If You Don’t Want Police To Shoot You, Don’t Resist Arrest
It saddens me that what little is left of the black civil rights movement is spent defending thugs, hustlers, drug dealers, and troublemakers such as Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Alton Sterling, and Philando Castile. Can you believe we’ve gone from honorable causes like fighting for the right of black people to attend college to defending black criminals who foolishly mouth off against, run away from, and fight with the police; police who are putting their lives on the line to protect us from criminals?
Can’t the protestors at least defend young black men of honor, quiet heroes going against the grain by wearing their pants around their waist; refusing thuggery, weed-smoking, and hustling; those who marry one woman, have all their kids with that one woman, proactively raise those kids to be successful, productive citizens, and love only their wife and no other woman; those who work an honest job with integrity, intensity, and discipline, no matter how menial the work? (Note: selling illegal cigarettes on the street or bootleg CDs on the corner doesn’t count as honest work!)
You see, unlike those men recently shot, I do not fear for my life from the police. Quite the contrary, my life is made safer by the police who stand between me and people like Sterling, who is much more likely to break into my car or stick me up at night compared to any harm that might come to me from a police officer. The fact is, the police are not shooting black men like me. Why? Because I am not a criminal, and when the police stop me, I politely do what they say, and they leave me alone. I do not run away, fight back, or mouth off. It’s really pretty simple.
Why is no one asking how these men’s families and communities failed them so badly that they became criminals or thugs? If you look up “tough” in the dictionary, my grandmother’s picture will come up. If you were raised under her and acted up, after she got done with you you’d wish the police had gotten to you first. I’m glad my father was raised in such an environment. Discipline happens in the home, and it starts early. When it doesn’t, the police are left to clean up the mess of deeply broken human beings who were already doomed before their first interaction with the law. It’s totally unfair to ask the police to treat hardened criminals with kid gloves.
How did we get here? The Welfare Industrial Complex has produced generational government dependence that has devastated black families and communities and created the criminal underclass of black thugs the police are killing today. I wonder what Black Lives Matter has to say about that? Will they unequivocally call for an end to the welfare, food stamps, and government subsidized housing that have replaced the black father, and thus return the role of family provider to the black man where it belongs, not the government?
Will they call for a complete end to illegal immigration and to burdensome regulations and taxes that make hiring Americans too expensive? After all, these things reduce wages, increase unemployment, and harm the ability of young black men to get jobs that provide for a family. My guess: don’t hold your breath. It’s just so much easier to blame the police, white privilege, and institutionalized racism.
Yet amid all the hype, let us not lose sight of reality: No matter how much the media attempts to stir up racial strife, the fact is about 70 black people are killed by other black folks for every one killed by a white police officer. White police killings of black people are simply a non-issue compared to what black people do to each other, unfortunately.
So no, despite the prevailing atmosphere of hysteria, I’m not afraid of being killed by the police. Quite the contrary: sadly, the data shows I’m much more likely to be victimized by a fellow black man than by a white police officer. So may the police remain sharp, aggressive, and strike fear into criminals so the good people don’t become victims.
This will come down to you: are you equally accepting of the position put forth in this article about working class whites?
If you agree with both the Gibbs piece and the French piece, then you are ideologically consistent, and don't deserve to be lambasted. If you try to argue that you think the Gibbs piece is valid, but claim the French piece is out of line, then you will have the greatest scorn heaped upon you.
Blah blah blah.
After the Rodney King Verdict riots in Los Angeles in 1992, LAPD police chief Darryl Gates asserted, without evidence, that the problem of police brutality against African-Americans was because Nig...er, African Americans didn't know how to "behave" when dealing with police officers.
It was bulls**t then, and it's bulls**t now when Gibbs asserts it.
For dissenting views, I offer up...
(African American) lawyer Lawrence Graham
https://paw.princeton.edu/article/rules
(African American) sports journalist David Aldridge (scroll down to the subheading "Not Feeling")
http://www.nba.com/2016/news/features/david_aldridge/07/11/morning-...
As for the rest of Gibbs Right-Wing Authoritarian F***tard Fact-Free rant....Tax rates have NOTHING to do with whether cops shoot Nig...er, African Americans. Buiness regulations have NOTHING to do with whether Cops shoot Nig...er, African Americans. What criminals do has NOTHING to do with whether Cops shoot unarmed Nig, er African-Americans. What causes cops to abuse, shoot, and kill Niggers is their own fear and bigotry. When they're in the middle of choking a subdued man to death (Eric Garner) or shooting a 12-year-old with a toy gun (Tamir Rice) or corking off 6-7 shots at a traffic stop as a Nigger complies with t..., they're not thinking about tax rates or the Welfare State or the lack of 2-parent homes in the African-American community. They think about fear and/or dominance. And if police officers can't put their fear and/or their desire to dominate away to serve and protect the public as they are sworn to do, then they need to find another profession.
Mr. Gibbs, for your defense of the indefensible, I invite you both you and your domestic pack animal to engage in sexual relations.
Sounds like a typical ... who's bought into the rhetoric that all blacks are criminals and welfare recipients. And I'm sure it makes the racist conservatives quite relieved that he's doing their hating for them.
Thank you for taking the time to write this.
Well said.
Yeah, I'm going to really read that.
Right.
No, I don't think so. Without reading it. Or with reading it.
You are welcome.
I think Radley Balko nailed it when he said we're training them to think and respond like soldiers, telling them they're at war with various abstract concepts and then we act surprised that they behave as if they're on a battlefield rather than city and suburban streets. Paraphrasing, of course.
I don't think any of us can honestly know the motivation behind their actions. I don't discount the possibility that some are so skittish they probably should be in this line of work or that others are so arrogant that they don't care who they hurt.
Hello Stu:
No, of course, I don't believe cops are going out of their way to execute unarmed black men. As individuals, I doubt they're racist at all.. That, however, doesn't mean the police force isn't racist. As an institution, it most certainly IS. Institutionalized racism is a form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions, as distinct from racism by individuals or informal social groups.
The question the right poses is, HOW can a police force be RACIST when the individual cops aren't? But, it can be and most times IS.
excon
I mostly agree. The truth is any human rights campaign can be bought for the right price and lead by virtually anyone charismatic enough to get into it. Right now people only care about demonizing cops because that's the new popular thing to do and humans have a habit of going with the tribe (whatever the next person thinks.) They also have a habit of giving the person the benefit of the doubt to believing nearly everything they say without knowing them or if it's true. This also helps forms their views. While it's good to consider people's stories and using your best judgement whether it is true or not... it isn't always good to take everything everyone says to heart because people lie.. we ALL do. Yes even cops. We lie to ourselves when we feel guilty.
I agree with this person who wrote that but it's not ever going to get taken care of because black people who say that are often called race traitors.. and I've heard of more than a few black people saying and being frustrated at the lack of attention to their actual communities about the violence that is happening often times by their own citizens and white people who say that are often called racist by the idiots preaching about white privilege.
