I am not vilifying the police's use of force to take down an armed thief in Milwaukee. He pointed a weapon at cops, so that is a justified shooting (two words that should never go together, but sadly, they do).
What I'm angry about is the knee-jerk response to the what happened afterward. Yes, there was a riot, there were fires and violence. But I cannot wrap my head around the inability to realize that this was a 50 year old pile of oily rags that was just waiting for someone to throw a lit cigarette into it. And that shooting was a lit cigarette.
Poor, hopeless, disenfranchised people are NOT "animals". They are not freeloaders, they are not lazy. They are victims of a corrupt system of institutionalized racism and segregation. Milwaukee is the most segregated city in the country. Think about that. Not Birmingham, not Detroit, not Chicago. MILWAUKEE.
All the head-scratching and the hand-wringing and the asking "Why would you burn down your own neighborhood?" Well, let me pose a question-- let me use Bay View as an example (For those not familiar with Milwaukee, Bay View is a now affluent neighborhood. When I grew up there, it was a white blue-collar middle-income German/Polish neighborhood). Instead of the hipster hell that Bay View has become, what if it went the other direction? What if all the little cafes and craft beer bars and the coffee houses all disappeared? What if the main economy in BV wasn't IT or service oriented, but manufacturing? What if that industry just up and left and left thousands of people jobless. And what if property values plummeted because of it, hence property taxes plummeted? No money for roads, no money for infrastructure, and definitely no money for schools? What if the local economy tanked? And no one had the means to repair their homes? And businesses pulled out, including big box businesses like grocery stores and department stores and gas stations? And city planners basically abandoned BV, choosing to put funds into a more "desirable" area?
And because of all this, the few left who have the means to live a middle-class life up and moved to these more "desirable" areas, leaving their less fortunate neighbors behind?
THEN the people left behind try to find work. But because the neighborhood economy has tanked, they don't have a car to get to and from jobs? And when they put in an application, a manager looks at it and his face drops as he says, "Oh, you're from BAY VIEW? Um, yeah, we'll get back to you."
And throws your application into the garbage can before you've even walked out the door?
Imagine that the only businesses around that make any money are liquor stores? Imagine that, because there are no viable grocery stores close by and you don't have a car, you feed your family Pizza Hut and McDonalds because it's close by and cheap and you can feed a family of 4 for $20 and those places take EBT because you can't find a job? And then your family's health begins to suffer for lack of proper nutrition? You and your kids become obese from fast food. And you go down the aisle of the bus with your kids and people sneer and mutter to each other, "Christ, go on a diet. They must be from Bay View."
Imagine your kids growing up in that environment. Seeing your despair and hopelessness day in and day out. Imagine your kids going to school and being shunned and ignored and teased because you have to dress them in Goodwill hand-me-downs and they may not even have a warm winter coat come November.
You can't afford a house. You can barely afford rent. You can't afford a car. You can barely feed your kids. There are no jobs for you. And everywhere you go, you are looked at as inferior, as "someone from Bay View".
So you drink. And you drug. Because it's your only escape from the misery of your life. You start to resent your kids because you can't properly care for them. And they absorb that resentment into themselves and reflect it back to you. They get in trouble. They start stealing, and dealing drugs. They have sex to comfort themselves and feel loved because you just don't have anything else left to give them. But because education funding has been slashed in your school district, they are not taught how to protect themselves from pregnancy and disease. Hell, even school doesn't seem important anymore. Why go to school just to graduate into a world who doesn't want them? So they turn to crime because they have been shown that THEY DON'T MATTER ANYWAY.
They're from Bay View.
Now imagine this scenario played out over and over, generation after generation, for 50 years. Sure, there are times when things seem to be improving. But the system has been set in stone. And to escape that system, you have to become more extraordinary than everyone around you, coming from the same place. You are told "Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps" when you don't even have boots. And when you seek help out, you are told that you are a lazy freeloader who doesn't want to work.
So, let me ask... wouldn't you be PISSED OFF TOO?
I read something from a white millennial, "They were stealing WEAVES from the BEAUTY SHOP?? Why would you steal weaves?"
IT'S NOT ABOUT THE WEAVES, DOORKNOB. It's about RAGE. It's about HOPELESSNESS. It's not about getting a free weave. It's an act of defiance against a system that has literally tried to kill you for decades.
Because you're from Bay View.
