by Farouk Martins Aresa
Americans Courts did not trust Jury with cases until later. One African lie once told us; in Texas you don’t walk the streets with your hands in your pockets, because someone might shoot you before you shoot him. Americans defend right to carry guns vigorously except suspicious blacks that may kill law abiding citizens or police. If it rains, shines or liberals are elected; gun sales go up for fear of limiting gun rights to defend themselves. Watch black man with hands in his pocket.
Grand jury, conscience of the community sees these shootings as accidents. In view of these, we quiver, especially for a 12 year old boy playing in the park with a toy gun in Cleveland, Ohio recently or an older one that was shot to death in a toy store holding a toy gun. In both cases police were responding to the calls of concerned citizens that observed a black man with a gun.
In South Africa, as police were brutalizing a Nigerian, the first area a white police kicked was his genitals. There is this fear of black men that police officer in Fergusson expressed: as a five year old facing incredible hulk. The image of black men has been demonized since slavery, not only in the eyes of the whites but also to those of blacks in America. Statistically, most of the men that killed spouse in abuse cases are white, yet 911 callers know police and Blackman don’t mix.
Frequently black men are being shot, for reaching out for something that looked like a gun or in illegal chokehold by police, scot free. Africans that have no place to go but stay in the land some had been before Columbus, have no choice. They refused to be intimidated in their country of origin. Other Africans that can still point either to their place of birth outside America or Europe are wondering if their children would follow them home before getting shot. Most doubt it.
Though Africa has never been poor, children always wonder why they would return with their parents while many Africans would do anything to escape the countries through the desert to Europe. Many of their parents live middleclass life and those in lower class would not exchange their life for the standard of living in African countries where you have to provide for your own electricity, water, security and many times contribute to pave your way out of your houses.
Yet, the excuses given for shooting black men and children outside Africa is fear and kill before being killed because you can never trust black men that kill their own 93 percent of the time. It does not matter that whites kill their own 85 percent of the time. While whites stand a better chance of going scot free for killing blacks, blacks that kill whites are not so lucky. Even a former Mayor of New York called white police officer killing blacks, saviors of blacks in their community.
As we belief in law: there are probable causes, preponderance of evidence, beyond reasonable doubts or clear and convincing evidence. The least, which is probable cause could be used to pull a man driving while black out of his car but cannot be used to indict police officer, security guard or a white as long as they claim they were afraid of “incredible hulk”. Since most jurors have that fear of a black man. So in experiments anyone would fire at black than white targets.
There was this episode in the old Archie Bunker series where a black surgeon with scalpel tried to examine Bunker in the hospital. He objected claiming you could not trust a black man with such a dangerous object. It was all a joke and Archie Bunker was in real life a liberal. However, it had a deeper meaning then and now. United States jurors expressed this internal fear of blacks, not justifiable law, in their verdicts rendered from New York chokehold to Fergusson shooting.
It is not that black men ever had a good “reputation” since slavery in or outside Africa, what is surprising is that despite the gains made by African Americans over the years, they still have to renew and fight again for hard won battles. As it is, it is hard to find heroes amongst African Americans, no matter how much they struggled and achieved. Those who thought they have “made it” are writing how disappointed they are that their children are still being stereotyped.
They thought if their children were sent to good schools, instructed on good behavior, manners and skills, the children would escape the stereotypes they endured, since successfully placed in the middleclass. To their own shock and naivety, they were wrong. Many tried to crash parties of conservatives and stood up against the unseemly behavior of blacks, only to be painted with the same brush and used as postal boy for bad behavior, as Dr. Carson will or Bill Cosby did.
Bill Cosby, one of the most admired and respected comedian found out as O.J. Simpson did that it does not take all that much to be demonized in retrospect. Mind you, these were not saints, they represent a culture of sleaze, sex, drugs with impunity in entertainment and sport world. They are paying for Hugh Hefner of Playboy Club or Pulaski of movie industry. We heard about Presidents that did drug and sex in the White House but still respected, so Obama watch out.
Dr. Carson is the latest darling of the conservatives and he is running for the President. We know that as a young black man, he had trouble with the law. They are still toasting him right now as their alternative. We just have to wait until primaries. Barrack Obama, who they could not find anything in his past was called a closet Muslim and his Pastor, a white hater for talking about slavery and past injustice to blacks.
Nobody kills mentally deranged men out of fear and suspicion that they possess guns. But the same week Michael Brown was killed, a mentally deranged man was shot dead by two police officers in St. Louis, Missouri. What was curious was that it never generated concern from the mental advocates that have cried hoarse for releasing them into the street as homeless. Since majority of them were veterans suffering from post-war depression. Watch it here.
