Dear Mr. Cell Phone,
I have always treated you well, I take you wherever I go. I pay every month for your upkeep, but when I needed you most , you turn your back on me. How come?
Signed, Roddie Bryan.
Sir,
You should have learnt your lesson from the events of Mr. George Floyd. I cannot tell a lie, what I take is exactly what I show. I do not interpret. Sorry I won’t see you again as cells are not allowed in cells.
Signed: Cell Phone
Let us put fun aside.
I cannot be elated that these three men, Gregory McMichael 65, Travis McMichael 35, and William Roddie Bryan 52, were convicted based on the evidence of a cell phone.
How could the 11 white jurors go against such evidence? Even the defence team moved away from the overwhelming evidence to instead, demonize this young black man, Ahmaud Arbery whom they claimed had long dirty toenails which should automatically reduce him to nothing, thus, a nobody was shot and killed.
One should not be convicted for killing a nothing, a nobody. What a sad state of affair.
The tragedy is when will be the next one? A week, a month, six months, a year, how long? If in all imminent killings a cell phone features and there is a conviction, we are still not at the root of the problem.
Fair trials and convictions are only a small part of the solution. Look at it this way. The bully roughs up his victim and the principal punishes him. He has not changed, but he moves on to another and does the very same assault. How do I stop this bully, how do I change him, or get him to change his ways? That is the question.
The bully bullies because he has some underlying assumptions about the victim. The victim is weak, poor, inferior, non-white, wrong, inhuman, deserves what he gets, will not fight back, afraid and has no support.
The bully also has some false ideas about himself. He is strong, right, superior, white with lots of support. But the bully is only as strong as the victim is weak.
However, time and time again the weak victim surprises the bully with nothing but pure courage often showing that the bully is just fraught without substance.
But I do not want to over-react.
Hundreds of years of beatings, killings, and dehumanization of Black people by Whites seem to have left them so frightened and afraid that in spite of all this, they will go down on their knees to ask for forgiveness on their behalf.
Mark you, they did not ask for forgiveness as they feel justified in what they did. I am even beginning to suspect that the difference in colour could not generate such hate, such determined negative response which is impossible to change.
Well whatever is that spark it has to be put out, and let us face it, Blacks cannot do it alone, the spark is now a fully blown fire. BLACK LIVES MATTER, in its infancy is no match for that fire and heat.
So the hope has got to be that fair minded White People must deal with their membership to bring each one to the true reality which is , that only those who claim to be white and superior are truly inferior.
Your thinking is inferior if you believe that the whiteness of your skin makes you superior to all. The colours, white, brown, pink, yellow or black do not determine who you are, but how you look.
Both Blacks and whites are products of their respective environments, which must be changed. So the environment must be counselled in order to effect changes.
The time is overdue for a president or prime minister or anyone with that kind of power, to put racism on the front burner with the express purpose of eliminating it.
It took us a long time to recognize how we consciously and unconsciously treat the physical environment and it was necessary to put the brakes on and change direction.
It is equally important to recognize systemic racism and its impact on all of us. Change must come because any system that dehumanizes a particular group must go. The ball is in the “White” court and they are some good fair-minded coaches who can be trusted to make the change.
I would challenge those three convicted white men, that if they would have sat with the young black man, Ahmaud Arbery and in a friendly way talk to him, they may have found him to be honest, bright, responsible and human, in spite of the colour of his skin.
They might have been challenged by such virtues and their own shortcomings.
So the fear to look beyond the colour and to find challenging virtues, often unlike theirs causes one to prolong this negative colour perception.
Let us face it, White people played a very prominent role in the abolition of slavery. It was not all because of economic projections. The humanists played an important role in this event. It is time for those who hold power and sway to step up and lead.
You have the tools, use them.
