SAVAGE INEQUALITIES: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE DESTINIES OF BLACK AND WHITE PEOPLE
He suffered as the flesh of his body trembled and the sustained pressure of asphyxiation brought forth a challenge to the nation. The sweat of death surfaced on his forehead, but it was his death that brought to life a movement. The indictments of Floyd’s killers comforted the public sentiments, yet it was not in whole the issue of their hardened minds or lay some of the blame on the police department. It had ample warning. Two of the patrolmen had been given multiple reprimands and appeared to derive gratification from abusive use of force. The Minnesota police offered no effective acts of prevention intended to guarantee citizen safety.
The police department did nothing except issue admonishments to offenders while other officers got the message the department tolerates racists. Other officers got the message it’s okay to use racial slurs, to use excess force, to use racial profiling. Not only that, but it’s also okay to do it in front of your fellow officers. Why be concerned? Internal affairs will keep it internal. Investigators will conceal officer errors, misconducts, or crimes, including police brutality. The blue wall will shield bad cops from criminal penalties. Not that they really have anything to fear, anyway. As long as crime isn’t apparent, as long as the streets are safe, as long as abuses by police officers happen in poor neighborhoods, instead of the suburbs, we’re content to look away.
That’s what the officer offenders count on, that our failure to police them manifests in society’s indifference or, rather, our acceptance of their methods. We aren’t just looking at racism. We are looking at cold-blooded murder. Now is the moment to send a clear and unambiguous message to every police officer, good or bad, that we will not tolerate hate crimes. That we will punish every abuse. And you can do it now by demanding those who violate procedures that result in the death of citizens and harm innocent people will be punished with the most extreme punishments under the law. The
The Fourth Amendment of the Constitution recognizes our right to be secure in our persons and protected from unreasonable seizure. No police officer can take those rights from us. Not unless we give them away. The lawless authority of Donald Trump is insisting that we take our rights away, to provoke protesters in order to have agents of government assault citizens exercising their rights who are exercising his vision and not the vision of the Founding Fathers. Trump is pretending to sell democracy and is selling another. In any legitimate realm of justice, his actions would be castigated and he would be removed for abuse of power.
It must strike many as being hypocritical for an administration to hold the Second Amendment as sacred while brutalizing those who are exercising their right to the First Amendment. Yet, the president shows little inclination to address this matter and sometimes seems rather puzzled when it has been brought up. In all cases, he gives the distinct impression that such inquiries about this comparison are not welcome. It must strike many as being hypocritical for an administration to hold the Second Amendment as sacred while brutalizing those who are exercising their right to the First Amendment. Yet, the president shows little inclination to address this matter and sometimes seems rather puzzled when it has been brought up. In all cases, he gives the distinct impression that such inquiries about this comparison are not welcome.
When the Government’s purposes are intended to do right by the people, men born into freedom are cautious and predisposed to repel the attack ideas and assaults on their liberty by those who claim power over the people. If history has taught Americans nothing more in the last four years, it is where ignorance is our leader, there is no possibility of real goodwill between the people. This is nothing short of a tragedy, as we must bear witness to day-to-day realities of life within the fumes of hate that have clouded this country’s ability to hold claims upon each other’s loyalty as human beings. For this reason, there is a population of white nationalists who are attempting to listen very carefully to and whenever possible, let the judgment repeated Donald Trump’s voice leads them to use irreparable harm to the lives of people of color. Some elements of power cultivate corruption and it is up to the American people to ensure that one branch of government does not assume absolute power that corrupts absolutely.
Any fool can find his way to an ideologically dense audience while exposing the nakedness of his own ignorance. He will blame the victims for their misfortunes. He is oblivious to dignity and lacks a constructive imagination; he exists in a state of constant and unavoidable denseness; he depends on his masters, who instructs him without his own rod and chemical spray because he is relying on the fool to bring his own with his demanding words and unjustified indignation. Unscrupulous critics create the unaccepted norms of behavior that humiliates, belittles, or degrades the target of bullying or violence. The fool listens. This point-to-point communication is kindled intolerance and directed towards the victims of racial prejudice and bigotry.
However, a fool’s life cannot “be lived” by those who lead. That consoling hope that a fool’s existence will serve some meaningful purpose by preserving racial purity, for example limiting the “invasion” of undesirable Africans, Arabs, Eastern European Jews, Asians, and other not-fully-white “social inferiors.” Toxic leaders feed this idea by persuading fools that others do not belong.” Unwisely repeating a historical manifesto offering a litany of grievances about blacks and Mexicans, immigration and Islam — its declaration of policy and aims, while preparing for potential attacks against minorities.
Support for such social corruption and the policy to degrade people of color was not initiated or supported by an act of Congress. Racism was legalized with the stroke of the executive pen. used to exercise lawless authority. A simple, oil-filled instrument is used unpardonably to create the emergence of illogical reasoning for writing death sentences for those seeking gender equality, this nation’s protection, to erase religious rights, and to penalize groups of brown and black people. At this moment, when pockets of our nation are suffering an open and aggressive attack on minority human rights, we by necessity must be voices of truth for these who have been silenced by death. We must raise our voices for those who never had the chance to say, “Why have you sentenced me to die?” Why did you orphan my children and re-define their lives? My life, which was not yours to take, and then to conceal my murder with lies that gave the appearance of reasonable cause? You follow the voices of those who celebrate the massacre of over 300 black people in Tulsa, Oklahoma. How many more do you expect to celebrate?
Stephen Miller, Trump’s brainchild of the “Convention for Torture”, is the pen-pusher that authors the chronicles of genocide. Miller was more than likely born with a silver chain in his mouth and rattled it when he turned back decency and democracy back for several decades. Through his injudiciousness and lack of character, he has navigated an enormous boat of bigotry into a terrible shipwreck, creating a social policy in which he has stage-managed child abuse of black and brown children into cages like animals. If justice was properly served, his most minor offense would be the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in pursuit of political aims, or in simpler terms, terrorism.
Those seeking sanctuary cannot place trust in a system that conforms to a set of standard reasons, expectations, cultural and societal explanations for a given preference to protect human rights objectively. Again, many things we need can wait. People who die based on color and vulnerability cannot. Speech is our second possession, consistency is our third. However, faith in the movement is the first. It is the most viable mechanism of succeeding in a mission that has not achieved its desired aim. There is no greater possession that requires a mechanism or a system of parts throughout the country that brings protest out to the streets. Don’t ignore the impulse; it would be like fearing a flood that surges up in my throat.
“In a country where there is no distinction of class,” Lord Acton wrote of the United States 130 years ago, “a child is not born to the station of its parents, but with an indefinite claim to all the prizes that can be won by thought and labor. It is in conformity with the theory of equality to give as near as possible to every youth an equal state in life.” Americans, he said, “are unwilling that any should be deprived in childhood of the means of competition.” it is hard to read these words today without a sense of irony and sadness.” Should black and brown people receive less than do “similar students” who live elsewhere? The inequity is clear and their complaints are real. Parents are disappointed. They are angry. They are sad. It’s amazing to me that these children ever make it with the obstacles they face. There’s a feeling of despair. The parents of these children want the same things for their children that the parents in the suburbs want. Drugs or violence are not the cause of this. They are the symptoms. Nonetheless, they’re used by people in the suburbs and the affluent people in Manhattan use such things as another reason to keep children of poor people at a distance. But let’s get real. With less than 5 percent of the world’s population but nearly 25 percent of its incarcerated population, the United States imprisons more people than any other nation in the world — largely due to the war on drugs.
Misguided drug laws and harsh sentencing requirements have produced profoundly unequal outcomes for people of color. Although rates of drug use and sales are similar across racial and ethnic lines, black and Latino people are far more likely to be criminalized than white people. Research shows that prosecutors are twice as likely to pursue a mandatory minimum sentence for black people as white people charged with the same offense. Among people who received a mandatory minimum sentence in 2011, 38% were Latino and 31% were black. Today’s media stories about drug users employ “colorblind” racism buoyed by the white privilege that is equally potent. Under color-blind racism, the maintenance of white privilege is done in ways that defy facile racial readings. Race is seldom mentioned explicitly in stories about drug use by white people. Indeed, being unmarked is a hallmark of whiteness:
Oppression is the friend of liars for terrorism, sabotage, mayhem, and targeting to eliminate the opportunities for people of color to systematically create a movement built on a consistent determination, without elements of fear which the tools of repression desire to nurture. At this moment, there is an aggressive and aggressive attack on minority human rights, We must be the direct voices of truth for those who can no longer speak for themselves. Many things we need can wait. People of color cannot.
President Trump praised the use of tear gas and other mandates of excessive force to disperse Minneapolis protesters, calling it a “beautiful scene” and describing the National Guard’s actions “like a knife cutting butter.” The butter Trump was looking to cut black people. He forgot that butter is not black.
The fact is, America’s political forces are taking us backward, closer to that brutal ethos we first rejected 100 years ago. We’ve descended into darkness when we should be going upward together toward the light.
Khalilah Sabra, Executive Director
Muslim Americans for Social Justice and Diversity (MASJD) advances and recognized the full and equal participation of all people in civic, economic, and cultural life in the United States of America through civic participation, education, and advocacy. We believe that mutual respect, appreciation for diversity, support for multiculturalism will eliminate an unsound social policy that allows some to look at others as aliens.
