I was born in Havana Cuba July 1965. My parents and I emigrated to NYC by 1968, fleeing the Cuban regime. Fast forward to 1978, now living on 140th Street and Broadway NYC. New York is not the Disney attraction that it is now. As a 13 y/o kid living in the NYC concrete jungle (Harlem, Hamilton Heights) most of my days after school involved some kind of playing with friends in the street. This was when our abuse at the hands of those supposed to protect and serve usually happened. We would be playing stick-ball, punch-ball or Chinese handball and you’d get your cop who for no reason would come over and harass you. When first these things were happening I couldn’t understand why the police held us in such high contempt. As a kid I could not understand why they hated us so. I would soon find out. I was a naive 13 y/o whose only interest was playing with friends like most other kids that age. One time when this cop named Jimmy was really putting it to us (smacking us across the head with his open hand, jabbing us with his night stick in the ribs and/or kicking us around the shin for example) I saw the look in his face and asked him why he enjoyed hurting us that way, he smiled and said to me “because you guys are mongrel spics and niggers. It’s what you deserve”. This is just one example, I have many, many others obtained first hand at the fists, night sticks and at the end of the barrels of the guns of New York’s finest. Perpetrated on myself and plenty of my friends, simply because they could. Who would take the word of these what they called “punk kids” over the word of NYC finest. No video then, just our word against adult white cops. Who do you think they always believed when we got up enough courage to complain? These were firsthand experiences, I lived through them. I was lucky, many were not. Some of my friends are dead and buried at the hands of NY’s finest and no one believed us when we said it was unwarranted. My children grew up in the 90’s and the 2000’s in NYC, experiencing their own racism, by then it had a new name. “Stop and frisk”, the updated version of racism with a new name for the millennium. Many who say racism in police departments does not exist did not grow up where I did. They did not experience the racism first hand on an almost daily basis. For year upon year, police wonder why so many hate them? Well maybe they should look in the mirror to answer that question.
Over the years some inner city police departments including NYC have begun to increase minority participation in their departments. Unfortunately, law enforcement attracts authoritarian types and when you join police departments no matter what color your skin is, the only real color visible is the blue uniform. There is no way currently for minorities to come in and be champions of change when the instantly run up against the blue wall of silence. If you are a minority and you betray that wall, God help you.
Those that question racism exists most likely come from suburbs somewhere where it was possibly a bit more affluent, more white, where white cops policed exclusively. The people in those places most likely looked like the police. Those local kids could have been the cops’ own kids or their friends. Not different but the same. Where we grew up, the cops did not look like us. They were mostly white with some token blacks, Hispanics and or Asians thrown in. But overall they were tasked with policing these streets and made us pay for the fact that they seemed to hate us because they worked in the inner city. I never figured out why, racism what the only conclusion I was able to come to. Somehow we were responsible for their very bias of us, or so they made us feel by their actions and words.
It is incredible when I hear people say that the majority of crime in inner cities is perpetrated by the very minorities who live there. That is true captain obvious. That is because the majority who live there are minorities. When there are few whites in an inner city of course the majority of people being arrested there are going to be minorities. They use these statistics as hammers when people say there is harsher over policing of the inner cities, by stating these obvious statistics. They try to say we are our own worst enemies, which is not true. We get arrested more in our communities because there are more of us there than whites, not because we are somehow more prone to crime. What they fail to say that the majority of crime committed in the so called white suburbs are committed by white people, yet they overlook those stats and there is nowhere near the strict over policing of those predominately white areas. By their logic then we can say they are more prone to crime because they are being arrested in their own neighborhood at higher rates than minorities. But that narrative doesn’t fit in with the lies they want the public to believe, so they only push facts that harm the minorities image, not their own. The Narrative that the “others” are the bad guys. Implying that the poor brown and black skin folks that reside in our inner cities are evil, not the people that resemble themselves. We are bad, they are good. That is how the status quo remains, that is how the wealthy and their police allies keep us always on the defensive. That is how they discriminate against us in the plain light of day. That is how they pit poor white folks against poor people of color. That is how they keep us against those that should be our natural allies, poor white folk who are almost as oppressed as we are. Unfortunately, they have the power and media to generate the narrative and we all end up victims at each other’s throats. While the wealthy elites responsible for this like Donald Trump, laugh at all of us behind the safety of closed doors. Having grown up in NYC, I was intimately aware of Donald Trump’s racism. The country is only now becoming fully aware.
It is ironic that the institution of slavery, Jim Crow and keeping the Black and Brown skin people down was institutionalized in this country. Even when this was still a British colony, together for about 500 years these institutions created discrimination and more. The push-back towards equal rights has been going on for about 50 to 60 years in earnest and somehow this is an equal amount of time for all racism, bigotry and biases to have been eradicated. Or so the current bigots will have you think, this is the narrative they push. When a minority calls out the racism they are immediately in push back mode delivering their narrative to combat the real racism that exists in our society. You know the everything is racist spew, how liberals always cry racism, blah, blah, blah. They call us racists for merely pointing out their true racism. This push back sadly, tends to work. More importantly it works with a group of people who should feel the most solidarity with those of color, poor and middle class whites. Poor whites are the blacks of the white neighborhoods. In their sections of America, they are next in line to receive rough house over policing by cops. They understand a lot of what the blacks and browns feel because to a certain extent they are victims of that same system. Unfortunately, the perpetrators of these injustices (the wealthy and their lackeys) have us all fighting the wrong fight. They pit poor whites against poor minorities hence they remain in power and the masses are too busy fighting among each other. Classic mechanism for the elite 1% to keep the serfs from burning down the castle and overthrowing the very people who have created the conditions for the masses to suffer poverty, and very little opportunity for better lives.
Not only are there racial and class divisions when it comes to police but militarization and this war on drugs disproportionately harm minorities and the poor. Police these days after 911 feel they can overlook the constitution and are pushing back on constitutional protections in the name of fighting wars on drugs and or terror. Really they just want more power and less freedom for citizens. These pesky rights we have get in their way. They hate transparency so they fight to keep citizens from filming their activities because video seems to expose the overreach in our current system of policing. Clear 1st amendment violations, 4th amendment violations when swat teams raid homes for a bit of weed without warrants. As well as contempt of cop so-called crimes like resisting arrest or obstruction charges that mostly end up getting thrown out in court but once the damage has already been done. Arrest records, bail, fines, creating records which keep these people from ever getting good paying jobs. An arrest today even if found not guilty can keep you from employment as much as the worst felony can. That is life in the digital world. Forcing minority and poor people in to a system that is intended to keep them poor and as victims which people are seen as cash cows to support the very system that keeps them oppressed. It is all a symptom of the same disease.
This will not change until all of us poor and middle class folk of all colors do not realize who is really keeping all these divisions front and center, the wealthy and their supporters. One of those wealthy, Donald Trump is playing on a few different levels, he is operating on a Ninja master level. He pushes racism (us against them mentality) to the poor whites to push them enough to allow them to hear his message and push them against poor minorities. Say what you will about him, he is a master manipulator, bullshit artist and scammer who is well versed in making people betray their own best interests. How many people has this Don the Con separated from their hard earned money in Trump University, the failed Casino’s or failed condos and other scams he pushed on them? This rich 1% guy (Trump) simply states talking points to these poor frustrated folks. They hear him blaming everyone else for their lot (especially minorities) in life and the message resonates. They do not realize that he is one of the very rich who is their true enemy (Trump), he is pulling a con on them. Simply stating whatever he thinks they want to hear and shamelessly repeating it lie over and over with the help of his gutless inadvertent or intentional media accomplices. He has the very people who should be most against him, following him like puppies. I don’t mean to do a Hitler comparison, but hey, if the shoe fits. This guy is a master at propaganda and an excellent salesman. His supporters’ complaints against the system are true, they have been screwed by the system. In this case not just the government but by the business class who outsourced jobs to other countries, who created robots to take the place of these poor folks jobs, by Donald Trump himself. He is one of those outsourcing, sending jobs overseas. But he has mired his followers so deep in his bullshit that hey only hear of building walls and rapist Mexicans, Muslims responsible for all evil or whatever other bullshit he is spewing at the moment. He has them so mesmerized with all the racist us vs them crap that they are not realizing the con. The only us vs them should be his supporter’s vs Trump and his fellow 1% who are destroying this country simply for their own selfish greed.
Who is really pulling the strings behind the scenes? Donald Trump, and those like him who are not in government but are the rich and powerful elite in this country. You don’t have to believe me, look for yourself when you see the people at his rallies that should be against him but instead are there as his most fervent advocates. Why because they are being fooled by his words (bigotry, racism, class-ism) and for some reason are purposely ignoring his actions in the past and now. This guy will say anything to anyone that he believes will get them to follow him. It is sad so many have fallen for it. In an ironic twist because Trump is shameless, he the very person who along with his fellow elite are the ones who have caused all this suffering are benefiting covertly and now overtly as a result. He has somehow pulled the wool over on his most ardent supporters. He has said, and will say anything to lie cheat and steal his way into the white house. The same way he has lied, cheated and stolen his way to wealth. This man who was born with a silver spoon in his mouth has conned his way into being the leader of the poor white masses. He achieves this by the very bigotry and racism that is currently the focus of many media stories between police and black citizens. The press to get ratings make him acceptable, racist and all. The press are corporate entities which behind the scenes are part of the elite, gone are the days of true independent press. Otherwise this racist con man would have been outed and no longer able to aspire to run for president. That job is now left to us, to the citizen journalist who does not have as loud a megaphone, but hopes enough fellow Americans can hear the truth before it too late. His echo chamber in the media is pushing out any message to the contrary. This man should be so far behind in public polling, but false media equivalency is keeping him in there. He and his elite pals create the environment for this division of which he is conveniently benefiting. He helps foment racism and division with our citizenry out one side of his mouth. On the other side he shamelessly says he is the least racist person he knows and is the most compassionate person he knows. Yet the media never checks him on it, they give him a pass. Why? For ratings and to protect the power structure of which he is a member, for example he and the presidents of NBC and CNN are pals. He is a regular on FOX. There is no other candidate that can rival the free press he enjoys. No matter how much money they have. As a result, he is now in a position where his fascist ideology may end up in the seat of government of the most powerful country the world has ever known. If this man becomes president race and class relations may sour the to the level of possible anarchy. We must wake up before this happens, or we may wake up one day under martial law and all those people who don’t know how it feels to have the police up on your every move will live to regret it. That is a terrifying thought. We the people need to fight back. You think things are bad now? Just wait and see if they get their way, it will only just be beginning.