Life, Death and Racism
By Solomon Comissiong
January 8th 2011 will long be a day marked in infamy throughout the United States. Friends and family of the six Americans whose lives were tragically and needlessly ripped away, by a crazed 22-year old, may never recover emotionally. 19 people in all were shot, six fatally, by a mentally disturbed young man. This horrific incident cast sadness across the nation. The US corporate media, understandably, focused the bulk of their attention on Tucson, Arizona where the senseless crime occurred. Millions keep the victims in their hearts and minds. Many Americans rightfully mourned the dead and continue to pray for the safe recovery for those who survived their gun shots, including a US Congresswoman who sustained a devastating gunshot to her brain. This heinous crime took the lives of six people, including a nine year-old girl. This, in and of itself, is a tragedy beyond comprehension. The nation now tries to grip the gravity of this event and learn enough from it so that it may never happen again. Lawmakers will undoubtedly deliberate the ramifications of loosely kept gun “control” laws. The dreadful event of January 8th 2011 will not soon be forgotten, nor should it be. As reflection sets within, the author cannot help but ponder myriad disgraceful social realities that continue to plague America and her most disenfranchised. What kind of improved society would the US have if the majority of its citizens mourned the violent loss of innocent life in the same manner they did on 1-08-2011? What kind of world would it be in most Americans mourned the violent loss of innocent life regardless of what country they came from? These, indeed, are questions seldom reflected upon by many white Americans; however these same questions are often thought about by people of color throughout the globe.
Each year within the United States there are myriad black and brown skinned men and women who lose their lives despite being unarmed and innocent. In the black community we call this police brutality or police terror. It unfortunately has long become something that is commonplace within the stained fabric of America. There are far too many instances of police brutality for this author to mention throughout this essay; however I will give but a few examples. They are far from isolated or novel situations. On November 25, 2006 a young man named Sean Bell and two of his friends were shot 50 times by a team of plain clothed and undercover New York Police officers. Their crime was that of celebrating Bell’s bachelor party. None of the three young black men were armed in any way, shape, form or fashion, however they were gunned down like wild animals in cold blood. Sean Bell’s friends were severely wounded. Sean Bell was not so fortunate—he was killed. This crime in any sane or just society left Bell’s finance and child without a future husband and father.
On April 25, 2008 all three trigger happy police officers were acquitted by an amoral judge named Arthur J. Cooperman. The three officers were allowed to go free and live the rest of their lives; meanwhile Sean Bell’s life is no more. The black community in New York was rightfully outraged and protested. Black people throughout the nation were outraged. However, white America, as a whole was virtually silent. No 24 hour news coverage and no nationally televised memorial featuring the then US president George W. Bush. US senator and presidential candidate, Barack Obama, callously said, “We’re a nation of laws, so we respect the verdict that came down….Resorting to violence to express displeasure over a verdict is something that is completely unacceptable and is counterproductive.”Who was Mr. Obama to say, “we respect the verdict that came down”? Barack Obama then, like now, never advocated for the black community. He has done everything he can to distance himself from the black community in order to curry favor with white America whose votes he was chasing after like cops chase black men. Given this blatant reality, who the hell did he think he was speaking for a bereaving black community? It was within their constitutional rights to assemble and peaceably protest the crime as well as the subsequent unjust verdict. There was no violence or rioting whatsoever. His comments proved to be as stereotypically prejudicial as that of many white Americans regarding black people. This fact makes the comparison between Obama and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. all the more absurd and insulting. Would Mr. Obama tell Dr. King not to protest in places like Montgomery and Birmingham, Alabama, over the reprehensible and inhumane treatment of African-Americans? Based on his repugnant and insensitive comments—-he probably would. Least we forget that it was President Obama who recently referred to protesters in Baltimore as “thugs”. They were protesting the brutal murder of Freddie Gray, however the barbaric cops who murdered Mr. Gray were never called “thugs”.
In the early morning of January 1, 2009, in Oakland, California a young (unarmed) black man by the name of Oscar Grant was shot in the back by a BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) police officer as he lay face down (handcuffed) on the cold pavement. He was shot execution style. He was pronounced dead later that morning. Despite the crime being filmed on two camera phones; the murderous police officer named Johannes Mehserle, was given a two year prison sentence with double credit for time already served. This reduced his pathetic sentence to 292 days for the 146 days he spent in jail during the trial. He, in essence, received less prison time than did the NFL football player Michael Vick—-for fighting pit bull dogs. Mehserle is eligible for release sometime in January 2011. Eyewitnesses even saw one of Mehserle’s goon police partners punch Oscar Grant in the face prior to handcuffing him as well as Mehserle calling Grant a “nigger”. Insult to injury is the fact that there were no African-Americans whatsoever on the jury during this farce of a trial.
Oscar Grant, like Sean Bell, is now dead. He was also a father. Where was the national outcry and nationwide mourning for the needless and violent loss of this man’s young life? Where was the corporate media covering this tragic story round the clock? They were nowhere to be found, much like justice in the black community. Despite the consistent actions of committed activists trying to bring attention to the case, and more importantly justice to the verdict, America did not collectively mourn the death of Oscar Grant.
On May 16, 2010 a seven year old girl from Detroit, Michigan was shot and killed by police officers in a botched raid. Blood thirsty Detroit police officers “mistakenly” and carelessly raided the home where seven year-old Aiyana Mo’Nay Stanley Jones lay sleeping. The Detroit Police officers claimed they were looking for the suspect of an alleged crime. That suspect was nowhere to be found. However, after the police fired a flash grenade in the home, they entered the front door and little Aiyana was shot in the neck by Officer Joseph Weekley. Coincidentally Officer Weekley is one of several police officers who faced charges for the 2007 raid of a Detroit house where he allegedly shot two dogs and pointed his gun at children. Needless to say he has yet to meet justice in that case or the murder of the seven year-old black girl, Aiyana Stanley Jones. As a matter of fact Weekley is now back on the Detroit police force.
Do you think there was a nationwide outcry riddled on every corporate news network for the violent loss of this innocent life? If you said yes, think again! The story received cursory coverage on “news” networks, at best. Not a damn word from President Obama condemning this heinous crime. Nothing! Little Aiyana is dead, just like Sean Bell and Oscar Grant, Mike Brown, Walter Scott, Freddie Gray, Eric Garner and countless others.
These crimes are far from novel in America’s poorest communities of color. If they seem novel to you, then clearly have little day-to-day contact with these communities or with the people live in them. If you regularly watch (are programmed) by corporate media you also would have no idea the kind of routine terror black people face by way of many police officers (overseers). However, it is simply not just the corporate media or the cops’ fault that these kinds of crimes go unchecked every year in America, there is a much bigger culprit that sets all of these things in motion. Institutional racism and white supremacy work hand-in-hand in creating an ongoing system of injustice that disproportionately plagues communities of color. This is why the innocent loss of black life frequently goes overlooked by the nation, as a whole. An institutionally racist “justice” system creates the chessboards that use people of color as expendable pawns, day in and day out. The corporate media serve as a powerful apparatus within this diabolical system. They over represent people of color as perpetrators, all the while under-representing those same people as victims, especially when they are victims of unfettered police brutality. This has irrefutably created a warped national consensus that immediately gives the benefit of doubt to the police officer whenever a case of brutality occurs. Like Pavlov’s dogs, “mainstream” America mindlessly salivates whenever the corporate media beckons them to think a certain way. It is all a tangled web masterminded to deceive, obfuscate, and isolate.
Much of America has lost its humanity. The elephant is in the room regardless of whether we acknowledge it or not—-America is a structurally racist nation. And like a cancer it continues to metastasize each day we ignore it. This societal apathy regarding the plight of black and brown people in America, and their unequal status, allows racial injustice to build momentum like a snowball—-a very large WHITE snowball. Understanding this ugly fact we can see why “mainstream” white America would not mourn the loss of innocent black life in the same manner they do the loss of innocent white life. In America there is no equality in those regards, thus the killing of dogs carries a stiffer sentence than does the coldblooded police murder of an unarmed young black man. This is also why in 2015 black people are paid 60 cents to every dollar a white person is paid. This is the unfortunate truth of life in the US, even in 2015, with no tangible change in sight. However, just imagine just for a moment—-what kind of society would it be if each life, regardless of color, were treated equally. And then imagine what kind of world it would be if Americans, as a whole, gave a damn even about the loss of innocent lives outside of her manufactured borders. If so, we might place equal emphasis on the over one million Iraqi civilians who have lost their lives in a illegal and US taxpayer funded war. We might even care about the tens of thousands of Afghan citizens who were mercilessly killed by way of indiscriminate US drone and air-strikes. And what if Americans, collectively, gave a damn and were outraged at the fact their their government levied harsh sanctions on Iraq in the mid 1990s thus preventing clean water and vital medicines to enter the country(Iraq)? Oh…by the way, these sanctions directly caused over 500,000 (half a million) Iraqi children to DIE! When the then US Secretary of State, Madeline Albright, was asked by 60 minutes’ reporter Lesley Stahl, “We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that’s more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it?”, her reprehensible response was, “I think this is a very hard choice, but the price–we think the price is worth it.” This just about sums up the sick social disease that plagues America from the inside out. When the US Secretary of State essentially justifies the direct killing of over 500,000 children in Iraq, without mass condemnation from the American masses; is a mark of the times that we may be living in a social hell. Perhaps one of the saddest thing about this…most of us do not even realize it.
If the vast majority of Americans truly were outraged, saddened and moved to some sort of progressive social action—undoubtedly it might be a much better world.
Solomon Comissiong is an educator, community activist, author, public speaker and the host of the Your World News media collective (www.yourworldnews.org). Solomon is the author of A Hip Hop Activist Speaks Out on Social Issues. He can be reached at: solo@yourworldnews.org
