Novel THOMAS
Here’s hoping this is not a disconnected rant on the issue of an extended moment: racism and its pernicious outcomes, an extending moment seemingly without end.
I too am a product of Africa’s widely dispersed diaspora, and whenever and wherever people of African descent pain and bleed… my eyes well up; I too could easily be a victim of more virulent racist outcomes if place, positions and circumstances were transposed.
The attempted overkill of 29 year-old Jacob Blake when he was shot seven times — in the back — by another white policeman in a place named Kenosha, Wisconsin on Sunday, August 22, was another pouring of gasoline on America’s embers of racism; it simply permitted the embers to glow brightly again, following several weeks of justifiably rowdy protests in the wake of George Floyd’s extended deathly life-extracting session.
So here we go again, witnessing another manifestation of racism at its worse, not quite its worst, as in the case of his predecessor, Rayshard Brooks, a 27-year-old African American male who was shot several times in the back on June 12 as he tried to outrun a couple of white policemen and their gun in an Atlanta restaurant parking lot on June 12, just days after George Floyd’s burial, after having had his life squeezed out a couple weeks earlier by another white policeman.
As we readily recall, Floyd’s was an extended painful death with him crying out for his “Mama.”
And lest we forge, on April 4, 2015, one Walter Scott, an unarmed Black man, was fatally shot five times in the back in North Charleston, South Carolina, as he was attempting to outrun Michael Slager, another white policeman’s gun.
Slager is now in jail for twenty years. One can say he unluckily fell through the proverbial justice cracks that continue to seemingly protect and spare white policemen from culpability for their continual blatant atrocious practices with regards to African Americans — specifically males.
Among other personal thoughts is my belief that America’s white policemen do not give a [F!] about “Black people.”
That’s what a gentleman who’s now deceased used to say. Into the fading days of his life he never strayed, his opinion never changed. He met, interacted with and got to know people of various backgrounds and professions, and built long relations with many of them. But he didn’t hate; he was able to assess peoples’ characters and built his relations accordingly.
Like many people he never met Donald Trump, but he assessed his predatory nature, bad behaviour and practices. He too saw through the mirror and emptiness of the man who became president of the United States.
[He’s] a gangster, a cultist, a political Jim Jones and a “racist” is how that man used to describe him. Wonder what he would say about “the greatest…” if he were alive today.
He loved to read and probably would‘ve got his hands on a copy of the book his niece recently released in which he is subtly and indirectly characterized by non other than his niece, who intimates in her unflattering book, that he’s heard him drop N bombs. And she made that point in multiple television and radio interviews about growing up around the man.
Nevertheless, his character and racism, and undoubtedly his lovability and cultist quotient have served him well among his socio-political demographic.
In the meantime the president remains mum, at least publicly, about the multiple shooting of Jacob Blake who’s living, but if he continues to live… will have a questionable and less than perfect life. He’s paralyzed from the waist down, as everyone could’ve guessed. He was shot seven times… What a life… for the young Black man going forward.
“No justice, no peace…” for Black men shot and killed by police. Whatever happened to Donald Trump’s oft-spoken “Law and Order” political rantings?
And what will happen to Kyle Rittenhouse, that white, 17-year-old admirer of Donald Trump, who shot and killed two men — what men as he did his patriotic chore at one of the Jacob Blake protests in Kenosha?
So we all are watching TV and listening to the news; all I can say is “Black lives do matter.” But after all, we’re talking about America, where white lives matter more. Even in that young white militia’s case. He’s now under arrest, but lest’s see how his case plays out in years ahead when he will be put on trial for murder. But he will undoubtedly be pampered in jail.
Which make me think of Dylann Storm Roof that other young white supremacist and mass murderer who was justly convicted for perpetrating the Charleston, South Carolina at the AME African-American church in 2015.
Roof is now biding his time in jail, having being tried and given the death penalty/life imprisonment for killing those nine people worshipping that night.
But before receiving his ‘just deserts’ he will be well pampered by his overseers.
Recall that after he killed those Black people he went on long ride to … perhaps get back to his racist nest, but police caught up to him. Better yet, he was taken to Burger King by his captors. After all that killing he was dying for a nice fulfilling mean. The police obliged.
The privilege of being white in America!
“This is America,” Childish Gambino sings… But my solidarity with Black people of every international stripe will never wane.
