The Disappointing But Not Surprising Resistence Against Black Lives Matter
Here
We
Go
Again.
Once again, another shooting. In the middle of a pandemic. In the middle of the Black Lives Matter movement. Seven shots to the back of an unarmed man in front of his children. Surrounded by cops and this somehow became the final solution to “de-escalate” the situation. And then even worse, following it up, we have this asshole from another state crossing borders with his gang of militia-wannabes killing two people and literally hanging out with the cops and being able to leave all of Wisconsin back to Illinois before finally being arrested for murder.
Tell me in what handbook for policing does it say “If the unarmed individual does not comply, even though you have the upper hand in numbers and in weaponry, shoot him in the back SEVEN times to ensure the situation is resolved.”
No, I don’t care about the victim’s warrants or criminal record. Everyone ignored Trump’s history with Black America on their way to voting him in because they treated it like ancient history. And these same folks ignore the legion of white supremacists hanging out at the White House despite this blatant history. Everything against Black America is treated like ancient history from slavery to reconstruction to Jim Crow to the Civil Rights Act to gerrymandering to voter suppression----everything except a man’s criminal history, and ignoring the dozens of factors that would lead to Black Americans overwhelmingly finding themselves in jail. So no, you bringing up criminal records is not going to help your horrible argument.
No, I don’t care about the looting. Why is it that we never need Trump to have to explain himself when HIS fandom constantly commits hate crimes? We have the synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh. We have the mosque killing in Quebec City. We have the shooting in El Paso. We have the rise in hate crimes during HIS administration. Of course, there’s the incident in Charlottesville which earned Trump’s approval and in a buried story, resulted in MORE marches in the area afterwards. Yet, somehow, its argued that he never has to answer for this. Yet the Democrats and Black Lives Matter has to answer for the looting, even though Black Lives Matter protests have been 97% (give or take two percentage points) peaceful before the cops and white militia groups infiltrating and stirring problems. You can replace buildings, but you can’t replace the lives lost, period. So no, the looting does not warrant police brutality and murders.
To be honest, writing this feels like an empty chore, because it feels like preaching to the choir. But this is precisely what the opponents to equality to Black Lives Matter to necessary changes want, they want to wear down the voices of resistance with persistence to their awful takes and inability to accept that changes are indeed needed. And they will spin every single obvious example of police brutality and discrimination against Black America and turn it into a black-and-white issue, into an us-versus-them debate, when this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
Black Lives Matter is NOT a political statement, it’s a plea for equality.
Read that statement again. And if you are still anti-BLM, read that previous statement twenty times.
Everything we’ve been fighting for should not be transformed into some political civil war, yet here we are today. Under horrible leadership that refuses to handle this situation altogether, we’ve had to depend on other loud successful voices to become the sounds of reason, and under these circumstances we’ve had media and pundits and shit-stirrers countering by appealing to the one group that is among the most vocal on all the internet:
I call them the thoughtroaches.
These are the pundits that inspire and incite the unnamed, profile picture-less heathens; those that hover over horrible takes and repeat racist and inaccurate tropes to the stratosphere consistently and without remorse. These are the “What About Chicago”s, the “What about China”s, the “Republicans Freed the Slaves” peeps, the “What About Black-on-Black Crime” people. These pundits aren’t trying to explore a conversation, they aren’t trying to see the other side, all they want to do is strike fear, continue delivering the fear, and in buckets of red herrings and pointless jabber that nonetheless becomes fodder to counter the exploration of change and equality.
These thoughtroaches are the ones that will surely explore the current shooting of James Blake and the arrest of Kyle I-Don’t-Give-A-Shit-What-His-Last-Name-Is in wildly different angles as a way to continue stirring the fear. They have transformed James Blake into some monster with a criminal record that needed seven shots to be euthanized without a day in court. These same people transformed Kyle into some national hero, as a Protector of Other People’s Properties, as someone within his rights to commit what he committed. And as the icing of their shitty-take cake, they will criticize athletes for trying to speak up about issues AND chastise the lower-class American citizens peacefully protesting those same issues.
What makes things even more frustrating is that these thoughtroaches become this delivery system for the far-right, the trolls, and the scum of American society because of different reasons. Tucker Carlson used to be one of the faces of the center-left CNN before getting roasted by Jon Stewart and losing his gig altogether, now becoming arguably the top program for white supremacists. Donald Trump’s goal as the most powerful thoughtroach is to incite the fanbase that voted him in as revenge for seeing a successful Black man not only be popular for eight years, but also rip him apart publicly during the twilight of the birther conspiracy. Then there’s Ben Shapiro, whose only means of survival is verbally roundhouse kicking bad takes all over the place, appealing to those who enjoy the high of trolling others without substance.
The first civil war was fought with weapons, on territory, on horseback, in waves of soldiers willing to die for their side of the country. The current civil war is the battle of words that exists online and in print, as we have Black Lives Matter suddenly encountering shades of the Confederacy, shadows of the KKK, and hints that some of these people prefer the days when slavery existed and Black Americans were allowed to be mistreated with no punishment attached. Every deplorable shooting and mistreatment of Black Americans is oddly being met with resistance; every obvious crime is still being observed with doubt from the ridiculous opposition. And sometimes this behavior leads to tragedies, like the ones I mentioned earlier from Quebec City to El Paso, Texas.
For some odd reason, Black Lives Matter and the pleas of Black America for more equality and actual justice has become this strong political statement that one side of the table just cannot handle. And its these thoughtroaches that continue to get in the way of necessary change. Maybe this changes with new management at the top, maybe this changes once the support of Black Lives Matter becomes even stronger. But all I know is that James Blake was unarmed when he was shot in the back SEVEN FUCKING TIMES, and we still find people that sees a justification within the parameters of the cops playing judge, jury, and executioner towards yet another unarmed Black American.
I’m tired y’all, please vote out the white supremacist administration come November.
P.S. MOST of this could also have been avoided if they had just simply immediately fired and charged the cop that did the shooting, similar to what should have happened to the team that killed Breonna Taylor.
#BlackLivesMatter
#JusticeForBlackAmericansNationwide