Sterling Sliver
This is a variation of a screed that I posted on Facebook. I am attempting to get into the habit of not wasting good words on an algorithm driven meat grinder that has me projecting into an echo chamber of validation. Which is is what I say before pausing this to go see how many likes my last status received in the last half hour.
I digress. Obviously.
So, here we are again. With another well loved black man dead in the street, executed at point blank range by a group of men who would never do such a thing to someone that looked like them.
Study after study after study have shown that is incredibly difficult for a person to muster up to gumption to kill another human being at close range, even if there is a perception of imminent danger. The person under threat will usually resort to posturing maneuvers before he or she will resort to deadly force. This has been shown across the board, regardless of nationality. YET, it is remarkably easy for the police to gun down black men, no matter the age, no matter the size. The same restraint and patience that they demonstrate towards whites who are committing the same crime is completely abandoned in the face of even a hypothetical black threat. In the case of Alton Sterling, he had a gun on him, yes, but it wasn’t raised at the police officers. It was merely concealed. This was enough for him to be EXECUTED.
Now, we tend to throw a lot of hyperbole around when we get into the emotional aftermath of events such as these. But the words executed, assassinated, murdered, are appropriate because that is what happened. Because of a PERCEIVED threat, Alton Sterling was murdered in cold blood by two men who share the same feelings about black bodies as a good deal of America does.
Simply put, they hate them
They hate blackness. They perceive is as both of inferior intelligence and superior strength. They assume that the black mind is too stupid to understand orders but the black body is strong enough to move mountains and stop bullets. You see this in the case of Tamir Rice, a 12 year old who was gunned down without any warning within seconds of a police car pulling up. You see this in the case of Levar Jones, a man who was pulled over for a seatbelt violation and AS HE WAS FOLLOWING ORDERS, reaching into his glove compartment for his license and registration, was shot three times. He lived, but he must do so with the knowledge that his very motion, his very being, was a threat to someone. Walter Scott was not so lucky. He was shot to death as he was running away from an officer. An officer who stood calmly, aimed precisely, and murdered him. Because the black body is a threat even as it is fading into the distance. Because it is loathed. Should it present any independent agency, that is, to act like it is free, it must be reminded that it is not. With bullets, batons, batteries, with a history of injustices in the name of maintaining the status quo backing up the notion that to be black is to already be dead in the eyes of your homeland, where you can lie bleeding out in the street for four hours in the midday sun, like Michael Brown was, baking, waiting patiently for a Bald Eagle to peck his fucking eyes out.
So, I ask you, America, please, from this barely seen blog, please, please, please, please, stop hating black people and black bodies.
Please stop blaming black people and black bodies because you're poor. Their blackness is not the root over your impoverished life. Shame on you for being so ignorant as to think an oppressed people are stealing from your pocket. Shame on you for buying into Caucasian propaganda as you are being fleeced by people that look just like you.
Please, stop finding new, creative ways to legislate the destruction of black communities. If you cannot welcome Black business into the primary economy, than you have no right to be administering your cruel laws, designed to break the black family, the black spirit, the black body, there.
Please,stop normalizing the language of oppression (them, those, THEY). Cease with your use of the word thug and gangster and criminal when they do not apply. Stop with your endless recitations of rap sheets to justify atrocity visited on blackness.
Please stop propagating the modern incarnation of the lynching spectacles of the old times, these videotaped atrocities that we trade like candy at the lunch table. This only serves to desensitize us to violence against blackness. When we finally feel nothing, than we will lose out ability to empathize and therefore, incite change.
I have often wondered, as I wandered the halls of Police academies in the service of attempting to change these institutionalized mentalities, as I saw the dummies for weapons training that were dark, as I saw the target practice sheets that were vague black faces under hoods, if this is something that could be trained, the idea of black as human. Or does that run counter to the primary mission of law enforcement, which is, like any business, to justify their existence, to legitimize their funding. If they stopped hating black people, who would they harass, and, more importantly, how long would they last? Is it possible to have a Police force that is populated by people whose instinctual reaction to blackness is NOT to snuff it out, lest they be consumed by it? Can blackness be bonded with those that offer nothing but bondage?
Can we stop training state sanctioned executioners?
Which brings me back to my original inquiry, which, again, is please, pretty fucking please, with those flashing cherries on top, America, please stop hating blackness, stop fearing black bodies, stop ending black lives. Fucking hashtag.
