#RACE #Ferguson In the article linked here, Tom Ley does a great job of highlighting the egregiously ugly racism at work here in an article Deadspin has tagged simply racism. While its galling that Deadspin has to have a tag for racism its not anywhere close to the kind of heart stopping ugly in the clip that Ley unpacks. In this clip one thing stands out for me: At about 10:25 a small blonde lady starts yelling at the protesters: Were the ones who gave all yall the freedoms that you have Let me stop you right there. The implications of the utterance here are of the earth-shatteringly stupid variety that typically elicits a response from me akin to: Is you fukkin serious, right now?! So while I am wrestling with my efforts to be dignified yall excuse me if I black out... Hello Small Blonde Lady, Im going to dispense with the customary preamble of the open letter format and get right to the heart of my missive. NO. YOU. DID. NOT. GIVE. US. SHIT. Our freedoms, our liberties, our dignity as human beings are not yours to give. They are not even in your purview. They are ours and we are endowed with them by our Creator. Now after you came to our land, stole us, murdered some of us and put the rest in bondage- you did take possession of our bodies and by virtues of physical and mental captivity you took our freedom. But you never have it back. We snatched it back. We fought, sweat, bled, died to be free. We paid a heavy toll. We sacrificed everything. All to get back something we already had free and clear before you and your ilk came to our shores. If you feel the need to be credited for some part of aiding the freedom efforts of the modem Black citizen then you may credit yourself for selling it to us. But thats fencing because the freedoms you sold never rightfully belonged to you. Perhaps you are thinking of the various wars fought by brave men and women in the armed forces, but if so youd be wrong there too. For one, while it is commonly patriotic to blanket the actions of all military persons as fighting for our rights it simply isnt true. Most wars the US engages in are on their surface for the rights of other people who do not enjoy the benefits of democracy. Beneath that there are generally politically driven economic concerns. Our freedoms-save the free market ones-are generally not the concern of the suited boomers who send our young men and womben to battle. Besides that though you have another inconvenient fact- there has not been a single war or large scale military operation where we -- Black Americans didnt fight and die. And since during the conflicts in Korea and Vietnam our liberties were of far less concern than the liberties of the free market and preserving the idealistic portrayal of democracy and capitalism Id venture to say the last war on record that you all could even hint at fighting to give us freedom was the Civil war and --well-- the history lesson there is another post entirely. But lets pretend that you somehow did GIVE us the freedoms we enjoy. Where and how does that excuse murdering us? How does freedom equal life? Life that by no rational argument can you claim to have given us? There is no argument to be made here. I hate --I mean I truly utterly hate- that I have to be the one to break it to you, but YOU DONT GET TO KILL BLACK PEOPLE. And you dont get to tell them to shut up when their noisy protests of your silent agreement with their being murdered disturbs your viewing of a ball game. Your skewed perception of what you have given us is not only woefully inaccurate but its patently insufficient to justify your ire at our outrage. You have given us nothing like freedom. What you have given us is a cause to fight and possibly given the climate die for. But freedom is outside of your capacity of giving, your presumption of power and even your most basic comprehension. But given the small, insular box of ignorance your comments suggest you live in I will not fault you for not understanding freedom---youve evidently never experienced it.
Posted on: Wed, 08 Oct 2014 21:09:59 +0000
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