We Are So Easy to Kill
That’s the main point of Black Lives Matter
I’ve had a gun drawn on me so many times in my twenties and thirties. I wasn’t a drug addict, bank robber, or murderer. I was just black.
It’s always a shock to the system. It starts out as a simple stop. Next thing you know, you’re looking into the barrel of a gun. As a worker at Ford's, as they call it in Detroit, I worked odd, strange hours. And for those of you who’ve worked midnights, you know what I mean; lunch is at 3 am and it feels perfectly normal.
Now some people would say that that’s the price of being out on the streets after midnight…but I was told that it’s not. Jack Cover, a really good man who mentored me and the father of two police officers, was on the same shift with me. He told me he’d never been stopped in twenty years…it was then I realized how close to death I really was — so many times.
I think I had PTSD for years, but I didn’t know what it was.
It’s one of the reasons I was glad to leave Michigan; my stress levels were sky-high. One time I actually blew up at a police officer (it was my Karen moment) in Melvindale, MI when he stopped me for, I kid you not, making a left turn. There was no other way to go left and if I did, it wasn’t illegal. But there it was. I was so incensed I called him a liar.
He had his gun out, and his partner was going through my glove compartment (what is it about glove compartments?) without my permission. The only things I ever keep in there are the car insurance and registration documents, the “how to operate your car” booklet from the manufacturer, and gum — not a gun. And it wasn’t the first time. And they way they do it, like rats…all of your stuff is on the floor and they won’t pick it up.
It wouldn’t have been hard for the gun to go off. Then, they’d simply say I resisted arrest — or tried to get his gun! That’s a classic! People who know me would say, “That doesn’t sound like Vanessa. She knows nothing about guns, and she’s kind of mild. Boring even.” But nothing would be done and it would be filed away for eternity. I would have missed raising my children…
I don’t hate cops
My brother-in-law has been one for many years, and another one did it for a few…so I had a “blue” connection. But if he wasn’t telling me how they try to protect the public, and they’re really nice people who just want to go home to their families every night, I’d probably have doubts.
But I’m not sure they look at us as human beings. There lies the problem.
President Donald Trump claimed Tuesday that “more white people” die at the hands of police, despite studies that show Black people are more likely to be killed by law enforcement.
Trump has some problems with the numbers. Here is some more news:
The study found that about 100 Black men and boys per 100,000, and 39 white men and boys per 100,000, are killed by police during their lifetimes.
So to break it down:
Black men are 2.5 times more likely to be killed by police than white men, according to a University of Michigan, Rutgers University and Washington University study released last year.
Hispanics are killed more often too:
There is a double standard
When they say “open carry” is legal — they’re not talking about Black people. That’s why Philando Castile is dead. He told the officer he had a licensed firearm. After that, his death warrant was sealed. The officer told him to get his license and registration. He also told Castile not to reach for the gun. Castile assured him that he would not. As Philando went to get the documents the officer asked for, the officer executed him by shooting him five times at close-range. One bullet went into his heart.
Castile’s girlfriend and her daughter were in the car…and the aftermath was caught on a recording she took. The city settled with Castro’s family for 3.8 million. It was the first department shooting with an officer in thirty years.
Open carry is not supposed to be for Black people.
The irony is that Mr. Castile had the right to have a gun. But once the officer was informed of that fact that he did, he made a decision very quickly, I might add, to shoot and kill. The evidence shows that he never even saw a gun.
It didn’t matter.
We are so easy to kill.
And then there are the unarmed
We don’t have the right to have a gun. We’re also at risk when we don’t. Here’s a trivia question:
How many minutes did Officer Chauvin sit on George Floyd’s neck?
8 minutes, 46 seconds
Is it too soon?
But the justification effort continues. Some comments on Twitter insist that he died of drugs. Oh? Have someone sit on your neck for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.
Then, let's talk about it when you come back from the dead.
(Wait! I’ve changed my mind. Don’t do it, even for an experiment.)
And then there’s Botham Jean.
How much time did 26-year-old Price Waterhouse accountant Botham Jean, eating ice cream and watching a game — have to respond when he was shot dead in his own Dallas apartment? Not much.
The Dallas police originally tried for justification (remember that?) — they found 4 ounces of marijuana in his apartment! Holy Cow! Woohoo! It didn’t work. Do you know how many White people have 4 ounces or more of marijuana in their apartment? You don’t want to know.
Do you know what no one really discussed and examined — at least not in the press?
IF he was a burglar, the sentence was still not death. As a police officer, Amber Guyger was supposed to arrest him. He was unarmed. But her social media shows she had a real problem with people of color. She was triggered to shoot black skin. To execute. Her bias shows that she was never fit to be a police officer in the first place.
Somebody must have looked at this, and that’s why the charges were upped from manslaughter to murder. Now, she’s serving ten years.
It should have been longer.
So the main point of BLM
Black Lives Matter does not indicate that White Lives or Blue Lives or All Other Lives mean less. It just means that actions are occurring that would not happen if the victim was white.
You will not see a police officer pounding a white woman in the middle of the highway, I don’t care how deranged a white woman is...
This Chip Officer is trying to save her life because she was wandering on the highway. She’s mentally ill. He’s really helping her, isn’t he? I think she had better chances in the street.
And then, here’s the Sacramento Police Department:
The witness said deputies later admitted they had the wrong man.
They still tried to double down by attempting to give this innocent man a felony: there’s that justification thing again.
“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.” — Hunter S. Thompson
The amount of viciousness expressed by that jump kick in the back by the Sacramento Police Department is frightening. One does not taser and drop kick someone who is a human being; especially one who has his arms in the air. Oh. I forgot to mention. He is unarmed.
This could have happened to a white man. Right? I think we can agree that even if the white man had a warrant, he would not have been treated in this manner. Do you agree?
I saw a boy shooting at people with an AR-15 the other day, and he couldn’t get arrested in Kenosha, Wisconsin.
It’s almost as if our very blackness is a weapon…
Most Black people are not criminals
But I’ve come to realize, just recently, that there are people who believe that, and it seems to have increased (or come out) since President Trump took office in 2016. It’s sad that I even have to say this. When he tells people that he will keep us (Black People) out of the suburbs so that White Housewives don’t have to worry, he seems to be living in the 1960s. This rhetoric doesn’t help. His comments stoke fear. This may subtly influence a police officer put his hand on the trigger to shoot, and to kill even faster.
But I forget. Trump is a very racist man. That is the only explanation for his relationships with white nationalists and white supremacists. He hired them to work in the White House. However, he’s too late.
We are already living in the suburbs.
And please spare us the common classless, racist trope: “But what about the Black people in Chicago killing each other? Oh, my God!”
White people are dying by the thousands all over this country by opioids (no one talks about this anymore, but they’re still dying). Some of them are killing each other when they shoot each other up. If the police kill a White person senselessly, in say, Texas, am I supposed to say, “But what about all the opioid addicts in Kentucky? Or West Virginia?” No. I’m going to be mad.
Do you see how useless that “Chicago” justification is?
What’s encouraging about the BLM movement is that all kinds of people are waking up to the injustice of one treatment for White people, and a different standard for people of color. It could’ve been the availability of cameras in the last five to ten years. They are catching the truth, the testilying (lying by police in a court of law), and the injustice.
It could’ve been the integration of schools. Kids find out pretty quickly that we are really just the same if given similar opportunities. They make friends from many cultures and colors. And they too see the injustice.
And it could be the older crowd, those who’ve worked with all types of people and have traveled the world. They know what we look like when we allow systemic racism to flourish.
Black Lives Matter exists because good people with integrity are saying enough is enough. We are merging together to make a better society.
Reach out to organizations that are fighting to stop bias, discrimination, and systemic racism. Check out:
These are just a few of the organizations fighting for equality and the end of police brutality.
They know that we are so easy to brutalize and to kill. And this has to stop.
Thank you, good people, who are fighting this injustice, from the bottom of our hearts.
