With all the unrest caused by the recent rulings in Ferguson and New York, there has been a great deal of dismay and disbelief among many white people, from Fox News commentators to Fox News Pundits to Fox News Analysts to Conservative Radio Hosts. It's a real head scratcher it would seem so being white I figured I would help out and explain a few things to my fellow melanin challenged friends.
1) Police pull over and accost visible minorities a lot more than white folks.
I know, this sounds crazy right? Why just four months ago you were pulled over for doing 75 mph in a school zone but it was Wednesday and Chicago Fire was about to start and you didn't set the friggin' TiVo and needed to get home. We feel your pain. You probably were spoken to very politely, asked to produce your license and registration and then had the ticket knocked back to doing 10 mph over the limit and you MISSED the first twenty minutes and had to record it later on the time-shifting channel which isn't even in mother effin' HD. Here is the thing. If you had been black or brown or wearing a turban things would have been VEEEERY different. Remember the album cover for Ice T's Iceberg that your one black friend in high school owned? It would have looked a lot like that. And that's if you're lucky.
2) Black people are always "matching a description" when stopped by the police for seemingly no reason.
Well duh, a lot of them look alike. I mean who the hell can tell the difference between Tupac, DMX and the guy who was the principal at the high school in the last season of Buffy? I mean the Pittsburgh Steelers' Head Coach was also the guy on House. And don't even get me started on which one is Sam Jackson and which one is Laurence Fishburne. Here is the thing though. Black people don't think that. Seriously. They can totally tell the difference between Michael Clarke Duncan and Ving Rhames. They think, and get this, that lots of white people only think they all look alike because of residual racism. And it pisses them off. BAM Mind ... Blown ...
3) It really seems like when the cops kill unarmed citizens they are pretty much always black or brown.
Forget that black people are three times more likely to be arrested than white people when there are three white people for every black person in the United States. Forget that the police are twice as likely to use deadly force against a black suspect than they are against a white suspect. And please totally forget that deadly force is used against an unarmed black suspect seven times more often than it is used against a white one. At least one white guy was killed by cops this year so it's a wash right? Apparently they don't think so.
Here is the things my fellow Caucasians. If Cliven Bundy's name was Leroy Jackson he would have been shot dead the first day of the standoff. That's just a fact. If black people in Compton or Harlem tried the open carry crap their fellow white citizens do down in Texas and Arizona and walked into a TGI Friday's with AKs and AR15s the mother of all SWAT teams would descend on that place like Godzilla's foot on Bambi. I don't even blame the police for that. These guys grew up as kids watching Belly, Juice and Menace II Society which taught them that young black men are carrying Gats at all times and will not hesitate to bust a cap when cornered. So did the jurors. We were and still are subliminally taught to fear black men. Movies do this as does TV. The media certainly piles on with a will. Until this changes, I am afraid that black and brown people will continue to suffer "tragic deaths" and have shattered families hearing hollow statements about "thoughts and prayers."