So … White America … what is it that you don’t get?
A Black man was killed in police custody.
Thousands of Black people have died in police custody.
America has the highest incarceration rates on the planet.
They incarcerate more Black men and women than any other place on Earth.
Racism is real. Even after slavery. See Michelle Alexander’s book The New Jim Crow and Ta-Nehisi Coates’ article for The Atlantic, “The Case for Reparations” for further explanation.
The world is in the midst of a massive shift in wealth. The bourgeoisie, the middle class, laborers and independent landowners are being wiped out.
Capitalism is an ever-shrinking boat that one must cling to to survive. When you eventually fall off, it is sink or swim. Those who can’t swim, sink or cling to others — and in groups or alone, they try their best to keep up with the boat. They eat off any and everything that falls off, and they constantly work to get back on. As the boat moves faster and further away, the crumbs lessen, so those swimming behind begin to fight among one another for what’s left. When the resources are completely depleted, they either cooperate or feed off one another. If they never learn to cooperate, eventually they all die.
It really is that simple.
Baltimore is the latest sign. The recent earthquake is as well. We must cooperate or die.
We can’t breathe because the system is choking us out. All of us: Black, Brown, White, Red and Yellow.
But it, the “system,” has always come after Black people the worst. If you don’t believe me, check the record books. The real history tells the story.
And even that would be OK if Black people played survival of the fittest. But we don’t. It’s in our nature to cooperate.
But the system of White supremacy doesn’t cooperate. And it won’t allow us too, either. It constantly seeks out Black people to victimize. And that forces us to fight.
The media’s story of how Freddie Gray died gets sketchier by the moment. How sketchy it’s becoming is another blatant example of how bad this thing is. But while it is about Freddie Gray, the story of how he died doesn’t really matter. We have so many other stories about lives lost that his death is just a reminder of every other injustice that we have already endured before.
Our coping mechanism is tremendous. We seek peace because it allows us to cooperate. But when the system keeps killing us, we can never cooperate. We will always be forced to fight.
People fight in different ways. Some covertly, some are up in your face. Some fight with and just like you, but some, including some of you, have not recognized that we are fighting against the same enemy.
These young Black people are fighting for people who don’t even know it. They fight for people who have yet to exist, and they fight for all the people who have died to injustice before.
You do understand that the land that they are destroying doesn’t belong to them, right? Though they live there, they don’t own the businesses … and though they have tried, they don’t own the land. The businesses that are there in the community mostly pay a minimum wage. Almost all of them have a predatory relationship with the community, in that they invest the least amount of anything in the community as they possible can. They exploit every opportunity. They mostly make their profits and leave.
Cities are based on factories but all of the factories have closed up and left. They didn’t really close, though. They just went overseas. The Black people in America have been systematically marginalized into laborers, so now that there is very little labor, now what?
Metropolitan cities are a competitive battlefield for the laborer of all ethnic backgrounds: Italian, Irish, Russian, Polish, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Asian, African, Black and others.
All ethnicities have been discriminated against on that battlefield, but the darker the hue, the greater the injustice.
And it is constant. It does not stop.
They do it to us as they do it to you. Just in different, and subtle ways. Some of us are complicit but there are Black people on the front lines. When we get hit, everyone should holler. So that changes can be made. So that justice can reign.
But you don’t.
So we riot.
Young, Black people, in particular.
They are out looking for justice, and they are asking us to help find it.
So … White America … Black Americans … all Americans … what is it that you don’t get?
