by Renee After | May 2020
I am angry. I am anguished. I am heartbroken. I am hallowed out.I am sick and tired of police needlessly killing black and brown people. Some police still see black men as threats, to brutalize, to contain, to remand. They have stereotyped our grandfathers, fathers, husbands, sons, and nephews, as monsters, subject to violence and death. They have killed our grandmothers, mothers, wives, daughters, and nieces. Every time I watch the video of George Floyd’s death, my heart weeps. Who in their right mind, kneels on another human’s neck and ignores desperate pleas of “I Can’t Breathe”? Where is the humanity of these white police officers? Policing should not be predicated on brutal force and a complete disdain for black life. White supremacy has no place in the criminal justice system, in government, in the White House, in the United States. Black lives matter every second, every minute, every hour, every day. A memoriam list of those unarmed black and brown people killed by the police, sheriff Deputies, and security guards.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [Policing] [Police Shootings] [History] [Systemic Racism] [-ing While Black] [Justice System]
by Connie Hassett-Walker | Updated June 2020
Outrage over racial profiling and the killing of African Americans by police officers and vigilantes in recent years helped give rise to the Black Lives Matter movement. But tensions between the police and black communities are nothing new. There are many precedents to the Ferguson, Missouri protests that ushered in the Black Lives Matter movement. Those protests erupted in 2014 after a police officer shot unarmed 18-year-old Michael Brown; the officer was subsequently not indicted.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [Policing] [Slavery] [Black Lives Matter] [History] [Systemic Racism] [White Supremacy] [White Culture] [White Privilege] [-ing While Black] [Civil War] [Racial Covenants] [Politics] [Justice System] [Police Shootings] [Implicit Bias]
by B Kean | July 2021
All this white and racist BS is all in your head, the murder of blacks is mainly by blacks against themselves! So Stfu you are an evil Democrat trying to destroy America (Karen N Post)!!! The white-mob-morality police had spoken. How dare I, a white man, question their resentment, their victimhood? The Karens are out there and many of you have had run-ins. Having never been “Karen’d,” I would watch in awe as others were verbally abused by the usually middle-aged women losing it over things that really had nothing to do with them. Karens get especially angry with Black people. They have a tremendous amount of resentment impacted inside of them that I am sure not even two or three colonics could dislodge. Recently, I wrote an article entitled I Have White Rage. Let me tell you, it brought out the racist cockroaches, alright. It even brought to my proverbial doorstep that very angry, and I don’t doubt, unstable, Karen whose post is up above here.
TAGS: [Collective Action] [2020’s] [White Supremacy] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [Systemic Racism] [Black Lives Matter] [Politics] [Calling Police] [White Defensiveness] [Assumptions]
by Allison Gaines | May 2021
Our nation is in the process of exchanging color-blind ideology with anti-racism. White people will have to take a good, hard look in the mirror and into their family albums. Some are afraid of the skeletons they will find, and others are leery of the theory that will make them take a look in the first place. White people want to focus on selected parts of American history, lionizing their role. Many choose to ignore that the gap between Black and white homeownership is wider than it was 50 years ago. Or that Black families have one-tenth the wealth as white ones. Currently, Black people are 3.25 times more likely to die in police encounters.
TAGS: [Individual Change] [2020’s] [History] [Policing] [White Privilege] [White Culture] [White Defensiveness] [White Supremacy] [White Blindness] [Denial] [Racial Covenants] [Housing] [Health Disparities] [Economics] [Politics] [Social Justice] [Definitions] [Intersectionality] [Colorblindness] [Tips-Dos/Don’ts] [CRT] [Accountability] [Slavery]
by Robert Williams | July 2021
I never thought I would be a cautionary tale. More than that, I never thought I’d have to explain to my daughters why their daddy got arrested in front of them on our front lawn. How does one explain to two little girls that a computer got it wrong, but the police listened to it anyway — even if that meant arresting me for a crime I didn’t commit? This is what happened to me: As I was getting ready to head home from work one day in January of 2020, my wife called me and told me that a police officer had called and said I needed to turn myself in. She was scared and confused. The officers called me next, but wouldn’t explain why I was supposed to turn myself in or what I was accused of, so I thought it was probably a prank. I couldn’t imagine what else it could be. But as I pulled up to my house, a Detroit police squad car was waiting for me. The squad car swooped in from behind to block my SUV — as if I would make a run for it. One officer jumped out and asked if I was Robert Williams. I said I was. He told me I was under arrest. By then, my wife, Melissa, was outside with our youngest in her arms, and my older daughter was peeking around my wife trying to see what was happening. I told my older daughter to go back inside, that the cops were making a mistake and that daddy would be back in a minute. But I wasn’t back in a minute. I was handcuffed and taken to the Detroit Detention Center.
TAGS: [Strategies] [2020’s] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [Policing] [Assumptions] [Politics]
By Renee Ater | May 2020
I am angry. I am anguished. I am heartbroken. I am hallowed out.I am sick and tired of police needlessly killing black and brown people. Some police still see black men as threats, to brutalize, to contain, to remand. They have stereotyped our grandfathers, fathers, husbands, sons, and nephews, as monsters, subject to violence and death. They have killed our grandmothers, mothers, wives, daughters, and nieces. Every time I watch the video of George Floyd’s death, my heart weeps. Who in their right mind, kneels on another human’s neck and ignores desperate pleas of “I Can’t Breathe”? Where is the humanity of these white police officers? Policing should not be predicated on brutal force and a complete disdain for black life. White supremacy has no place in the criminal justice system, in government, in the White House, in the United States. Black lives matter every second, every minute, every hour, every day. A list of names.
TAGS: [Racial Terrorism] [2020’s] [Black Lives Matter] [-ing While Black] [Systemic Racism] [White Culture] [White Supremacy] [Policing] [Police Shootings]