New Carthage Chronicles

The police officers who fatally shot Kendric McDade  are now in line for compensation as victims who “feared for their lives.”  Pasadena police Officers Jeffrey Newlen and Matthew Griffin  are now eligible for financial compensation to pay bills  while McDade, the suspect (not victim), is dead. As victims of crime, they can apply for aid as any victim of crime is able to do.

If a police officer, who is trained and paid to engage in stressful situations, can fear for his life in a situation where he/she is in a car, in possession of a gun, a back-up gun, taser, baton, bullet proof vest and a radio to call for back-up, then either his/her training is inadequate or they need not be a police officer. If they possess fear, they simply lack faith or confidence that they can control the situation. Furthermore, it not only adds insult to (mortal) injury that the shooters are the victims and the person shot and killed is considered a suspect, it also creates a legal issue. In a perverse way, a conflict of interest is created when a police officer can be compensated as a victim when they shoot someone. There is a financial incentive for an officer to shoot civilians. It doesn’t matter if the compensation is a large or small percentage of their income because the fact remains that the officer can receive a benefit from using deadly force, or, by logical extension, any force at all.

The makings of a cover up began almost immediately after the death of Trayvon Martin. It first began with the mismanagement of the investigation. There was an immediate presumption of innocence for Zimmerman and an assumption of guilt for Martin. The fact that that tests for drugs and other substances were conducted on Martin and not Zimmerman  also reflects the focus of the investigation being biased against Martin.

Sanford, Fla., Investigator Chris Serino wanted to file manslaughter charges against Zimmerman after the investigation of the incident on the day it occurred but was told not to by Norman Wolfinger, the State Attorney.

It’s not surprising that there was a shoddy and incomplete investigation of the murder of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla. The town has a history (as does most of America ) of unconstrained, unchastened violence towards Blacks. The New York Times reports on several instances of anti-black violence. In fact, the current police chief, Ben Lee (who has temporarily stepped down as chief) obtained his job after the former police chief, Brian Tooley, lost the job because of the shoddy investigation of an assault on a Black man by a Sanford police officer’s son. Not too surprising, Norman Wolfinger, the State Attorney who declined to charge Zimmerman is quoted back in 2010 as saying “It depends on what we see once we’re done, but you know the ones that obviously come to light in the video perhaps are battery, things like that, perhaps assault, felony battery…” Once you see the video, once you realize that this guy Wolfinger is still saying we have to see, you will understand that the lack of concern is not too different that the cold, cruel, heartlessness of the wickedly sadistic slaveholders of old.

Recently, there was been a buzz about a pill to curb the racist tendencies of individuals. 36 white, mostly British volunteers were given a drug to combat heart disease. While on the drug, they were given a test that measured racial bias in the test-taker. Supposedly, the volunteers scored lower, implying less racial bias, while on the drug.

Beyond the fact  that 36 is too tiny a sample to draw any significant conclusion (although they published their work anyway), questions abound. The most obvious question is, if the drug does work, what happens when the racist runs out of the drug? Doesn’t the very nature of being racist precludes a desire to even take the drug? Doesn’t the racist have a logic and value system that justifies racism? After all, if you know you are a racist, and don’t want to be one, wouldn’t you just stop? If you didn’t know you were a  racist (which is somewhat hard to believe), but someone told you that you were racist, would you want to begin taking this drug,  or continue to believe you aren’t racist?

Furthermore, why on Earth would a team studying heart conditions administer a test regarding racial bias? Certainly, to have racists view the objects of their racial hatred would start their blood boiling, but is race the most stress inducing agent in a white person’s life? It just seems to me there are a great many other issues and concerns that would cause stress which are more common parts of everyday life. Moreover, what are the implications about the researchers’ opinion about the race related attitudes of the greater white population, if their representative sample is all white and they use race to elevate their blood pressure? Is this a tacit acknowledgement that all whites are racist? If the researchers truly believe that such a small sampling can be the basis for making actionable inferences, are they painting a whole group of people in the broad swaths that disregard the individuals who aren’t reflected in the sampling?

The scenario that concerns me the most is the one where agents of some corporate, governmental or other institutional entity would seek to promote the use of such a drug among the Black population. These institutions and their Black ambassadors, under the pretense of concern over the high rate of elevated blood pressure documented among African-Americans, would attempt to get as many physicians as possible to prescribe the drug to Black people. The hope would be that Black people would not be as quick to vigorously combat anti-Black racism. Blacks still wouldn’t like the racism, they would just be less likely to do something about it. In this manner, white supremacy would be able to continue to exist and Blacks would once again be accomplices in our own oppression.

Marcus Garvey once stated (in paraphrase) that the white man’s science is the threat Black people (and white people as well, truth be told) must be on guard against going into the future. Most drugs (and a lot of foods) contain chemicals that we don’t need to live long productive lives.  More often than not, a change in lifestyle is a better prescription for normalizing blood pressure. The removal of stress and improved diet would be direct results if Blacks were to be able to pursue lives free of racism. If you want to lower the high incident of elevated blood pressure in the Black community, actively fight racism!

Today it was reported that the Justice Department ruled against the state of TexASS in their Repiglican led effort to discriminate against individuals, mostly of Hispanic genealogy, who lack the ways and means to pass identification tests. The tests stood in the way of those who would participate in the voting process and were assumed to vote for the Demoncrats. The goal of the Repiglican led legislation was to block the votes of those who would commit voter fraud via impersonation of legitimate voters.

Just as in the year 2000 during the Bush-Gore presidential election, this Repiglican legislation would have prevented millions of voters from participating in the electoral process. However, this time the effort would be to block Hispanics as opposed to Blacks, which was the case in the year 2000. In the New York Times article dated March 12, 2012, Benjamin T. Jealous, head of the NAACP, is quoted as saying it would support hundreds of thousands of Hispanics attempting to exercise their right to vote. Here is  were I have issue with this ‘issue’. Why wasn’t the Mexican American Legal Defense Fund quoted? The NAACP is on record once again in support of non-Black issues were the NAACP was created by all whites and one Black (W.E.B. DuBois), to support Blacks, when has MALDEF come out to support Black issues? Although a Hispanic issue such as this encompasses people such as Filipinos, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans and others (some of whom are certainly Black), where is the MALDEF leadership? Certainly the majority of the Hispanics in TexASS are Mexican, so, where is MALDEF?

Here, Barack Obama (by all appearances, a BLACK MAN), has his administration stake out a position that is supportive of Mexicans, and MALDEF is NO WHERE to be found. What is their response to this issue?

My point is that until there is respect and equanimity between the various groups that are oppressed by the mainstream western European civilization, there can be no mutually effective coalitions.  Reciprocity is the key to equanimity. Until the various oppressed group in America and the world support Black people, the hierarchy of racism will always be re-enforced by coalitions in that the other groups will rise because of Black efforts. Blacks are at the lowest level in this paradigm, so their rising tide will lift all the boats above us, while other groups’ tide will not necessarily raise ours unless specific action mandates it to be so.