When Does Black Life Matter? Every preacher, commentator, politician, professional athlete and average citizen knows that Mike, Tamir, Trayvon and Eric didnt deserve to die. There is no debate in the average household in America: black, white, rich, poor, suburban, urban or rural. The truth of the debate is when has black life ever mattered? Twisting this question around from emotional to economic is that we always mattered and always will. Since 1609 in Jamestown, Va we mattered. However, once you answer the question with emotion there is a paradigm that hasnt been established internally for the subconscious of the African American expierience in North America to be anything more than a culture of reaction when confronted with a mirror. Zimmerman, Pantaleo and Wilson have stimulated better organization of the masses of African Americans outside of the election of Barack Obama, since the Million March in 1994. How is it 20 years later, those million man who stood on the mall in Washington and took a pledge to protect their community, are protesting injustice as opposed to refining the longterm agenda of the African American Community? Race and murder were a business practice of slaveowners and now as it occurs in the modern sense its a marketing tool of the agents of the powerful to maintain a dialogue that has no logic. The victim, a bad guy, protestors, political pundits, and the abilty to use random events as a venting process to an entrenched underclass has no vision to implement resolution. If times like this produced facts like fires, it wouldnt be easy to protest before there was a plan of action. If we lived in a world where protestors actually governed, the protestors themselves would protest each other. America isnt perfect, but its as close to the ideal nation/state in the present global order. With such large, complex and opposing perspectives; we exist in a society of different sub-demographics who have been oppressed, demonstrated resilience and weaved a sordid narrative into human possibility. I am no apologist for wrong doing of dominant culture and the status quo. However, I would suggest all who protest this crisis of police and judicial misconduct demand a solution to resow the seeds that grow into murderers in our own garden. We cant dismis the relevance to redressing the collective violence that has killed thousands of African Americans annually for more than a generation, because we expect something of dominant culture that we have not established in ourselves. Until this culture of reaction is mobilized to oppose the injustice we administrate to each other. I have no faith that protest against the obvious makes the next African American male to be murdered by the police or his neighborhood shooter anything more than a status symbol of a page in history that has no new chapters.
Posted on: Tue, 16 Dec 2014 22:18:31 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015