Black Lives Matter

My my hopefully not with random killings as beside the matter of morality of doing so it would had likely brought the hammer of god down on my people.

Blacks was not able then or now to win a full scale racial war.

footnote in 1831 a black slave by the name of Nat Turner led a slave rebellion that ended up with many dead white children, and women.

You hear that it was against southern laws to teach slaves to read and write that was the result of Mr.Turner setting up his rebellion with the aid of the written word.

Free black men could votes in many areas of the south until the Turner rebellion and if memory serve me correctly not only did they loss the right to vote but was order to leave the state of VA by a date certain or become slaves once more.

That dull throbbing feeling in your forehead may be a result of beating it against a particularly thick and dense wall.

By the way there was a black riot that never happen in Miami, when some black leaders was openly calling for the black citizens to leave their own communities and march on the non-black areas of town.

Well everyone got their guns out and for example the location of my work place at the time was right next to a black community so those who did show up for work that day the riot was supposed to had kicked off was armed to the teeth.

I remember joking that we have enough fire power between us to be able to take over at least a small south american country.

Well the riot never happen for some not so strange reason, in my opinion and one black leader at the time stated that the Cubans was waiting for them and who knew what heavy weapons the Cubans over the year had collected.

Too bad other riots in the Miami area did not just fizzle out in the same manner but then there was never any more threats to bring the riots to the white/cuban areas of town.

I don't understand how you would even bring up a rebellion that represents such a tiny percentage of the deaths of slaves. Do you know why you're so focused on those few lives?

The point being that force and violence by the black community in the slave days or now only just results in a far worst situation/conditions for the black community then exist before the violence was try.

Oh as far as deaths of slaves the ones that landed on our shores and their now free descendants are without question better off then those that missed the slave ships sailing as first they was likely to had been slaves of the tribes that won local wars before being sold to the slave traders and conditions in the south for slaves most likely beat the hell out of being slaves in Africa. Next their descendants are now citizens of the most powerful nation on earth instead of being in the hell holes that a large percent of Africa happen to be.

Next unlike Haiti where 30,000 or so slaves died from over work a year repeat a year the conditions in the colonies was far better.

George Washington to punish one of his slaves and as a warning to others of his slaves sold him to a Haiti slave trader. Being sold to work the sugar cane fields in the Caribbean was a threat held over the heads of the slaves in the colonies.

As I stated slavery existed for most of human history with or without a racial element being involved.

A large percent of the time you was just on the losing end of some war or you have the wrong religion for that matter.

History is never simple and black and white tend not to exist even when it come to the subject of slavery.

See the subject of the slaves/soldiers/slave armies in the middle east as how non-simple the subject of slavery can be.

You go pick some sharp thorny cotton with your bare hands out in the hot Georgia sun for days without end and then say blacks were better off in America than, free, in the lush coastal ports of Africa...

Sounds like you have been listening to Pat Robert$on and Mike Freakabee...

LOL with all the diseases that to this very day cause the average lifespan in Africa to be very very short indeed.

Next free as in being a member of a tribe where there was little or no freedom in fact some of the chiefs would sell some of their own tribal members to the slavers.

Love the silly movies that show a slave ship landing a shore party and having the sailors chasing happy blacks and then placing them into chains while the facts was that there was more then enough tribal chiefs being more then willing to sell slaves they gotten by warfare with other tribes or even some of their own members.

Have you noticed all the people willing to die trying to move out of Africa? Blacks seriously need to shut up and get to work taking advantage of all this opportunity they have as Americans. I am seriously sick of their constant complaining about their good fortune.

And wtf do you think the average life span of a black slave cotton picker was?

Do you know what the average life span today of the average sugar cane worker is in South America? You know those workers that put sugar on your table for 3 dollars a LB?

FORTY YEARS!

Before you open your pie hole it would be nice if you from time to time engaged some rudimentary brain activity....

They can take that up with those that done it, leave me out of it. And it had nothing to do with these belly aching blacks we have, they have never even seen cotton usually.

The only belly aching I hear are from the repugs that can't sell out their office fast enough.

Yes indeed the sugar crane workers was in serous trouble that is why slave owners in the colonies such as George Washington would sell their trouble making slaves to such places as Haiti where life was very short in order to keep their other slaves in line..

But once more that is not the US or the colonies before the US was founded.

Hell Haiti needed 30,000 new workers a year to replaced the slaves that they had worked to death on that sad island.

All in all the black slaves who ended up in the colonies compared to any other place they might had ended up including Africa was damn lucky.

Here are some of the results of the black live movement that sure the hell is not going to made young black men any safer.




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I can understand why the father of a dead child may want to kill the murderer or even, in his grief and rage, want to burn down his town, but it can't be condoned, at least not in a civilized society operating with the rule of law. This isn't the Wild West or a vengeance themed action flick starring Jason Stratham or Denzel Washington.

In addition, it simply isn't true that every African-American who has participated in violent and destructive actions as a result of actual or perceived abuse of an African-American is anywhere near as emotionally tied to the victim as the father is to his daughter in your hypothetical. Or for that matter, has personally experienced a similar level of abuse.

There is every reason for every citizen of this nation (regardless of race, religion or ethnicity) to not only "hope" but "expect" that incidents will not result in violence and rioting. Or have you conceded and now accept that certain areas of our country, particularly, inner-cities are powder kegs, so volatile that even a perceived spark can cause an explosion?

It didn't happen in Charleston and that city experienced two terrible crimes motivated by racism: One perpetrated by a cop and the other by a deranged white supremacist. If any African-American community had a "right" to explode over such abuse it was Charleston's, and yet they didn't.

Meanwhile in Ferguson, riots break out after a black man is shot by a white cop. There are no videos, as there were in Charleston, that showed the cop clearly gunning down an unarmed man who was running away from him. In fact, we now know that the black man was attacking the cop and that (despite the insistence of some groups that a blatantly false narrative is true) the shooting was legal; and accepted as so by the Eric Holder DOJ.

So what's the difference? African-Americans in Charleston haven't experienced as much abuse from cops in particular and whites in general than those living in Ferguson? African-Americans in Charleston are not as "courageous" or "fed up" as those in Ferguson?

The difference, in my mind, is that, for whatever reason, the African-Americans in Charleston responded to these crimes in the way we should expect Americans of all races, ethnicity and religion to respond: Like rational, responsible American citizens. Maybe it's because I've spent a fair amount of time in Charleston, but I wasn't surprised. Were you?
(I should say I was surprised by level of forgiveness the families of the victims of the church shooting were able to display, but that level of grace surprises me whenever I see it, no matter who it's from and where they live)

For whatever reasons some of the citizens of Ferguson behaved very differently and frankly, I don't understand why. A lot of people were very quick to point out, as they should have, that all of the citizens of Ferguson were not rioting in the streets, that the majority of them (as was the case in Baltimore) were not and wished it wasn't happening. (Why wouldn't they? It was their neighborhoods and businesses that were being destroyed).

So we have plenty of examples where rioting and violence doesn't break out in black communities when a real or perceived injustice occurs, and where it does, the evidence strongly suggests it's due to a minority of residents (perhaps even some outside agitators).

Of course, black Americans are as capable of restraining their anger and outrage as white Americans, perhaps, given their history, even more so, and even if they have more frequent cause for anger or outrage than do whites, our expectations of them as responsible citizens shouldn't be any less than it is for any other group.

It's not a coincidence that the greatest advancements in civil rights have been achieved through very deliberately non-violent methods. Black American are as smart, as savvy, as wise as white Americans. They figured it out and it worked. Reacting and overreacting to situations violently does not work. From a purely practical consideration, as long as black American constitute a minority of only 14% it never will work. So not only is it illegal, and immoral, as a political strategy it's stupid.

Expecting less of black American than is expected of Americans of any other race, no matter what the setting may be is, in my opinion, insulting to them and a form of racism.

Do we need to address problems of unequal justice (both in policing and jurisprudence)? Yes, but we also need to approach these problems holistically and with an understanding that they involve socio-economic factors as much, if not more so than race. In any case lowering expectations for abiding by the law is certainly not the answer.

Fathers killing their children's rapists and murderers are roundly applauded in this country. I've heard interviews on this for forty years. People understand, and when the perps live to get to jail, they are often killed or raped savagely in prison because of our country's sentiment about this crime.



You aren't qualified to make this statement. You don't have any idea what it's like to wake up wearing black skin every day of your life in this country.


Yes. The boil of racial injustice in the country has never been popped to use a lovely, but appropriate, metaphor via MLK in the 60s. Healing can't happen while the sore festers. Yes. there are places where people are so sick of being treated like **** that they are one incident away from losing it.



The difference is that black people aren't a monolithic group that can be measured by one set standard. They have individual personalities, varied histories, and different triggers and fuses, varied local political and religious mores... They prayed in Charleston; they lost it in Ferguson. Do I find it odd as **** that Ferguson blew for a kid I'll call a bullying crook - and Charleston wept and forgave a brainless little asshole for murdering - in a prayer meeting - nine innocent elderly Christians? No, I don't understand it, but it's not for me to understand. What I shouldn't be questioning is their response. What I SHOULD be questioning is what happened to them. Why is has happened all through the history of this country - and why in the hell is it still happening.

It seems very paternalistic to me to pet Charleston on the head for behaving in a "respectable" manner in the face of this carnage.

If black Americans hadn't stood up to the establishment in the 60s, they'd still be drinking from segregated water fountains.

Institutional racism is wrong. We've had how long to end it?

I'd be pissed too. I'd be in the streets too. How can you fault anyone for being out of patience?

Good post, Finn.


Add via edit - me, I'm all for peaceful marching. Also, opinion writing, speech making ,political action. Not for rioting. (I've been in one, somewhat.) I get the anger, but not the tactic, get Finn's larger point.

LASH QUOTE TO FINN:



If you've never met Finn in public, how do you know the color of his skin?

One other point: You mention the word "black"...With the increased rate of inter-racial marriage between" whites" and Afro-Americans in the US, what percent of Afr0-Americans living in the US today, actually have BLACK skin? I suspect that inter-racial marriage occurs at a lower rate in the SOUTH, than in the NORTH and therefore, there is a greater number of black-skinned Afro-americans in the SOUTH, than in the NORTH.

As a matter of fact, there is a growing number of Afro-Americans (NORTH)
whose skin is so WHITE, anyone who didn't know them, would immediately call these folks WHITE.

And as you probably know, from American History, such "White looking" Afro-Americans were frequently called "passing" by their families and friends.

Those silly laws was change by actions of the federal government reacting to peaceful repeat peaceful protects.

Burning and looting and random racial killings are not a way to convince the rest of society that your group should be look at in any way but as dangerous sub-humans that need to be tightly control.

footnote the pre-civil war laws in the south that even ban teaching blacks to read and write was a direct resulted of a slave rebellion in 1832 that ended up killing a hundred or so whiles and they was mainly children and women at that.

Hell the slaves even cut the heads off of twenty or so children in a boarding school.

Have that in my own family in regards to two step daughters and their children.