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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region Forums'We are being killed because we're black and because we refuse to be subservient to angry white men'
What No One is Saying About the Killings of Blacks in Americaby Benjamin Dixon
____This is what no one is talking about with regard to the killings of black people. Some white Americans feel as though they have the right to confront us and, if we do not cower before their demandsif we dont humble ourselves and complythen they become infuriated. How dare we not instantly obey the words and instructions of these angry white men? How dare we respond to them as if we are equal. How dare we demand respect not only from thugs on the street, but also from thugs with badges. No one is talking about this because we arent ready to confront the glaringly obvious vestiges of Jim Crow: the idea that black people should be subservientknow their place, hold their head down, and say, Yes Sir and No Sir whenever being instructed by any white person who wants to teach us a lesson...
Our leaders ignore this. Our media ignores this. Our justice system doesnt even consider this. All our system considers is, if at the moment of confrontation, whether the person who shot the gun feared for his or her life. And in this regard, black people are stripped of our right to be human. We are stripped of our right to get angry when we feel as though we have been mistreated and disrespected. No one cares if little people with Napoleon complexes come to assert their need for domination over a group of people whom they feel should be subservient to them. And when they find men and women who refuse to bow down, they kill them. And what does America say about this? It tells black people that we should have complied.
The most painful example of institutionalized racism is the fact that our legal system pays little, if any, regard to this truthespecially when the victim is black and dead. A dead black man can have any narrative necessary created about him. It certainly helps that America is so ready to believe that every black man is a potential thug. This helps them conclude in their minds, without any question, what happened...
We must stop minimizing these murders to simply being about black and white and we must unpack what that actually means. While there are some who are killed simply because their skin color is black, most of the cases we are seeing are deeper than that. We are being killed because we are black and because we refuse to be subservient to angry white men who feel they should have authority over us. We are being killed because we are not cowering to the demands of small people with guns who want to be free to speak to us in any manner they wish. We are being killed because we have the nerve to declare our right on this earth to be men, to be human beings, and to be respected as human beings.
read more: http://thebenjamindixonshow.com/what-no-one-is-saying-about-the-killings-of-blacks-in-america/
W.E.B.B.I.E DuBois @fivefifths
Excerpt from Baldwin's "A Report from Occupied Territory", written in 1966
ron fullwood @ronfullwood
madokie
(51,076 posts)malaise
(269,054 posts)for truth
jwirr
(39,215 posts)treating our president simply because he is black. We are seeing that there are cities like Ferguson MO run by white officials and police departments in which this type of brain dead authority is used every day. I suspect that if one looks deep enough into the SC killing that we would find the same kind of community. Jim Crow enforced by cold blooded murder because the whites in the community somehow think they are better than others.
I wonder how many communities like this exist in the USA? Too many for sure.
awoke_in_2003
(34,582 posts)could you imagine 47 democratic senators going around president Bush to communicate with the leader of another country? Could you imagine this happening to Clinton? I can't.
butterfly77
(17,609 posts)libdem4life
(13,877 posts)I have no way to understand at a cellular level. But I know for a fact that the MSM loves drama and videos/cellphones/surveillance cameras provide a tantalizing backdrop for news stories. The closet of police abuse has opened and allowed a bit of light.
I am independently promoting a website I stumbled across called www.wewatchcops.org It is providing organizing, fund-raising for cameras, and no one can deny that the lowly cell phone is more powerful than a loaded gun. You can't kill a video...especially one that's streaming...which I hope comes soon.
Slager may not/won't likely get the punishment he so richly deserves, but that video will last in perpetuity, thanks to a brave young man. Very smart of the family to take it to the New York Times.
MrScorpio
(73,631 posts)irisblue
(32,980 posts)Response to bigtree (Original post)
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rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)Rex
(65,616 posts)Name removed...I am looking at YOU!
Response to bigtree (Original post)
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zentrum
(9,865 posts)Same reason they've tried in the particular way they have, to destroy Obama.
The entire Tea Party arose out of angry white menbeing unable to bear seeing him in a position of strength and power.
WillTwain
(1,489 posts)Hatred of racists is a bigger part of what defines America. Most people of all races (whites included) despise racism. We all need to separate the majority of whites from the angry white men. There are more angry white men - angry at racists - than there are angry white racists.
Response to WillTwain (Reply #15)
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mountain grammy
(26,624 posts)For this TRUTH
"We are being killed because we have the nerve to declare our right on this earth to be men, to be human beings, [and] to be respected as human beings.
Well worth reading the whole piece.
brer cat
(24,577 posts)Thanks for posting, bigtree. K&R
HipChick
(25,485 posts)White America is either in denial or naive..
SusanCalvin
(6,592 posts)onecaliberal
(32,864 posts)BumRushDaShow
(129,096 posts)that this mentality keeps getting passed on from generation to generation and is reinforced by the continued negative stereotypes promulgated by the mass media.
stage left
(2,962 posts)U4ikLefty
(4,012 posts)phil89
(1,043 posts)Instructions?? What is the alternative?
heaven05
(18,124 posts)death or grievous injury. Period. Even for a broken tail light.
Novara
(5,843 posts)Underneath white superiority is the feeling that other races aren't even human, because only the white race can be. That's the mindset that enslaves people of color and treats them like animals - in their mind, they are less than human.
I grew up in a racist household. Then I grew up. I saw what racism is, close-up. Thinking of other races as "other" denies them their humanity. The "other" is less than human.
It is to weep. There can never be enough reparations that can possibly make up for that.
And yet it continues.
Response to Novara (Reply #27)
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Chemisse
(30,813 posts)Is because they want to have power over others. They want people to fear and respect them.
Add racism to that and the results are explosive and deadly.
AgingAmerican
(12,958 posts)The assholes from high school become cops.
Oktober
(1,488 posts)beachbum bob
(10,437 posts)...cops already are on a power trip and if any minority shows the slightest bit of resistance to that attitude....lights out
until the public...including the white public starts to raise hell about it....nothing will change. As for minorities, they need to vote, they need to vote, they need to vote
rid their towns of white control and start exerting their own power over the police.
that is in their hands to do. .We saw what happen in ferguson....elect people to represent YOU
socialist_n_TN
(11,481 posts)And if you dig deeper it gets even worse. For the masses of black people the stats show that they are TWICE as likely to be unemployed, SIX times poorer than non-Latino white people, last hired, first fired during recoveries and the inevitable capitalist downturns. THAT economic cost is a violence perpetrated by the system that, although not as dramatic and final as a cop's bullet, is consistent and daily lived.
It's been over fifty years since the deck chairs on the Titanic of capitalism RE: civil rights for POC were rearranged, AND NOTHING SUBSTANTIAL HAS CHANGED FOR THE MASSES. And it's because capitalism as a system CANNOT change racism because racism results in super exploitation of a subset of the proletariat (black workers) which results in super profits for the owners. Malcolm X said it best right before he was assassinated:
"You can't have capitalism without racism". To get rid of racism, you must get rid of capitalism.
heaven05
(18,124 posts)libodem
(19,288 posts)DesertDiamond
(1,616 posts)little children. It doesn't happen. The human spirit never dies, and those who are oppressed WILL fight back. It's the same in the black communities where the police are like an abusive occupying army. Black people will not take it forever, and I don't blame them when they fight back.