As far as police and Black people go, “No news is good news.” And for me it’s truly a feeling of relief when I wake up another day to no news story of another Black man — or woman — fatally shot by America’s badged, armed gunslingers, vigilantes, or however one now chooses to describe them.
No shooting casualties any given overnight is good news, but not necessarily a clarion call to let (your) collective guards down and go about business as normal. Truth is, normal is never… will never be normal, as long as we’re wearing that permanent coat, albeit of various colours… and no matter how some may try in vain to dilute it — physically, psychologically or otherwise.
This is an era where person and image indisputably matter to many beings more than ever. And we’re daily bombarded by different media and other stimuli (images of things that are essential to attain those things in life that are viewed and/or perceived as “the ideal…” whatever the context, however defined and for whatever they’re worth…
Maybe it’s just too many people, giving the current circumstances we’ve been trapped in for months thinking too hard and too long about the same things… as if (over-) thinking will bring mental or other forms of relief, otherwise known as the proverbial “good news” to the mental and physical place we’ve been locked in seemingly forever… We all hear so many people talking about wanting “some good news…” And who doesn’t?
“One thing at a time” I heard a wise person say the other day.
Okay, I thought, notwithstanding our continuing collective preoccupation. “We’re all in the same boat.” I know things are not particularly rosy these days, but find a pleasant fragrance and allow it to soothe you.
One that can be said with certainty is that other pandemic that has been gripping certain societies and communities for generations is pervasive, seemingly never sleeps. And since media don’t sleep they never fail to deliver their regular quota of good or bad news. A sort of social medicine to heal some of those things that trouble/afflict us, mentally or physically.
They deliver the good and the bad, but it is media responsibility (some of us who still seeing and understanding is the media don’t sleep, never fail to deliver its regular quota of bad or good news as it were. It’s like social medicine indeed: taking the good with the bad.
So when, a couple weeks ago, news broke of another Black man who was “done in” by police (which one is now irrelevant) the most recent news, since we learned of that most brutal murder of another Black man, named Ronald Greene, down in the southern United States, a place named Monroe, Louisiana.
When the incident, which apparently happened in May 2019, but had been deliberately ‘covered-up’ by State Police for over two years, for several weeks (the operative term) by State Police for over two years. But some people, the believers, say faith intervened when the truth ultimately came to light after being covered up by said police for over two years.
Some of those who saw the police cam video footage and images of the brutality being visited on that were left almost speechless: vicious, bloody… If you were not able to see it, simply listen to the audio instead.
I for one thought we had seen some of the worst of the police with George Floyd, and a few other Black men (you’ve seen some of them) being taken down while running… Shot in the back several times like hunted animals… I imagine punishment for attempting to outrun
America’s twenty-first century slave hunters.
Friends and relatives of that particular murdered man, Ronald Greene, not the least of whom were the family — particularly his mother, sister and other relatives made multiple appearances on CNN to speak to that personal incident. As well as his legal team (yet another one that has to go to legal war with another U.S police) for what is becoming a dubious norm, the murder of other… Black men.
But if you’ve got a week stomach you might want to pass on the inhumanity of it all (brutality of police when interacting with Black men) something they’ve been trying/managing to keep under raps for generations, that is until a certain media outlet ‘uncovered the attempted cover-up’ as it were of Ronald Greene’s vicious murder in that late night down in rural Louisiana in 2019, aided and abetted by a gang of police who essentially tortured… bludgeoned that man in a most barbarous and unspeakable way.
Many of us have seen many horrid images of police vs Black men in recent years. George Floyd was one of the most heart-wrenching. Ronald Greene’s torture is right up there.
If you haven’t seen the police video cam images of the incident, visit Google or ubiquitous social media, and see how that undeclared police war on Black men particularly is playing out.
But if you’ve got a week stomach you might want to pass on the inhumanity of what plays out on the police video cam, something they’ve been trying to keep under raps, that is until a certain media outlet uncovered the attempted cover-up of Ronald Greene’s vicious murder that late night in rural Louisiana in 2019, aided and abetted by a gang of police who essentially tortured that man in a most barbarous and unspeakable way.
Many of us have seen many horrid images in recent years, the late George Floyd (one of) the most recent, but Ronald Greene’s torture is right up there, an unspeakable atrocity being perpetrated by the police against that Black man.
Some wondering aloud how could some people be so brutal, heinous, and more… angering “shocking,” “unbelievable,” when people were finally able to and more. People wondering how police could perpetrate such an atrocity on a human being.
Prior to the release of the police cam video of the slow coming to light, all who viewed the George Floyd incident of 2020 thought we had seen the worst of America’s police and their inhuman treatment of its Black citizens.
At first sight of that barbaric police video camera footage of the ruthless killing of Ronald Greene, one could’ve correctly concluded ‘you haven’t seen the worst of it…’ The subsequent release of additional police camera images, and reaction of his mother, sister and other family members, as well as his legal representatives spoke volumes.
It’s no surprise that so many Black men are being hunted and killed by U.S. police these days.
A recently released book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, by Professor Carol Anderson Professor of African American Studies at Emory University enlightens with this, her latest literary work.
It speaks to what seems to a new (historical) phenomenon.
But as she explains in a lengthy, fulfilling and enlightening discussion on Democracy Now, Thursday, June 3, guns have always been and continues to be essential in the policing of Black people during slavery and today.
The recurring shootings of Black men, and women, in America
are not new, just a 21st century continuation (uptick) of American history (of controlling the slaves – Black people – being played out.
Google and listen to Democracy Now, the June 3 edition on CKUT radio.
Listen and learn, as the saying goes.
