The Price of Black Lives

[Medusa]

Jordan Davis. Trayvon Martin. Oscar Grant. Richard Sherman. Chavis Carter.

There are a great many more names of youths of Color that could comprise a long list. I just read the Huffington Post article about the Michael Dunn verdict in Florida (who shot up a carload of kids over loud music and white rage) and felt an outrage and disgust that I can't describe. Another dead kid. Another inequitable verdict. Another shitty court case outcome from Florida (wtf is up with Florida these days???)

Several friends have posted on Facebook and Twitter about the perceived dispensability of the lives of folks of Color and it's hard to not argue that court cases and new laws such as "papers please" do anything more than reinforce institutional racism.

What is the answer? What is it going to take for young folks (and even old!) of Color to be as valued as young white folks? How many more lives lost? How many more people like George Zimmerman will walk the street?

A wise friend of mine posted about his rage on Facebook and was immediately met with a close white friend of his telling him that his rage was inappropriate and untimely. I asked her, "What other emotion would you have if this had been your child?"

I realize this is all over the place but wanted to open up the discussion about what I feel is an epidemic in this country.

[The_Lady_Snow]

First of all I want to take a moment, and ask all of you here and then you ask all your friends to take one moment, a few seconds, to celebrate the life of Jordan Davis who was unfairly taken from us all before his light fully reflected upon our world, Jordan would of been 18 today.

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This whole week I have been sitting by waiting, waiting with a sense of impending doom knowing that our justice system may fail another child of color like it did with Trayvon Martin, the longer the jury took the more unsettling the mood of Jacksonville became. It's in the air, the unspoken resentment of the upcoming verdict, the knowing, the impending disappointment.

When the verdict came, I felt like the wind was taken from my lungs, and my mind became confused with an array of emotions from desperation to anger. How can his life mean nothing?

75 years is nothing, it may mean something in the long run to most because Dunn will never see a day outside of jail, but he isn't going to not see the outsidie world as a punishment for the death of a 17 year old child, he will not see it because a jury could not find him guilty when it came to Jordan. Jordan's death is still unresolved, unpunished, Dunn has not been held accountable for the attack on a young child.


We have an epidemic in this country, a silent genocide where children of color are being gunned down as if it were open season by the WHITE PRIVELEGED MALE CULTURE. When a child can not play their music at whatever volume they wish, or go to a gas station, or hang out with more than 2 friends and not be deemed a *gang*, or go to the 7 Eleven in their neighborhood to buy candy and juice without having to worry about some guy having a shitty night or day is going to gun them down it becomes a social problem.



Children of color have a target on their backs, children of color are in a war that has been waged against them since the very beginning of this country's history and we turn a blind eye to it as much as justice does with each swift clank of her gavel.


I am angry, disappointed, and have a heaviness in my heart for his parents, today they wake up with the knowledge that their son was erased with the mistrial.

Something has to change.

[Gráinne]

This is surely going to be the wrong opinion.

Yes, I'm angry too at the outcome of this case. The justice system does not apply equally to all. If the races were reversed, forget it.

But while the outrage over Treyvon Martin and Jordan Davis is appropriate, there are hundreds of unnamed Blacks who are killed by other Blacks-94% of Black murder victims. And, crucially, it's something like 86% of White murder victims are killed by other Whites. We still live in a segregated country. But the last statistic is conveniently forgotten in order to "prove" that Blacks are more violent.

The high-profile interracial cases get the sympathy, but the rest of intraracial victims go unnamed. I would bet that Black murder victims make the news much less than White ones, though I don't have any evidence of that.

I feel the same outrage over the cases like Treyvon Martin. But where is the anger, and action, for the nameless hundreds killed?

[The_Lady_Snow]

Originally Posted by Gráinne

This is surely going to be the wrong opinion.

Yes, I'm angry too at the outcome of this case. The justice system does not apply equally to all. If the races were reversed, forget it.

But while the outrage over Treyvon Martin and Jordan Davis is appropriate, there are hundreds of unnamed Blacks who are killed by other Blacks-94% of Black murder victims. And, crucially, it's something like 86% of White murder victims are killed by other Whites. We still live in a segregated country. But the last statistic is conveniently forgotten in order to "prove" that Blacks are more violent.

The high-profile interracial cases get the sympathy, but the rest of intraracial victims go unnamed. I would bet that Black murder victims make the news much less than White ones, though I don't have any evidence of that.

I feel the same outrage over the cases like Treyvon Martin. But where is the anger, and action, for the nameless hundreds killed?

It's always interesting, irritating and oppressing to me when white folk bring up black on black crime after a white man guns down a child of color.

It's a deflective excuse to use.

No one gives a shit when we (POC) gun each other down because systemic oppression has made *SOME* neighborhoods into war zones. That is until gentrification happens, then we take all poor, POC, differently abled, and stick them in even small areas, shittier schools and give them even less space to have and fight for to survive.

[ProfPacker]

This is after all Michelle Alexander has done with new Jim Crow laws, does the government think that lowering the penalty on drug laws will curb the Jim Crow society we are living in?

Actually, that attempt to stem the tide of arrests for drugs is in the service of the Privileged society...we are bleeding money in the jails. It is not to look at the new Jim Crow laws and say hmmm racism is alive, well, institutionalized.

This verdict is akin to saying it is ok to continue to lynch. The disgust is palpable but the reality of what is being sanctioned by our legal system, our political system, the continued denial of our right to free speech and protest ( kids know now they can protest if they get permits and stay with in free speech zones) is chilling. It is subverting our constitutional rights. I think in another post on racism and privilege I did admit that I do not raise my voice as I used to when I was a youth...) I think that our system and maybe the internet's lull into our thinking we take action when we sign a moveon or change.org petition is enough has co-opted our ideas of what a "voice" is anymore. Ironic, isn't it that those in what we think are "repressed" societies like the Middle East and Russia have youth that express themselves in ways our youth used to: Arab Spring and Pussy Riot. When I was watching Pussy Riot on Colbert I said to myself "wow, we no longer have movements and protesters that will put themselves, their values and beliefs on the line anymore." I think we all need to wonder how we went from Black Panthers, SDS, King, Stonewall, etc to NOTHING. Even when we did protest Trayvon, are controlled by what the media will expose America to. Really, I love them, but Pussy Riot gets more press in US then white men controlling our reproductive rights or killing our youth. Sad

Where do we have a voice? How do we express that voice, will our voices be heard...one verdict after another giving rise to Jim Crow and with all the rationalizations that were present when Jim Crow was instituted.

[ProfPacker]

http://titsandsass.com/for-their-own...on-intiatives/

POC are being annihilated every day in many ways.

[Medusa]

I think there are definitely a couple of conversations to be had here.

I agree with you, Gráinne, about intraracial violence being as important. The thing that sticks out for me is that it folks of Color are punished with a much greater severity no matter the if it's black on black crime or black on white. And I should caveat by saying that I'd need to find a statistic to back this up but that in some cases, black on white crime is punished at a *much greater* severity than white on black crime ever is. Of course there are specific circumstances and of course this is not an infinite measure but I continue to be alarmed at how the only lives that seem to matter in the judicial system are the rich white ones.

The most recent case where that rich white kid got drunk and ran over a bunch of people and then his attorney claimed "affluenza" was flat out ridiculous. Had that been a black or brown child that had gotten drunk, stole his Daddy's car, and run over a bunch of folks they would have had him or her UNDER the jail by now. Oh, but because he is a white kid from the rich part of town, he is somehow absolved of his responsibility.

Also agreed about the hundreds of nameless deaths that have occurred that have never been reported on. There was a girl of Color named Cleashindra Hall who disappeared from Pine Bluff, Arkansas back when I was in high school. We were around the same age and she was never found. There were some blurbs on the news about it but her parents and the Black community in Pine Bluff were the main driving force behind keeping her name in the papers and still, she has not been found. Only a few years later, Morgan Nick (young white girl) disappeared from an Alma, Arkansas ballpark and it was all the news talked about for a year.

It's just insulting.

[The_Lady_Snow]

"In June 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was found nine months later — during which her story received enormous national coverage. According to Washington Post staff writer Howard Kurtz, "such factors as the missing children's race and social status matter."


"Alexis Patterson, a seven-year-old, African-American girl from a poor part of Milwaukee, also disappeared in 2002, after being walked to school"



>linkyloo<

[The_Lady_Snow]

"Although Whites commit more types of homicides in comparison to Blacks, Blacks are more likely to be arrested and convicted. Whites are just as likely as Blacks to commit crimes against people of their own race, but Blacks often receive longer sentences and are more likely to be incarcerated or sentenced to d***h when they commit crimes against people of their own race. It is a double-standard that Whites who commit crimes are more likely to be acquitted, and Blacks who commit crimes and are more likely to be convicted. This historical issue of racially disparate treatment in the criminal justice system is another reason why people rally for justice. Using the “Black-on-Black Crime” argument only serves as a means to distract people from macro-level issues of injustice."


>linkyloo<


I hope the above article explains why the "black on black crime" argument is not only not beneficial but also damaging when discussing the crimes committed against children like Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis... It continues to erase their very existence.

[lamuymuyfem]

Originally Posted by The_Lady_Snow

"In June 2002, 14-year-old Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped from her home in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was found nine months later — during which her story received enormous national coverage. According to Washington Post staff writer Howard Kurtz, "such factors as the missing children's race and social status matter."


"Alexis Patterson, a seven-year-old, African-American girl from a poor part of Milwaukee, also disappeared in 2002, after being walked to school"



>linkyloo<

Don't get me started on the Alexis Patterson thing! I still vividly remember the day she disappeared. I pray they reopen the cold case and find out what truly happened to her. Seven year olds should be safe to go to school, no matter their race/ethnicity…