American Dream Hijacked by Hatred

By Mildred Robertson

I am undone by the times in which we live.

The other day as I lay on a massage table the Masseuse said the muscles in my back were extraordinarily tight, and asked me what the source of my stress was.  I chuckled to myself as I thought about my life and the times we live in.

I thought about my inbox full of political campaign propaganda, all asserting that their respective candidate is the answer to my prayers.  None of them are.

I thought about the nightly news and the ridiculous Republican campaign that is so absurd it would be practically laughable, were it not so frightening.

I thought about a Facebook post that compared the vitriolic Hitler with Republic front-runner Donald Trump. I shuddered at the comparison because it rang true. It occurred to me that this man, like Hitler may rise to power, fueled by blind hatred and misdirected anger; a hatred and anger that will surely result in the downfall of our nation if it is allowed to run rampant.

I am undone by the times in which we live.

It appears to me that the entire nation is red-faced and belligerent, just like Donald Trump. That is why he has been able to gain traction, because so many look in his face and see themselves…even though the majority of Americans are nothing like Trump…except for the hate.

America hated the Indians. Their sin…they stood between the European immigrants and the land that they wanted to claim as their own.

America hated the African. Why… to justify the injustice done to that mighty race by snatching its future from its shores, raping its women, emasculating its men, destroying its family structure, obliterating its culture, denying its humanity and building an empire upon the back of its labor.

America hated the Hispanics.  Why…because they came and worked jobs Americans would not, took pay that Americans refused, and then had the audacity to attempt to reap the benefits of their labor by becoming a part of the American society.

I am dismayed that a performance by Beyonce elicits a nationwide backlash, but what appears to be the lifeless body of Sandra Bland hanging in a jail cell is not cause for alarm.

Our nation has been hijacked, not by Blacks, or Hispanics or any other minority, but by a group of unthinking, racist, self-centered and miserable human beings who believe that the bounty this land has to offer is not enough to go around. We are being held hostage by a small group of powerful men who are manipulating the mindless masses to destroy opportunity for all except for the few of them. And the masses do not even know that they will be left standing outside the gate with the Blacks, the Hispanics, the Asians and all others not born to privilege and wealth. You cannot reason with a man who has no reason.

And so, I am stressed. I do not see an answer. I am undone by the times in which we live.

Super Bowl Excesses

Super Bowl Excesses Demonstrates Nation's Misaligned Priorities

By Mildred Robertson

Before I start my rant about Super Bowl excesses, let me give full disclosure. I am not an avid sports fan. My brother was a jock, and my father was an enthusiast, and, back in the day, there was only one TV in the house…you get my drift. Sports all day, every day.

So it is not unusual that, when given access to four televisions in my home, not one is tuned to an athletic channel. So much for the entertainment desert that was my youth.

Even if I had not been sports traumatized as a youth, I nevertheless would be appalled at the Super Bowl fervor that engulfs our nation every year. At first it was just the advertising budget.

I get that Super Bowl exposure can launch a company into the stratosphere, but millions being spent on 60 second spots, no matter how dramatic or star-studded, just seems ridiculous to me.  Call me crazy, but Beyonce’s butt, or Bieber’s chest don’t’ figure into my decision to buy one product or another.

Then there is the price of the tickets. That someone would pay upwards of $5000 to $10,000 for a weekend of entertainment is patently ludicrous. Particularly in light of some of the social challenges our world faces.

If everyone caught up in this Super Bowl fervor were to expend just $1 in a collective fund, how many hungry children could we feed or clothed; how many homeless might we house; how many underprivileged kids could we send to college? How many Flint Michigan residents could we give water filtration systems?  I am a humanities major…someone do the math.

I am not knocking football, sports or entertainment. I just think we have our priorities mixed up when we choose to expend so much of our resources on so frivolous a pursuit when there are so many pressing social and domestic challenges that go sorely underfunded.

Watch the Super Bowl. Enjoy the half-time activities. Wear your favorite team colors. Eat, drink and be merry. There is nothing wrong with that.

My question is this…can you bring that same kind of passion to everyday situations that require our attention?  Can you justify funding infrastructure or healthcare, or college tuition like you justify paying $5000 for one Super Bowl seat?

Just know that, where we lay our treasure…that is where our heart lies.

Slaying of African Americans by Police Require Federal Response

By Mildred Robertson

Eric Garner, Mike Brown, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland , and the list goes on and on and on.... So many lives snuffed out for no reason.

And no one is accountable.

The police officer who murdered Eric Garner used an “illegal” choke hold. That’s a violation of police policy, but not a prosecutable offense. The fact that Eric kept repeating, “I can’t breathe…I can’t breathe,” seems to be irrelevant. Clearly, the intent of the choke hold is to restrict the airway. And the fact that paramedics and police officers alike stood and watched this unarmed citizen suffer and eventually die, convicted of nothing and guilty of at most, being big, black and selling loose cigarettes,  does not appear to give authorities or many in the main-stream public pause.

Mike Brown was an obvious threat. Again, big and black, he had just robbed a corner store…right? The police officer was so in fear for his life that he shot a fleeing Brown in the middle of the street, leaving his body lying there for hours. It was almost like the days when they would leave black people strung up on a tree so that all could see what happens to bad Ni_ _ as.

The cop who shot Tamir Rice was probably given bad information, and assumed he was in danger. So it was okay for him to shoot the young boy playing with a toy gun. I mean, how was the officer to know Tamir wasn’t a grown man with a loaded weapon? And of course, it would be too much to ask that he take a moment to investigate the situation to determine the threat. I mean after all, Tamir was black, and he was male…obviously a potential threat.  And this officer had only about 2 seconds to determine whether Tamir was a boy or a man; whether it was a gun or a toy. In those 2 seconds, he snuffed out a young life, and society does not appear to believe he should be held accountable.

And then there is Sandra...Angry Black woman that she was. On her way to a new chapter in her life, her journey was interrupted by a traffic stop that went horribly wrong when Texas State Trooper Brian Encina pulled her over for failure to signal. Bland, who was initially accused of only a traffic violation, was later forcefully removed from her vehicle, threatened with a Taser, and manhandled because she refused to put out her cigarette. She was then arrested for battery on a police officer, and inexplicably died several days later in police custody. Suicide, they said. Sad, they say, but no one is responsible other than Sandra herself.

All these “Oops” moments have received a pass from those supposedly set in place to protect the public from abuse of authority. Grand juries have refused to hold any of the officers in these and numerous other murderous situations responsible; that is, even when a grand jury is convened.

The grand jury system, clearly flawed, seems to give undue weight to the perspective of the officer. The fact that you were murdered by a police officer makes you no less dead. And your right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not diminished because it is a duly sworn officer who chooses to deprive you of these God-given rights codified in our Constitution. They must be held accountable.

The fact that a black life can be snuffed out for little or no reason, and this action can be deemed unfortunate, but “reasonable,” by institutions supposedly designed to protect citizens from corrupt governance is overwhelmingly disheartening. And the fact that there is no cohesive, organized government response to these actionable assaults on American citizens is blatantly outrageous.

Just as the Civil Rights Movement required a federal response to local assaults on its citizens, so does this current assault on the Black community by authorities sworn to protect and serve them. It is clear that many police departments and local municipalities have a symbiotic relationship that makes it difficult, if not impossible to bring to justice those officers too corrupt, biased or untrained to serve communities of color with fairness and objectivity. It is imperative that outside forces bring pressure to bear on these entities so that a general expectation of justice and fairness in the review and prosecution of police misconduct and/or criminal acts can be attained.  

Until such action is taken, people will continue to gather in the streets. Social media will continue to churn with accounts of injustice and inequality, and social unrest will continue to grow. Without a unified government response we will continue to be a divided nation catapulting toward anarchy.

That is a place where no one really is accountable.

Harvard Professor Promotes “Willie Lynch” Theory as Basis for Growth of Terrorist Organizations

By Mildred Robertson

In an essay published on LinkedIn on November 14, 2015, Harvard Professor Cass Sunstein wrote an essay titled, “Why They Hate Us.” Sunstein posits that terrorists are made, not born…and on that one point we agree. However, Sunstein goes on to say that terrorist organizations are born of the proclivity of like-minded people to come together in such groups. He believes that the group-think that occurs in these types of organizations pushes members toward a more radical and violent posture.

At first blush, his thoughts appear to be logical. But if we choose to dig a little deeper, we find that Sunstein has it backward. The fact is that acts of intolerance, prejudice, hatred, bigotry, cruelty, criminality, social and economic injustice, and other societal offenses endured by members of the group crystalize to a point that it appears the only solution is revolution. By sharing their individual struggles with societal ills, these individuals develop a collective resolve to make a change, even if that change requires violence or self-sacrifice.

This sense is heightened when those in power trivialize their complaints, protect and make excuses for perpetrators of acts perceived as offensive or unlawful by the group, refuse to provide due process to members of the group, and when the group itself is denigrated, ostracized, pursued and criminalized.

It is primarily the Willie Lynch theory, whereby open communication among oppressed people is prohibited to reduce the possibility of rebellion. In the not-to-distant past, it was illegal for groups of blacks to gather. The slave master knew that it was easier to manage slaves individually than collectively.

Right now on our own shores, “Black Lives Matter” is being treated thusly. Many in the media are demonizing the group and blaming them for social unrest in cities across the country. It would appear, from media coverage, that problems in our inner cities between Blacks and police are a result of folks in BLM stirring people up.

The fact of the matter is BLM is stirring the pot, but the ingredients are provided by a society that does not value Black Americans and other people of color.  It is automatically assumed that if a police officer pulled his or her gun, it was justified…that if an officer takes a shot, it is because he or she has no choice, if an officer tases a suspect, it was because he or she was in danger…and this, in the face of eyewitness accounts and video that testify otherwise.  It is assumed that, if a suspect has a criminal past, he or she is guilty of whatever the accusation, or that they somehow deserved whatever they got, even if the trespass for which they are gunned down turns out to be without merit.

It is this discrediting of worth, this indifference to humanity that strikes at the heart and soul of each Black person in America. How can a society support the shooting of a young boy playing in the park with a toy gun, the assassination of a man in handcuffs, or the choking of a man selling loose cigarettes on a street corner?  How can no one be accountable for such miscarriages of justice? How can the victim become the one that is demonized? 

As we look to the East to truly understand why they hate us, we must accept responsibility for our actions. True…terrorists are not born that way. It is our acts of indifference, prejudice, hatred and imperialism that provide fertile ground for the growth of unrest, dissatisfaction, and the desire to find someone…anyone who will listen to the horrors that have been witnessed; from the injustice that has been inflicted and the crimes that have been committed against marginalized people at home and abroad.

It is these acts that nurture hate and resentment, not the conversations of those who have been pushed to those extremes.

________

Note: This essay in no way implies that terrorism is an acceptable method of creating social change. It is simply an observation that we as a society carry some responsibility in the creation of social unrest and the growth of terrorist organizations by both our action and our inaction.

Just Saying...: Dylann Roof - Troubled Youth or Domestic Terrorist...

Just Saying...: Dylann Roof - Troubled Youth or Domestic Terrorist...: By Mildred Robertson Troubled youth.   That’s what the media has to say about the terrorist who calmly entered a place of worship…sat b...

Dylann Roof - Troubled Youth or Domestic Terrorist -You Decide

By Mildred Robertson

Troubled youth.  That’s what the media has to say about the terrorist who calmly entered a place of worship…sat beside his intended victims for at least an hour, and then with malice and forethought brutally slaughtered nine innocent human beings.  He said he wanted to start a race war. But politicians, media and others hesitate to call it a hate crime.

This is only one example of the pathology that governs race relations in the United States today.

In this supposedly post-racial society, obvious inequities are overlooked much as the emperor’s nakedness in Hans Christian Andersen’s fable went not unseen, but unacknowledged. At least until someone had the strength of character to speak the truth.

So the Boston marathon murderer was immediately identified as “a terrorist”… and that was an accurate description. But Dylann Roof is no less so. He took innocent lives for no reason other than to make a sick, demented point.

While sages agree that the Boston marathon killers’ actions represented the intent of the entire Muslim religion to destroy America – Roof’s rampage, they say, represented the hateful intent of a lone murderer.

While Roof’s action occurred under the backdrop of a state that fought tooth and nail for the right to fly the Confederate flag and continues to do so today even after this heinous crime, few in South Carolina are comfortable calling this a hate crime.

While the South Carolina and American flags fly half-mast, the Confederate flags still flys high; irreverent to the lives of nine more Black people snuffed out by racism, hatred and bigotry. South Carolinians walk daily on paths named with great pride after what I would call ‘infamous” heroes of the Civil War.

The killer, demonstrating his ignorance as well as his bigotry, claimed he must carry out this heinous act to keep Blacks from taking from White Americans. Ignorant, because it was, in fact White America that wrested this land from the Native Americans who were its first inhabitants… bigoted because it was the slave master who brutally raped Black women stolen from the bosom of Africa, ripped black babies from the arms of their mothers and sold them to parts unknown and beat and murdered Black men who would object. 

 No one wants to talk about these facts.  But they are a festering wound that is reopened every time a Black youth is shot while walking in a neighborhood where he has every right to be….is manhandled for swimming in a pool…is choked to death on the street for alleged minor misconduct…is shot down in broad daylight for infractions that might not even result in a night in jail.   

And then there is the flip side…where a Black woman is jailed for defending herself from a known abuser…or the manner in which Mr. Roof was apprehended in comparison with the brute force used against Blacks who have committed far lesser crimes or no crimes at all.

Until America has the strength of character to cry out “the emperor has no clothes;” until we as a nation admit that there are inequities and disparities that relegate an entire race to second class citizenship, then race relations will continue to spiral down to the point that Mr. Roof will get what he prays for. A nation so divided that we take up arms against one another.

The march for justice in Ferguson

FROM FERGUSON TO JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI  

As told to me by: Mary Ratliff, President – Columbia Chapter NAACP &
NAACP Missouri State Conference of Branches

We had already walked 50 miles when we approached the small town of Rosebud. The police who escorted us on our journey told us we would have to get back on the bus that travelled with us. It was too dangerous for us to walk down the streets of Rosebud, they said. But we refused.
 

In a town that must have a population of 500, at least 400 hundred of them were in the streets, yelling and mocking and threatening us. As I walked down the streets of Rosebud, looking into the twisted faces of men and women spitting evil epithets, one woman, old, obsess and full of hatred chased us from corner to corner with a sign that read “all this for one dead nigger.”

No, this was not Selma Alabama in 1960, but the route between Ferguson Missouri and its state capitol, Jefferson City.

The Missouri State Chapter of the NAACP organized the 120-mile march to protest the decision of the Grand Jury not to indict Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot Michael Brown down in the streets of Ferguson. NAACP National President/CEO Cornell William Brooks, who led the march, said that we had promised to have feet on the ground the entire 120-mile march, and we were not going to allow the hate that Rosebud Missouri represented stop us. I echoed his sentiments, and other marchers vowed that they too would march through Rosebud Missouri, with heads held high.

We had planned for a moment such as this. Adolphus Pruitt, I^st Vice President of the Missouri Conference and I worked diligently to lay the groundwork for the protest. We had explained to those marching that they could not fight back if attacked because all the media would cover was the violence connected with the march; not the violence that precipitated the march in the first place.

This was, perhaps, the most difficult part of the journey. Although we planned for it, we didn’t really expect it.  Not like this. I had flashbacks of Bull Conner, fire hoses and dogs. That was all that was missing to make this circa, 1960.

Many students from Lincoln University in Jefferson City had joined the march. One young student approached me and told me, “Mrs. Ratliff, I want to march, but they can’t spit on me, or hit me.” I told him it would be best if he were to ride the bus. I had to explain to him that those types of indignities, none of us wanted to bear. But if it happened, we would have to think of the greater good before giving in to our natural, human desire to meet violence with violence.  Straying from our commitment to non-violent protest would surely lead to confrontation, and possibly even death among ourselves or others.

We started our journey with about 60 marchers. The numbers rose and fell as we travelled the 120-mile stretch between Ferguson and Jefferson City. We had folks who would come out and walk with us in the evenings, and then go to work the next day.

Our only encounters were not with hatred. Along the way, groups of people would come out to greet us and wish us well. Many brought food and drink.  In Rosebud, even, one lone elderly lady stood on the side of the road and told us, “You are doing the right thing.”

By the time we reached the capital our numbers had swollen from hundreds to more than a thousand. What we saw on our journey from Ferguson to Jefferson City was both the worst and the best of humanity. The fact that this is not a post-racial society was crystalized in the tense moments when our movement came face-to-face with inbred racism that, if buried at all, lay only in a shallow grave. But we also saw people who looked pass the issue of race and saw the injustice in a system that is supposed to be designed to protect us all.

And that is really the issue. Not whether Mike Brown was a good kid or a bad kid. Not whether Wilson was a good cop doing his job to the best of his ability or a racist angered because a young black man defied him. The issue is whether our justice system can look at those moments when a life was extinguished on the streets of Ferguson Missouri and see neither man; only the acts that took place on that day, and determine whether those acts were just.

Thus far, our justice system has not been able to meet that standard. Until that standard is met, we will not stop. We cannot stop. We MUST not stop.  In the words of the old Negro spiritual, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired!”