Commentary by BlackKos Editor JoanMar
By all accounts, Jonathan Price was a force for good in his community. According to the lawyer for his family, Jonathan was “a hometown hero, motivational speaker, trainer, professional athlete, and community advocate.” A cop on the beat for mere months robbed him of his life, robbed his mom of her son, and robbed his family of a loved one.
Shaun Lucas chose to murder a man who was in the act of doing good. Jonathan saw another human being in distress and chose to stop and help and paid the ultimate price for his selfless deed.
He noticed a man assaulting a woman and he intervened. When police arrived, I’m told, he raised his hands and attempted to explain what was going on. Police fired tasers at him and when his body convulsed from the electrical current, they “perceived a threat” and shot him to death.
Lucas was fired from his job, arrested, and charged with murder. Encouraging news for sure, but as we all know, being arrested does not mean that he’ll pay for pumping four shots into the body of an unarmed, defenseless man. In fact, if you are a betting person, your smart money should be on him not seeing a day in prison for his crime.
So what motivated Shaun Lucas to kill Jonathan Price?
We’ve had thousands of publicized acts of wanton cruelty and murder, and after each, well-meaning folks will passionately advocate for better training for the police force. At the very same time, offending cops and their enablers will just as passionately try to convince us that their murderous actions are motivated by fear. “I feared for my life.” So which is it? Is it a lack of training or is it fear? Undoubtedly, the quality of training is a major issue but it is nowhere near the top of the list. These same cops know how to conduct themselves when they interact with people whom they respect. For example, watch how cops behave when they enter different neighborhoods in the same state. In my state, for example, cops will blare their sirens all hours of the night in cities like Bridgeport, parts of New Haven and Norwalk. In wealthy areas of Connecticut like Westport, Darien, Greenwich, New Canaan, and Trumbull, it doesn’t matter the emergency, cops (and ambulances for that matter) very rarely use the siren. Same training for all CT cops.
I contend that police brutality and over-policing have precious little to do with either training or fear. It’s all about hate. Racist hate of the Black skin, racist hate of the Brown skin, and racist hate of the Native skin. I’ve made that point many times on this blog and inevitably some wanna-be psychologist/sociologist will immediately proceed to school me about how hate is the by-product of fear.
“Hatred is fear, irrational fear of the other which is embedded in American culture from its earliest days. That is the true and ugly underbelly of racism.”
Yes, like Derek Chauvin feared George Floyd as he knelt on his neck and savored the act of squeezing the life out of his unresisting body. Or it was really and truly fear that had Darren Wilson firing that fatal shot execution-style in the top of Michael Brown’s head as he turned with his hands held high and his knees buckling as his system began to shut down. Was it fear that had a cop standing on a basketball player’s ankle — deliberately trying to cripple him — for the crime of parking in a handicap spot?
Doc Rivers:
They’re spewing this fear, right? You hear Donald Trump and all of them talking about fear. We’re the ones getting killed. We’re the ones getting shot. We’re the ones that were denied to live in certain communities. We’ve been hung. We’ve been shot. All you do is keep hearing about fear. How dare the Republicans talk about fear? We’re the ones that need to be scared. We’re the ones having to talk to every black child.
Someone who is most precious to me is currently writing her doctoral dissertation in which she examines how psychology itself has been one of the most potent weapons of white supremacy. Bear that in mind as you read the following:
Public and political discourse may devalue members of unfamiliar groups,ix and offenders may feel that their livelihood or way of life is threatened by demographic changes.x Offenders may not be motivated by hate, but rather by fear, ignorance or anger. These can lead to dehumanization of unfamiliar groups and to targeted aggression
Yes, let’s give those ignorant racists a pass. The poor dears are only just scared and trying to protect what’s theirs.
Yes, there is a kind of hate that’s motivated by fear. Me telling everybody who’ll listen that I hate rats, lizards, and snakes, that’s hate motivated by fear. (Though in my case, I don’t want to kill them, I just don’t want them near me.) Me watching the cop following me on the highway, that’s hate born out of fear. White men going over to Africa to grab shiploads of Africans to use them as beasts-of-burden was not fear; that was unbridled hate rooted in a supremacist ideology. The genocidal hatred that was unleashed on Native Americans had nothing whatsoever to do with fear and everything to do with superiority and entitlement. Likewise, Shaun Lucas, Derek Chauvin, Darren Wilson, (George Zimmerman,) et al, murdered their victims neither out of fear nor because of lack of training, but rather out of racist hatred. As with their murderin’, rapin’, plunderin’ forefathers before them, white cops murder Black people because they subscribe to a racist philosophy that holds that Black people are barely human and thus our lives are of little to no value; that we can and should be used, brutalized, and murdered as they see fit. There’s no fear involved in that kind of hate and stop trying to convince me otherwise.
That video had absolutely nothing to do with fear and everything to do with racist hate.
We desperately need a sophisticated, empathetic police force worthy of a first world country, and yes, tearing up the current training manuals is an absolute prerequisite to getting where we must if we are all to survive together. But let’s not get it twisted, cops shoot and shoot to kill — and brutalize — because they can. Because to date, there has been precious little consequence for their murderous deeds. And because they hate their victims and all those who look like them. We are talking about calcified hate that training will not and cannot eradicate...you are not gonna train the hate outta them. The only antidote to over-policing rooted in racist hate is accountability.
Convict Shaun Lucas for the murder of Jonathan Price and then lock him up and throw away the key.
RIP, Jonathan. Condolences to your family, and may your memory be a blessing.
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NEWS ROUND UP BY DOPPER0189, BLACK KOS MANAGING EDITOR
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The recruiters strode to the front of the room, wearing neon-yellow vests and resolute expressions. But to the handful of tenants overwhelmed by unemployment and gang violence in Northview Heights, the pitch verged on the ludicrous.
Would you like to volunteer for a clinical trial to test a coronavirus vaccine?
On this swampy-hot afternoon, the temperature of the room was wintry. “I won’t be used as a guinea pig for white people,” one tenant in the predominantly Black public housing complex declared. Another said she knew of five people who had died from the flu shot. Make Trump look good? a man scoffed — forget it. It’s safer to keep washing your hands, stay away from people and drink orange juice, a woman insisted, until the Devil’s coronavirus work passed over.
Then an older woman turned the question back on Carla Arnold, a recruiter from a local outreach group, who is well-known to people in the Heights:
“Miss Carla, would you feel comfortable allowing them to inject you?”
Ms. Arnold, 62, adjusted her seat to face them down, her eyes no-nonsense above a medical mask.
“They already did,” she replied.
The room stilled.
Recruiting Black volunteers for vaccine trials during a period of severe mistrust of the federal government and heightened awareness of racial injustice is a formidable task. So far, only about 3 percent of the people who have signed up nationally are Black.
Yet never has their inclusion in a medical study been more urgent. The economic and health impacts of the coronavirus are falling disproportionately hard on communities of color. It is essential, public health experts say, that research reflect diverse participation not only as a matter of social justice and sound practice but, when the vaccine becomes available, to help persuade Black, Latino and Native American people to actually get it. (The participation of Asian people is close to their share of the population.)
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Microsoft Corp. and Wells Fargo & Co., which have both pledged to double their ranks of Black leaders, received letters from the U.S. Labor Department asking how their efforts comply with laws limiting the consideration of race in employment.
Microsoft, whose contracts with the U.S. government subject it to certain rules, said Tuesday it’s confident that its diversity pledges are legal. The company said in June that it would double the number of Black and African American managers, senior contributors and senior leaders in the U.S. by 2025.
Wells Fargo confirmed it received an inquiry about its diversity efforts from the Labor Department’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. Earlier this year, the bank rolled out a series of goals including a five-year target for doubling its roster of Black leaders, who accounted for 6% of senior management at the time.
“Wells Fargo is committed to and taking action to become a more diverse and inclusive company,” the bank said Tuesday in a statement. “Numerous efforts are underway to implement changes at all levels of the company, and we are confident that they comply with U.S. employment laws.”
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Former First Lady Michelle Obama did not mince words in an October 6 Facebook video in which she described the sitting president’s actions as racist.
In “Michelle Obama’s Closing Argument,” she said: “They’re stoking fear about Black and brown Americans, lying about how minorities will destroy the suburbs, whipping up violence and intimidation, and they’re pinning it all on what’s been an overwhelmingly peaceful movement for racial solidarity. … So what the president is doing is, once again, patently false, it’s morally wrong, and, yes, it is racist. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.”
Former President Barack Obama released his own video on September 30 in which he accused Trump of suppressing the Black and brown vote. “Right now, from the White House on down, folks are working to keep people from voting, especially communities of color,” the president said.
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Back in 2002 The Economist mused about the rise of Brazil’s left-wing president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. “The meaning of Lula”, ran the cover line, prompting a great deal of mail—much of it from amused South Asian readers who wrote to say that the meaning of “lula” in Urdu is “penis”.
Amused—not outraged. It would have been absurd not to cover a soon-to-be president because his name is naughty in Urdu. Yet another complaint about a verbal coincidence, involving the trace of a graver kind of obscenity, recently had serious consequences at the business school of the University of Southern California (USC). Greg Patton, who teaches communication, was describing how repeating “erm, erm” can undermine a speaker’s effectiveness. He noted that other languages have similar pause-fillers; Chinese people, he mentioned, use the equivalent of “that, that, that”, or in Mandarin, “nei ge, nei ge, nei ge”.
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Firestorms like the one at USC are set to become more frequent. America and other countries are wrestling with a history of racism, and language is part of those reckonings. Some renamings and reframings are justifiable, even overdue. Others hit the wrong target, but do little damage. In a few counter-productive cases, aspersions are cast on well-intentioned people.
The problem runs deep. A host of negative words and expressions in English contain the modifier “black”; they are old, and are probably related to a primeval fear of darkness. Nonetheless the constant equation of “black” with danger or evil can weary black human beings: consider black magic, blackguard, black-hearted, black economy and so forth. Some, such as blackmail, are unavoidable fixtures. But not all: the computer types who are replacing “blacklist” (a list of e-mail addresses that cannot reach you) with “blocklist” are making a small but symbolic effort.
The same tech wizards deploying “blocklist” have proposed new terms for “master” and “slave” in computing (whereby one process or device controls another). This seems justifiable, too. The hunt for “masters” has ranged beyond power relationships, however. Harvard has dropped the name “house masters” for faculty members who live in student accommodation and have a pastoral role. Some property salesmen are ditching “master bedroom” in favour of “main bedroom”. These changes may be inessential, but they are harmless.
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As massive protests against police brutality and systemic racism continue throughout the United States, many Americans doubt that this current racial reckoning will lead to actual policy changes, according to a new survey published Tuesday (October 6) by nonpartisan think tank Pew Research Center.
According to Pew Research Center:
The public is about evenly split on whether the increased focus on issues of race and racial inequality in the country in the past three months will lead to major policy changes to address racial inequality (48 percent say it will and 51 percent say it will not). A sizable share (46 percent) say this will not lead to changes that will improve the lives of Black people. And while a majority say the heightened attention to racial issues represents a change in the way most Americans think about these issues, just 34 percent say this represents a major change.
More than any other racial or ethnic group, Black Americans have been energized by public condemnations of police violence, primarily sparked by the high-profile police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others.
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Black students get punished more harshly than white students. The president actually has a ton of power to do something about it. VOX: How US schools punish Black kids
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For the 50 million kids who attend public schools in the US, the 2020 election is personal. That’s because whoever wins the presidency also decides how American schools handle things like testing, class size, and discipline.
When it comes to who gets punished — and removed — from the classroom, the US doesn’t treat all students equally. Black students are suspended and expelled far more frequently than their white classmates, often for the same or similar offenses. As a result, Black kids are missing weeks of school each year because of unfair discipline policies.
During the Obama administration, the Department of Education started to take this problem seriously. They investigated schools and districts with significant racial gaps in punishment rates and gave them guidance on how to replace outdated policies with more effective ones. But Betsy DeVos, President Trump’s secretary of education, has abandoned those efforts. And since the administration hasn’t released any new discipline data since the 2015-16 school year, we have no idea how many Black students are currently affected by school punishment policies.
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Here’s a question that I feel like I’ve been asking myself for as long as I’ve had a driver’s license: Why is it that no matter how minor the original offense, cops always ask to search for weapons and drugs after stopping Black people?
To be fair, I have no concrete proof that this only happens to Black people. I just know that white people who I’ve brought this up to have only ever responded one of two ways: Either they deny it’s racism by citing some anecdotal, one-time experience of being asked the same by police, or they respond in absolute shock and disbelief that this actually happens.
Anyway, last week, a Black man was stopped by police officers in Beverly Hills, Calif., while walking across a street after shopping in the area. He said he was coming from the Versace store—which makes sense, given that it turns out he’s Salehe Bembury, vice president of Sneakers and Men’s Footwear for Versace.
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