad cops’ will be the ‘good cops’ who no longer have to, or feel pressured to, look the other way because now the ‘citizen camera’ will vindicate their doing the right thing: holding others in their profession to the same high standard they aspire to.’
The impression that people of color are more prone to criminality is no more valid than the impression that cops hate people of color. It is the devastating effects of some that paints the many with the negative stereotypes that divide us and cause us to fear each other.
UPDATED: 4-28-2015
Some perspective on protest and riots:
“The city of Baltimore, Maryland, has been besieged by riots Monday night — and police are on the scene ready to serve, protect and subdue.
This has become an evergreen narrative in the aftermath of reactions to state-sanctioned violence against black people. But that it persists sends a troubling message about how officials and, by extension, many of the people they serve regard rioting: specifically, when there's white people involved versus mostly black people.
Usually, if a riot involves black people, it's connected to intense episodes of where systemic racism is undoubtedly at work. These episodes include the 1992 Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King beating verdict, the riots in Oakland after the 2009 BART Police shooting of Oscar Grant, and the national outcry immediately following the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. That outcry included the city of Baltimore, where blacks now represent roughly 2 out of 3 residents.
But when a mob of mostly white people take to the streets, vandalizing cars, storefronts and street signs in the process it usually means someone either won or lost a game.”
Instead of focusing on the race of the protesters and the rioters we should be dealing with and discussing the root causes, and considering solutions. Continually dividing us into factions: cops versus blacks, black versus whites, us against them, is no more than declaring animosity of neighbor versus neighbor.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/white-people-rioting-for-no-reason.html GlennDL
When one of the The Five hosts kept on rambling about ‘where are the civil rights leaders’, Shepard Smith had had it.
“I also don’t know where we are. We’ve got a major American city that has decades of turmoil within this neighborhood,” Shepard Smith said. “Decades! You’ve heard the stories from Doug McKelway a little while ago of people being arrested for nothing, a violent crackdown for years and years, of them feeling powerless and hopeless and nobody listening to what they were saying. One quarter of the youth locked up. Clearly there is a big problem. Then all of a sudden an African American man is taken into a vehicle and he comes out of it and dies. And you get nothing from authorities except a suspension. And those who would do harm take an opportunity to do harm. And here we are. But it is what has happened between all of that and today that that has led to this. There is no escaping that reality.” Shepard Smith, in response to his networks coverage of the Baltimore situation.
UPDATED: 4-8-2015
Ferguson Election Result Changes The Face Of City Council
UPDATED: 3-28-2015
UPDATED: 3-11-2015
If you believe that Darren Wilson was unjustly maligned then when you demand an apology from those who wronged him don’t forget to demand an apology from his fellow police officers that created and promoted racist attitudes and emails such as the ones exposed in the DOJ report, don’t forget the policy makers that established law enforcement as a means of revenue production, the officials who mishandled the situation from the second that Mike Brown was shot to the minute the DOJ report was completed, and unfortunately, on into tomorrow..
If you believe the DOJ report totally exonerated Daren Wilson then don’t ignore the remainder of the report which establish the factors that led to the protest (along with the shooting). When you look at that report, and then look at other factors in play in Ferguson, you should consider that protest and unrest were inevitable. There was a problem festering before Mike Brown… a firecracker looking for a match.
I’m sure there are good officers in Ferguson, but like Wilson, they have to accept some responsibility for the toxic attitudes and practices in their department. If not for participating then at least for tolerating it.
GlennDL
- "All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing"
Ferguson city manager resigns after critical DOJ report
Ferguson police chief resigns
UPDATED: 3-4-2015
Justice finds pattern of race bias in Ferguson
“Alec Karakatsanis, a lawyer at Equal Justice Under Law, said that the findings in the Ferguson case are indicative of larger issues with criminal justice systems around the country.”
“The lesson isn’t that Ferguson is uniquely bad, the lesson is that we have an American problem that Ferguson is helping shed light on.”
UPDATED: 12-23-2014
“The protests are no more to blame for his actions than The Catcher in the Rye was for the murder of John Lennon or the movie Taxi Driver for the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan,” he writes. “Crazy has its own twisted logic and it is in no way related to the rational cause-and-effect world the rest of us attempt to create.”
“Police are not under attack, institutionalized racism is,” he writes. “Trying to remove sexually abusive priests is not an attack on Catholicism, nor is removing ineffective teachers an attack on education. Bad apples, bad training and bad officials who blindly protect them, are the enemy.”
Original Post 12-1-14:
It has gotten to be so typical that so many of us choose to fixate on singular aspects that just serve to further divide us, have little to do with the real problem and bare no relevance in truth or relativity. Facebook and right-wing media has erupted with condemnation of the riots by emphasizing that: “…whites didn’t riot after the OJ Simpson verdict”, as if this proves something. Of course the underlying reference here is to the stereotype of African-Americans as being more inclined to this type of violent behavior. The right-wing media puts forth this malicious falsehood and their bloggers post the graphics to insight further dissatisfaction. But it is a false comparison. On the face of the simplistic statement it festers on racial stereotypes, everyone who post and repost the graphics are not looking beyond their own latent prejudices, they may not themselves be knowingly cooperating in a racist message, but they are, nonetheless participating in a sham that has been perpetrated on themselves as well as African-Americans.
You want to believe that blacks riot more readily then whites then consider this:
- In over 90 days of protest the overwhelming number of peaceful days/protest were peaceful. While there were arrest during that time the number is small and not all the arrest were related to violence. Civil disobedience protest routinely involve non-violent arrest.
- In the past ten years how many riots by African-Americans can you name? Violent riots, not peaceful demonstrations. 1? 2? Google it and get back to me.
The number of riots by non-blacks are fairly numerous. After World Series Championships (San Francisco), Superbowls (Seattle), after a Coach was fired for protecting a child-molester (Penn State), After a college coach was fired (Tennessee), at a pumpkin festival (Keene State College)! etc., etc., ( http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/white-people-rioting-for-no-reason.html )
Now before you start rationalizing a difference between Ferguson and these riots, before you start trying to put in any context, before you point out that a minority few were guilty of violent behavior, lets remember that the promoters of the “…whites didn’t riot after the OJ Simpson verdict” theme neglected to add context or the explanations of a ‘difference’. The right-wing critics of the Ferguson riots have failed to put into their comparison the role of agitators, drunkenness, and idiots.
I’m am not defending the Ferguson riots, I condemn them and but I condemn all riots, but I am also condemning the stereotype and defending the peaceful protesters. If you want to talk about riots and their cause, or even who is their cause, fine, but lets talk about all of them because in that discussion is where we will discover the root causes
It wasn’t the players on the San Francisco Giants that started a riot anymore than it was the peaceful protesters that started the Ferguson riots. Its fine to examine the contributing factors and circumstances that contributed to conditions that accommodated a riot, but let’s do it in context, let’s not just chalk it up to race or spontaneity. That’s a little weak-minded.
In further regards to the “…whites didn’t riot after the OJ Simpson verdict” comparison, in actuality it just further makes the point that there is a believe that options for whites are more plentiful for whites. When the family of Simspon’s victims didn’t receive satisfaction they sought civil action, without moral outrage from the country, yet the family’s of Trayvon Martin and Mike Brown both have been vilified for even considering such an option.
GlennDL
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