Killing Black People Is As American As Apple Pie

Like many of you, I was disgusted about the miscarriage of justice in Minnesota and seeing another police perpetrator of a murder of a young Black man get off for his crime.

But as any African American can tell you, this isn't a new phenomenon.  Killing Black people and getting away with it is as American as apple pie.

Why am I saying that?   Because white people have been taught and conditioned because of 246 years of slavery and another 100 years of Jim Crow segregation to have little to zero regard for the lives of African descended people.

In order to justify owning another human being, you have to demonize them, and anti-Blackness did that.   Anti-Blackness is one of the negative legacies of America's original sin of slavery. When you spend 400 plus years demonizing African descended people, that negativity just didn't go away when the Civil War and slavery ended.

It is deeply embedded in the American psyche to hate Black people.  It is also a deeply embedded practice to kill Black people and face little or no punishment for it via lynchings and extrajudicial killings.

As an example, when Lawrence Russell Brewer, Shawn Allen Berry and John William King were convicted in 1999 for the July 7, 1998 murder of James Byrd, Jr. by callously dragging him behind a moving truck, when Brewer and King were sentenced to death, they were the first Texas white men in over 100 years to be sentenced to death for killing a Black Texan.


That's how rare it was for a white person in Texas to be sentenced to death for killing a white person

If you think I'm kidding about this or the title of this post is over the top hyperbole, there are pictures you can Google of Black people being lynched and the white citizens turning it into a joyous occasion they mugged for the cameras or deemed it suitable to take their precious children to.

Because of the ongoing demonization and othering of Black people by the with majority, we have sadly had a long history of other ethnic groups participating and marinating in that anti-Blackness in order to be 'more American' and attempt to set their ethnic group apart from Black people.
Even African descended immigrants from the Caribbean and continental Africa who should know better have engaged in bashing American Black people when they step on these shores.

Anti-Blackness is an international problem.  Note the popularity of skin lightening creams in Asia, the Caribbean and sadly even on the African continent because dark skin is considered 'bad'.

It also isn't new that African-Americans have had a long, negative and ugly relationship with oppressive police to the point where we say that it's Officer Oppressor who patrols our neighborhoods, not Officer Friendly.  

And police forces across the country sadly keep proving that point with every ugly incident that happens .  Eric Garner.  Tamir Rice. Michael Brown. Terrence Crutcher.  All killed by white police officers.   All those officers either were not indicted, or as sadly happened last month in the Crutcher case in Tulsa, found not guilty by predominantly white juries    

What will it take for a cop who kills a Black person to get punished for it?  

And miss me with that Blue Lives Matter 'be respectful to the cop' toro poo poo.  Philando Castile not only did exactly what you po-po loving conservafools screech at us,  as someone exercising his Second Amendment rights and being a licensed gun owner,  he even told Officer Yanez during the traffic stop for an inoperative tail light he had a gun and had no intention of reaching for it. .

And he was still killed for it with his fiance Diamond Reynolds and her then 4 year old daughter in the car as passengers and witnesses to this extrajudicial murder along with the world that watched her heart wrenching Facebook Live video shot to document for posterity what happened.

The Second Amendment is for conservative white people only.   The National Rifle Association's cricket chirping silence on the Castile case proves just how anti-Black and racist they are and always have been.

When the Black Panthers marched into the California state capitol building carrying their unloaded shotguns, it's interesting to note the NRA was quick to call for gun control legislation then.

Speaking of the Panthers, one of the major reasons the Black Panther Party formed in Oakland in October 1966 is because they and the Black citizens of the Oakland area were tired of being harassed and killed by police with impunity.

So what happened in the Philando Castile case isn't a new problem. It's just a problem that has never been properly addressed because of its systemic nature that the conservative white males and females in power don't want to deal with.because it isn't happening to 'their kids'

They also don't want to deal with it because they will not only have to do some deep introspection into their own roles of perpetuating the anti-Blackness, but having to come to grips with how they and their ancestors benefit from it.

In the meantime, because of their inaction, Anti-Blackness, especially when it is combined with a racist trigger happy cop, is killing my people.  .