Current Events: Ferguson, and Police Brutality
8
What type a person deserves six bullets into their back? A war criminal? A serial killer? Or an unarmed black teenager? These questions have already been answered in the way society conducts itself today considering that, astonishingly enough, it is not war criminals or serial killers that are being barbarically executed. But it is our children. Our friends. Our siblings. Our parents. Our family being murdered ruthlessly in the streets. We are frustrated. We are tired. But most of all we are not free.
American society likes to imagine itself as being somewhat progressive, a mature adult who has since aged from the temper tantrums of slavery and the rebellious phase of Jim Crow and segregation to a sage grown person who has “been there” and “done that” with racism. However, most nonwhite folk know that is not the case. Every 28 hours a black person is killed by an American police officer. Every 28 hours another black person falls victim to a violent Anti-Black State that has convinced us that we were worthless since the moment we had arrived.
Many civil rights leaders and even the family of Michael Brown have offered solutions to the vast problem of State violence. But ultimately all the ideas are just superficial reform that fails to get to the core of our problems. Why waste our energy on reform efforts that will surely fail? Why waste our time pandering to cruel oppressors who relish at our death? The government has proven that even sensible things like body cameras on cops will fail because of country’s insistent need to commend Black death. Eric Garner has shown us this and even if body cameras are dispatched to every cop in America Lord knows that he will not be the last victim.