I was driving down Derry Street in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania,
on Tuesday, October 21, 2014, when I witnessed more than 20 Police Officers,
leap out of their cars and take off running after a young African American
male, who appeared to be no more than 16 years old. I don’t know what he did to generate this
kind of response, but whatever it was I am sure that he is in a heap of
trouble. This is the kind of scene that
I have witnessed all of my life, a young African American male being pursued,
tackled and then shackled, in full view of the community that love, hopes and
cries for him. This is a double-edge
sword for everyone involved. On one
hand we have a young African American male, usually from a financially poor
family, living in a single parent home, who is trying to fit-in to his tough,
crime-ridden environment and survive the daily grind without the benefit of
fully engaging in educational opportunities or social interactions offered in
the schools or community centers. He
appears to be conflicted about his identity.
He is disrespectful to most adults and anyone in authority. He is hard, cold and distant from his
emotional feelings, because he is “representing” a lifestyle that he can’t
define, but feels that he must embrace to survive. On the inside he feels that he is a “good
person” who is just misunderstood by people who don’t like his kind.
On the other hand, we have the men and women who represent
the “blue wall” of protection, commonly known as the police. They have become a military style force and
very aggressive against street criminals.
They feel justified, citing the type of weapons that many violent
criminals are using to terrorize and control the communities they target. The average American citizen has had enough
of the violent criminals that prey upon them.
There has been a loud out cry for greater police protection and harsher
mandatory sentences for criminals who use weapons or traffic drugs. The police response has been devastating to
young African American males. The prison
system has been called the new system of slavery in America. The image of Willie Horton, the convicted
criminal who was released from prison, only to commit another major crime, and
become the face of fear in America, continues to fuel the “fire this time.”
Far too often the person in the blue uniform is white and
the person in the shackles is brown. Far
too often the crime that has been committed is by a brown person against
another brown person. The arresting
officer, District Attorney, Judge, Jury, Prison Guard, and Probation Officer,
that has control of the brown person’s life, are usually white. The dirty little unspoken truth, by too many
of the controlling authorities, even when they are also brown, is that the
brown person in their care is the reason for America’s problems and a drain on
the society. Those who represent “the
hood” and those who protect the community are at war. Travon Martin, Michael Brown, and all of the
other brown persons, too many to mention, who were killed in the midst of this
war, are mourned by a community that wants this war to end now! The police, who are winning the war, refuse
to negotiate because they too point to their fallen comrades who wore the blue
uniform to serve and protect, only to be killed in the line of duty. This is an American Tragedy with no end in
sight!
I was particularly distributed by a recent episode of “Blue
Bloods”, a television show that comes on CBS on Friday evenings. In this particular episode, a young black
male is committing armed robbery at a grocery store, when two white police
officers happen to come into the store.
The black male throws hot coffee on the female officer and has a
shootout with the male officer. The
black male runs out of the store, with the male police officer in hot
pursuit. The chase ends with the black
male being cornered in a second floor hallway, and the male police officer,
holding a gun on him. A young Hispanic
boy looks out of his apartment door. The
police officer tells the boy to go back inside his apartment. The boy appears to shut his door, but he
continues to look at the standoff. The
black male decides to jump through a closed window to the concrete pavement
below. Her badly breaks his leg, and
begins to scream that the white police officer pushed him. The rest of the show has the police officer
trying to defend himself, while an “Al Sharpton” type character calls the
police racist, and tries to bribe the Hispanic boy and his family to lie about
what he saw. The particular program
seems to have a lot of this type of storyline.
Bad black criminals, corrupt black leadership (even the Mayor) and
police officers who are only trying to do their job, and war against black
criminals and corrupt black leadership gets prime time treatment. This is a real tragedy!
We have to speak to the whole issue. No longer can we wait for the next big scene
to play itself out on the streets of America.
No longer can we watch the next television show that validates
justification of the new system of slavery for brown people. We are all responsible to fix this mess! We must fix this mess! If we don’t, the Fire Next Time just may
consume us all!
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