#blacklivesmatter I woke up this morning feeling sick about the story of Demario Bailey. It breaks my heart to think about what the family is going through right now. Yes, BLACK LIVES MATTER. And if they matter in Ferguson, New York and Cleveland--- they also have to matter on the streets of Chicago. They must matter when a white police officer looks at a black man and believes he should act with reckless disregard; and those lives must matter when young black men look at each other and act with equal contempt and viciousness. I want to hate the cop who shot Michael Brown and the one who choked Eric Garner to death. I want to hate the young thugs involved in the Demarios killing. If hate could do some good, I would. But theres a larger problem. And, it goes beyond the calls for more police training or asking mothers and fathers of bad ass kids to parent in ways they clearly arent equipped to parent. What the police need---what we all need---is to begin a process of deprogramming so that we re-train our brains to see the value in the lives of people with black and brown skin, particularly black and brown men. The Race problem in America is as neurological as it is sociological. That makes trying to fix it a huge undertaking, massive and, some might say, impossible. But its so necessary. We all suffer from this need to typecast. Its just that most of us dont carry guns. We have to get to a point where we value black men more than we fear them. Sadly, the thugs who killed Demario just give us more reasons to fear them. Yes, BLACK LIVES MATTER. But nothing will change on the police front until officers start seeing black men as individuals, rather than types. Nothing will change on the thug front until these young men first value themselves. And if their parents cant instill a sense of self-worth, then we as a society must. We cant expect someone to have regard for someone elses life---even that of a childs---when he has none for himself or feels he has nothing to lose. This would require a lot of heavy-lifting and we may not want to do it, but I dont know we have many other choices.
Posted on: Mon, 15 Dec 2014 19:49:48 +0000
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