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America Is Not For Black People - Greg Howard

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MHBDemon

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http://deadspin.com/america-is-not-for-black-people-1620169913

The worst part of outfitting our police officers as soldiers has been psychological. Give a man access to drones, tanks, and body armor, and he'll reasonably think that his job isn't simply to maintain peace, but to eradicate danger. Instead of protecting and serving, police are searching and destroying.

If officers are soldiers, it follows that the neighborhoods they patrol are battlefields. And if they're working battlefields, it follows that the population is the enemy. And because of correlations, rooted in historical injustice, between crime and income and income and race, the enemy population will consist largely of people of color, and especially of black men. Throughout the country, police officers are capturing, imprisoning, and killing black males at a ridiculous clip, waging a very literal war on people like Michael Brown.
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By all accounts, Brown was One Of The Good Ones. But laying all this out, explaining all the ways in which he didn't deserve to die like a dog in the street, is in itself disgraceful. Arguing whether Brown was a good kid or not is functionally arguing over whether he specifically deserved to die, a way of acknowledging that some black men ought to be executed.

To even acknowledge this line of debate is to start a larger argument about the worth, the very personhood, of a black man in America. It's to engage in a cost-benefit analysis, weigh probabilities, and gauge the precise odds that Brown's life was worth nothing against the threat he posed to the life of the man who killed him. It's to deny that there are structural reasons why Brown was shot dead while James Eagan Holmes—who on July 20, 2012, walked into a movie theater and fired rounds into an audience, killing 12 and wounding 70 more—was taken alive.
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I thought this paragraph was #truth.

To ascribe this entirely to contempt for black men is to miss an essential variable, though—a very real, American fear of them. They—we—are inexplicably seen as a millions-strong army of potential killers, capable and cold enough that any single one could be a threat to a trained police officer in a bulletproof vest. There are reasons why white gun's rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children's toys. Guns aren't for black people, either.
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Good article. Sadly nothing will change. Our criminal justice is supposedly innocent until proven guilty but police officers have free reign to execute the death penalty as they see fit and most Americans feel safer as a result.
 
I remember as a kid wanting to take that little orange piece off the tips of all my toy guns. They were pretty fucking hard to get off so I don't know that I ever did, but it strikes me that I probably could have walked through my entire neighborhood as a kid with toy rifle in hand, toy grenades on belt, toy knife in my boot, and it wouldn't have drawn any attention.
 
Deacon923 said:
I thought this paragraph was #truth.
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A friend of mine shared a news story on Facebook about a black guy with a 5.0 GPA going to an Ivy in the Fall. The caption described him as "this thuggish looking young black man."

He had long dreads and wore a cap. Nothing particularly unusual.
 
Coming back to this

There are reasons why white gun's rights activists can walk into a Chipotle restaurant with assault rifles and be seen as gauche nuisances while unarmed black men are killed for reaching for their wallets or cell phones, or carrying children's toys. Guns aren't for black people, either.
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Can you imagine the collective freak out if 10 or 12 black guys in dashikis and long black leather coats wearing berets ( I think that just about covers every angry black man wardrobe sterotype) and carrying AR 15s strolled into a Panera in the University Park area of Dallas? Hurray, Texas Open Carry!!

More and more, I'm beginning to believe America is inherently racist.

Edited to add:
Ferguson has 3 black officers on it's roughly 60 man force. For a town that's 65% black.
 
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Spot the Wonder said:
Coming back to this



Can you imagine the collective freak out if 10 or 12 black guys in dashikis and long black leather coats wearing berets ( I think that just about covers every angry black man wardrobe sterotype) and carrying AR 15s strolled into a Panera in the University Park area of Dallas? Hurray, Texas Open Carry!!

More and more, I'm beginning to believe America is inherently racist.
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it took you this long?
 
I predict this thread is going to that a sharp turn by the end of the day when either or both of the mds decide to weigh in.
 
Spot the Wonder said:
Coming back to this



Can you imagine the collective freak out if 10 or 12 black guys in dashikis and long black leather coats wearing berets ( I think that just about covers every angry black man wardrobe sterotype) and carrying AR 15s strolled into a Panera in the University Park area of Dallas? Hurray, Texas Open Carry!!

More and more, I'm beginning to believe America is inherently racist.

Edited to add:
Ferguson has 3 black officers on it's roughly 60 man force. For a town that's 65% black.
Click to expand...

Don't know if you saw it but last week a 22 year old black man was killed in a Walmart. He was carrying a toy gun. A couple notified a cop. The cop shot first then told him to get on the ground. He was on the ground already because he was dead.

A toy gun. At Walmart.
 
America is very clearly racist. It goes too far beyond isolated incidents to be anything other than a structural problem. This is what happens when one group of people are predominantly brought here as property - and somehow it isn't overtly clear to nearly everyone that this still has very real impacts in 2014 in a variety of areas.
 
Police Officer Doesn’t See A Difference Between Black, Light-Skinned Black Suspects

FORT WAYNE, IN—Explaining that his sole concern is serving and protecting his community, Fort Wayne police officer Vincent Turner told reporters Wednesday that he does not see any difference between black and light-skinned black suspects. “As an officer of the law, I am committed to administering justice swiftly and even-handedly, regardless of whether the suspect has dark skin or really dark skin,” said Turner, adding that he has no problem giving a full pat-down to any potential criminal or hauling them down to precinct headquarters in the back of his patrol car, even if they are more of a light mocha color. “When you’re responding to reports of gunshots fired, or sprinting down an alleyway, you’re not thinking about where the suspect falls on the spectrum of African-American skin tones—you’re thinking about doing your job. Heck, the guy could be a very dark-looking Latino, for all I care—I treat every one of them the same. He’s still just a suspect to me.” Turner added that his dedication to upholding the law stems from a belief that all local residents should be able to walk their streets without fear, whether they come from an affluent white neighborhood or a working-class white neighborhood.
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