Unheard behind the screams of police brutality and Black Live matter are the gunshots fired at Police Officers and silence from the White House as Obama pretends everything is fine. In spite of more officers being killed by ambush, gunned down on the street while on duty there are cries of abuse of power and idiots trying to record these abuses. With a snippet from a cellphone recording, Officers are tried in the court of public opinion.
How long until the protectors start pushing back?
In Baltimore, complaints of oppressive policing policies resulted in riots that the Mayor sanctioned and ordered police not to respond. In the aftermath, the police gave the service that the community demanded and violent crime soared. The backlash? Complaints that the police were providing less service to black communities because of racial motivation.
Just in the month of February we have had a run of tragedy in the policing community. Where is the resulting protest? What about the condemnation of the acts where the perpetrator states that the act was intended as reprisal against police?
For our Blue Family, we have done what we always do. We gather in our circles, closing ranks to protect each other as best we can, knowing that we are all vulnerable. Still, we endure. Still, we patrol the most violent and dangerous areas of cities like Detroit, Chicago, Los Angles and Philadelphia. We show restraint more often than not. For how much longer?
It feel like we are the guard dogs, being teased and beaten. We try to remain loyal because it’s not everyone who joins in the abuse. Not everyone joins in the abuse, but almost no one helps protect us either. We loose a little trust everyday, just a small part withdraws. We are less likely to take risks for others because everyone is starting to look like our tormentors. When we do act, we are hounded by people threatening us, our lives and livelihoods. Why act when it’s easier to just clean up the mess and not take the risk.
There is s Thin Blue Line of man and women sworn to fight to protect others, to risk that other might live better. On one side are the peaceful citizens in need of protection. On the other side of the line are the criminals and predators who would attack them. More people cross the line everyday. Not because they are preying on the weak and innocent but because they have started attacking the line. We represent less than 1% of the population and we are under attack. How much longer before we are reduced to protecting ourselves more than the weak and innocent?
The New Word Wars 
If you Believe that All Lives Matter, You Must Believe that Black Lives Matter.
If your response to Black Lives Matter is that all lives matter, you are lying either to yourself or to the world. The only rational response of a person who believes that all lives matter is to be angry because Black Lives Matter. All lives matter; granted, stipulated, broadcast to the world and blazed across the sky in neon colors. All lives matter, so how can you not believe that Black Lives Matter.
Black lives in America matter, because not all lives in America are the same. The statistics are there for anybody to see. The history is there for anybody to study. For more than 200 years, Black lives in America have not mattered as much as White lives in America. If you believe that all lives matter, and you are not angry that all lives are not the same in America, you are either a coward or you are too stupid to understand the problem.
When I was a boy in South Mississippi, 9 or 10 years old, my parents were divorced. My mother was a barmaid or stripper or who knows what. We were dirt poor. Whatever my mother was doing, it didn’t pay enough for us to live in our own home or even to live with our mother all the time. We lived for the most part in a place called North Gulfport with a friend who agreed to keep us while my mother worked. North Gulfport was a Black community on the North side of Gulfport, Mississippi. There were four siblings; I was the oldest. We were the only white residents of North Gulfport. We weren’t there long. A year or so, and then the economic tides changed, and we moved on. While I was in North Gulfport, I was a second class citizen. I was hated, despised, and attacked for the color of my skin. One group of boys tried to blind me, another hunted me through the woods. I heard shotgun pellets pass my ears before I had hair on my balls. I was beaten and chased and hated while I lived in North Gulfport. I was despised by many, but not by all, for the color of my skin, and then we moved on.
I did not understand the significance of this for decades. We moved on. We moved out of North Gulfport. In Gulfport, we were still poor, white trash. In Orange Grove and Saucier, we were still poor, white trash. To many of my own family, we were poor, white trash, but we were white. I was no longer a second class citizen. I was despised for my ignorance and poverty and for the filth that I lived in, but I was not despised for the color of my skin. We moved on. I was still ignorant and poor, but we no longer lived in filth. There were ups and downs. There are no happy memories of my childhood, but we moved on. The day came when I moved on. I was no longer a child; now I was a man. I slowly shed my ignorance. I fought for decades not only to have an education, but even to learn what an education is or where and how one procures an education. I earned a degree; I learned to think. I eventually earned a doctorate. For a time, I even shed my poverty and lived in the upper middle class.
I am not the first to have walked that path. Many have walked that path before me and shed their ignorance and their poverty. Many have done it and worn every shade of skin. Many have done it, but there is a difference when your skin is white and you do it in America. All I had to do was move. When we left North Gulfport, my second class citizenship vanished. I was still poor, white trash. I was low class, but I wasn’t second class. My family learned a little; we earned a little more money; we moved again. Nobody knew us. We might be poor and ignorant, but we weren’t poor white trash. Every step of the way, all I had to do was move. My white skin and my newly learned manners where all I needed to move up in society. That is the difference in America. The problem is not that people of color can’t move up in our society. The problem is that in addition to all the problems that anyone moving up in American society must face, people who are not white, face one more.
In America, race still matters. Race in America is a better predictor of social and economic factors than virtually anything else. Race is the best predictor of an American’s level of education, wealth, and happiness. Race predicts where Americans live, how Americans live, how long Americans live better than any other attribute across the populations of Americans. White skin predicts a greater likelihood of education, wealth and happiness. Black skin predicts a greater likelihood of incarceration, poverty and misery.
If you believe that all lives matter, you should be angry that all lives are not equal in America. When you hear that Black Lives Matter, and you respond that All Lives Matter, you are either a coward, a bigot or an ass. It is impossible to be an American and believe that all lives matter without being angry because Black Lives Matter.
LikeLike