I don’t want to see anything that says “Police Lives Matter” in the next 24 hours.
Here’s the thing–Cop Lives Matter, or even All Lives Matter is a reaction to Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is different from both because, as one of my friends so pointedly put it, this follows 500 years of history where black lives didn’t matter.
We recently watched “Free State of Jones,” and my wife got to really see just how ugly that segment of American history was. The Jim Crow Laws, and the KKK come on the scene.
I read recently the rate killing of blacks by police have now matched the death rate by lynching during the Jim Crow era. I also read recently white supremacists and KKK members have been infiltrating police forces with the express purpose of killing blacks without repercussion. It doesn’t take the vast majority of cops; it just takes a critical mass willing to pull the trigger. We’ve passed that number.
Two deaths in two days of black men following police orders. Two deaths in two days that follow weeks and months and years of the same thing. So in Dallas, a couple of people decided enough is enough and started shooting back. Is anyone surprised somebody decide enough is enough? Make no mistake; this is civil war, and it’s not one we should be fighting. We already fought this war in the 1860s. We also fought it in 1960s.
Do police lives matter? Of course they do, and what happened this evening in Dallas breaks my heart. It makes me angry, but it’s not just the death of four police officers in an ambush, it’s also that the situation in this country has degraded so badly that somebody felt it necessary to climb on a roof and shoot cops like cans on the back fence.
This can’t go on. There has to be house cleaning in police departments. The KKK members and other white supremacists must be rooted out. Chiefs who allow such slaughter on their forces must be removed. There have to be consequences.
Did you know Arizona is attempting to pass a law making it illegal to take video of a police officer? What possible reason could be behind that bill other than to eliminate evidence against police officers behaving badly? It’s rampant in this state. Just look at Joe Arpiao and his racial profiling lawsuits.
I’m not even sure I have a point to all this, other than I thought after 150 odd years, we had finally gotten past all this. But, hatred is hard to kill. It hasn’t been that long since I heard somebody say the south will rise again. Problem is, this civil war has no Mason-Dixon line. It’s a civil war fought in the streets at night. In the daytime, we go to work, see the events on the news, and shake our heads wondering why there were more killings last night.
It’s because we’ve lost everything that had been won since 1965, and we seem to be on the edge of losing some of what had been won since 1865. This isn’t my America anymore. It’s turning into Abraham Lincoln’s America. That’s an America I want to stay in the history books. I’m afraid one day I’ll turn on the news and learn Neil DeGrasse Tyson was killed for driving while black.
As a nation, we haven’t really changed. Not one damn bit since 1865. The racism, the hatred, it’s been there the whole time. It only took putting a black man in the white house to bring it to the surface. I’m guessing the next four years will bring all the misogyny the surface.
Sometimes, I’m embarrassed to be American. We have a document, our constitution, that has been the template for many nations around the globe, and yet we can’t even live by the document we used to declare independence from Britain–We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal… It wasn’t believed in 1776, and it isn’t believed today.
And still, in the morning, I know my wall will be covered with “Police Lives Matters” memes. I know it, because a lot of people believe police lives matter more than black lives. They are the same people who rationalize a justification when police shoot a black man, regardless of his innocence or guilt.
What happened in Dallas was return fire. It isn’t right, but let’s recognize it for what it was. Racism is America’s national disease, and I’m afraid there may never be a cure.
