|
No one should be a victim of crime, much less committed
by those who profess to be victimized by a racially-based
society but nonetheless they engage in heinous acts against
their fellow-oppressed people! Go figure.
That makes no sense and it shows that some people are
without conscience or care as to the mayhem that they
inflict on others and then they try to blame such hateful
conduct on the "system" or as we used to say in the day,
"The Man."
It is a far stretch of a fanciful imagination for a
black criminal to justify wanton acts of crime against black
senior citizens or black youths or the terrorizing of black
communities and to do so under the guise that they are
oppressed and thus they are acting out their oppression by
criminal behavior.
Let's be totally and brutally transparent on this issue.
If you are oppressed by the "system" or "The Man,” that is
not your cue or your right or your justification to sell
heroin in the streets or to do drive-by shootings or to
pillage central city stores.
Do not make criminal thugs out to be the proverbial
Robin Hood who takes from the rich so he can give to the
poor.
For those who are truly concerned with the grim
realities of the criminal justice system, please read the
brilliant book, The New Jim Crow by Michelle
Alexander. It is a rough book to read because of what it
says and how it profoundly illustrates how precarious and
grim our situation is in America vis a vis the mis aligned
criminal justice system.
No one with two working brain cells can "pooh-pooh" the
viciousness of many of the killings and shootings of black
males by white police officers or the suspect deaths of
black people in jails and prisons and with the findings
invariably stating: unknown assailant...no probable cause
for an indictment.
Those same words were used during times of terror of
black people both in the South and in the Up South (North)
when "unknown" people took justice into their own hands and
black people were lynched or mutilated or mysteriously
disappeared under questionable circumstances.
Those circumstances included mobs rushing local jails
and absconding with the black prisoner who was later found
lynched or drowned or simply disappeared.
Space does not allow for me to even slightly venture
into the juvenile court justice system and the public
schools wherein black kids are stigmatized from an early age
and are put on the conveyor belt to Juvie Court and later to
jails and prisons.
I understand the anger and angst regarding the slogan
#"Black Lives Matter!...but
if we are going to have a honest dialogue about lives that
matter and which are black, we must allow some embarrassing
discussions about: abortions in the black community and any
abusive homes out of which some black children must navigate
and still hope to emerge half way sane.
What about black abortions you ask? Simple. A life is
a life. A black life is a life. Abortion destroys that life
in the womb. That life did not have a chance to see the
light of day but yet does it not matter?
Be it Planned Parenthood or other facilities that did
or may have performed health care services for women, unless
you see abortion as a danger to black life, you are not
being honest.
Unless you see child abuse and hunger and lack of
proper medical care for black kids as being a critical part
of the discussion that Black Lives Matter...you are in
denial and are focusing only on the media-profiled cases of
white cop kills black man.
Unless you can take on the public school systems that
fail to teach black kids but rather socially promotes them
upward and then outward to a society that they are ill
prepared to successful navigate, black lives do not matter.
Unless you are willing as a mother or as a father to
bring black babies into this world and to love and nurture
them in a family unit and to respect them as a person made
in the image of God, black lives do not matter.
Unless you are willing to give information so that
criminals who are black can be held accountable for their
despicable acts towards other people, including people of
color aka: black on black crime, black lives do not matter
to you.
So, please do not get caught up in the hoopla about
#Black Lives Matter! unless and until those who are the
movers and shakers behind that slogan are willing to
enlarge the circle of discussion to include correcting the
above scenarios.
As an attorney who is engaged in the criminal justice
system both in the adult and the juvenile courts, it is sad
and dispiriting to see so many black men and other people of
color coming into the court system and being shipped out to
jails and prisons.
Understand that our ancestors who toiled both in abject
poverty as slaves and
who championed the later civil rights movement did not
engage in such nefarious conduct that would cause such harm
by us and on us.
There is blame galore to share with and about the
"system" and with those who blame the "system" for their
every ache and ill so that they fall prey to corrupt
thinking and act out their inner rage against fellow black
people.
That is wrong. No if's and but's about it because there
are times when we are our own worse enemy and I believe that
if a person does not respect his or herself and act
accordingly, why should others respect you?
#Black Lives Matter! but only if we first matter to
ourselves.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at
tolliver@juno.com
|
