Ferguson, Missouri, 2014
I’m not going to pretend to understand racism. It’s a
disease. An affliction of the mind. Self-curable. Nor will I accept that anyone
with any appreciable training in peace keeping—and let’s call it that instead
of “law enforcement,” a terminology which includes the very brutish word
“force”—needs to shoot someone whose arms are in the surrender position six
times in order to subdue them.
I will not accept that a stranglehold is necessary for one
officer as several other officers pile on top of a man, choking him to death.
New York, New York, 2014.
The George Zimmerman Training Academy of Enforcement and
Anger Management seems to be gaining favor among our cities’ local police. We
can’t go a day without video, whether it’s old or new, of police violence
slapping us in the face. The “heat of the moment” is too often the background
noise of these acts. I disagree. The heat of the moment is cursing at the
driver that recklessly cut you off; the heat of the moment is throwing “You
don’t love me!” in a lover’s face; heat dissipates very quickly. The heat of
the moment for a police officer being a
thousand degrees hotter than mundane interactions, they should be given the
proper training to deal with that. They shouldn’t be the assholes that flip you
the bird while running a red light; shouldn’t be the guy that slaps his kid to
stop the child’s crying.
But they too often are. Because they’re us.
An officer of the law shouldn’t be the one telling a
reporter, “We’re dealing with 4,000 animals.” That tells us what the heat’s
done to him. His mind is everywhere but on what’s in front of him, and the most
dangerous thing for a police officer is blind spots.
A state trooper, along the side of a busy freeway, while
atop a woman, punched the hell out of her.
Los Angeles, CA, 2014.
Blind spots. Rage. Blind rage.
A worldwide epidemic of rage.
That officer didn't shoot and kill the young man in
Ferguson, Missouri simply because the young man was black. He did it because he
was (potentially) a small officer in a small town with a failed marriage and
friends who were only friends when drinking was involved, in a country that
can’t get its shit together to save its life and so forces him to be a small
officer in a small town, a white man against the black man no matter how many
black friends he can point at, and giving him nowhere to escape but out the
barrel of a gun. Death by projection.
Gaza, Palestine, 2014.
Ukraine, 2014.
Honduras, 2014.
Australia, 2014.
England, 2014.
Canada, 2014.
Racism is a social construct predicated on economic
disparity. The color of skin means squat. We’re all from Africa. There are no
bogus genetics to justify brutish thoughts. There is not one person on this
planet that made it here without being human. There is no white race. Ask most
Irish if they were “white” when they made it to America’s shores in the early
19th century, then ask them now. The difference is capital. Money.
We are enraged the world over because no one thinks they
have enough.
Money. Whatever form capital takes. Financial capital,
emotional capital, religious capital. In order for one group to have enough of
one thing, another group has to have too little of everything. Money kicks in
our anger receptors like few other things can.
Schools underfunded while billionaire fights for control of
shipping lanes. Takes an angry man to accumulate so much. Thousands without
water, summertime. Gangs forming at an increasing rate. Detroit, MI, 2014.
Takes a ton of rage to wall that out and keep it in.
Rage blinds us to what’s right in front of our faces time
and again. Rage. We rage against everything.
Except the palsied monkey grinding the organ for the machine
for which we dance.
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