During this singularly anomalous period of Mad Hatter Presidency, when it has eerily become necessary to distinguish true facts from false, is it appropriate to persist in telling our children that America is the world’s avatar of liberty, equality and justice, in the face of its errant history of injustice and inequality? It is a regrettable and disheartening fact that our Nation has not been, and is not now, certifiably, equal and just.
America’s past decades of kidnapping black people, for sale as slaves, [including the breaking up of families] for lifetimes spent in unpaid back-breaking labor and experiencing arbitrary cruelty (but approved by Government and the King James Bible) clearly, is not consistent with its prideful avowal of liberty and equality. Despite relatively recent government attempts at attaining reasonable (publicly demanded) equality and justice, through Statute and Court precedent, chronic prejudicial treatment, of black Americans, still persists. In our view, as expressed in earlier essays, this etiology, is founded in early childhood teachings of human differentiation which may morph into a chronic cultural pathology of hatred, for “others.”
In an early essay, “THE DIRTIEST WORD,” we radically chose to request the elimination of the word, “race” from the contemporary American lexicon. The word, itself, is virtually useless, as determined by any valid scientific or anthropological criteria, and from an empirical viewpoint, invariably leads to mischief. There is no rational reason to (reductively) believe that arbitrarily identified groups of people possess different behavioral traits corresponding to their physical appearance; ignorantly and self-serving, based on the alleged superiority of one group over another. History has shown that it is at its most reprehensible and dangerous level when such reductive disapproval of a misapprehended group is practiced by another group that happens to be in power. America, the avowed land of liberty and equality, while eternally dreading and attempting to atone, for the recurrent nightmare of its past slavery, has nevertheless, afforded a viable home to such offenders.
Despite the democratic provisions of our Constitution, and clarifying Statutes, the perverse cultural pathology of bigotry persists in the Nation, often metastasizing into areas of the body politic, such as jobs, housing, pay, promotion, relief from natural disasters and in diverse other contexts.
Happily, contemporaneous public sentiment does seem oriented towards fairness and equality for all Americans, regardless of color, belief or ethnos, and social equity, and the subject has become front and center in American discourse. Nonetheless, too many individuals still appear to prefer the retention of their pernicious bigoted attitudes. This may be due, conceivably, to reasons of personal insecurity, and the consequent need to derive some measure of needed pride in their perception of physical differences from an identified and culturally degraded group, or possibly, the need for tribal acceptance by other bigots or simply, just plain down-home, flat earth ignorance.
By far, the most personally disturbing examples and objectively, the most reprehensible demonstration of prejudice, has all too often been demonstrated, by our societal police officers. Felonious police, shielded, uniformed, visibly authorized and, armed, by their respective municipal governments, have been witnessed, (where video or television cameras have been available) cruelly, intentionally and wantonly, shooting, and usually killing, unarmed black Americans. Numerous acts of unjustified homicidal bigotry, witnessed on film, presumably, are but a portion of like, but unrecorded, police criminality.
The casual shooting of unarmed, apparently innocent, unarmed black American citizens, by white police has become a regular, truly revolting ingredient of daily television news. It is to be borne in mind that such intentional and bigoted acts of criminal homicide are being wantonly practiced by uniformed municipal police, cloaked in an identifying uniform and accessories, ominously enabling them to fraudulently and visibly purport to represent, the sentiment of the (dominant) societal establishment.
In two cases, a gun was not used. In one, a police officer hatefully squeezed down on the neck of an unarmed, accused black man with his flexed knee, for a full nine minutes, despite pleas of inability to breathe and anguished crying for his mother; all in the presence of several white police officers. In another such homicide, it was a white officer’s illegal chokehold that killed the black, unarmed person, ignoring his weakening statements on numerous occasions, also in the presence of other white policemen, that he could not breathe. The many other dozens of homicidal cruelty, uniformly include unarmed Americans, visually determined to be guilty of the premeditated and intentional crime of being black. A small list of illustrative examples is, Amadu Diallo (shot 40 times in his own doorway), Breonna Taylor (shot in her apartment while relaxing on her couch), David Jacobs, George Floyd, Michael Ramos, Michael Ellis, Atatiana Jeffries, El Fitzgerald and sad to say, additional dozens of instances of such police acts of criminal homicide of black human beings. It is a horrifically unacceptable fact that, as reported, there were only a mere 12 days of this partial year 2020, in which an unarmed black American did not die from a bigoted police killing. It would appear that not even the added trauma of the Coronavirus pandemic has slowed the pace of such cruel police incidents of bigoted hatred and murder.
The police are given the franchise to carry guns, to be available when, in the course of carrying out their undertaken duty to protect societal peace, their lives are threatened. Bigoted policemen have, under the misleading guise of uniform and badge are themselves, committing the most serious of crimes delineated in the Penal Law, intentional homicide.
We find it incredible that such a visibly apparent, lethal police practice has been permitted to continue by a just society. At the very least, these murderous cops must be dismissed and barred from constabulary service anywhere in the Nation. Additionally, societal justice and closure for the grieving families of the victims, require that the miscreants be charged and tried for intentional homicide or murder. Such an appropriate disposition might serve as a deterrent to others, who would falsely use the costume and trappings of a policeman, to enable and mask their hateful intentions towards minorities.
A solution to such repulsive acts of racial abuse would obviously and reasonably call for realistic and effective procedures, targeted to prevent their repetition. The shameful persistence of racial hatred, of human beings with dark skin, most especially, by certain members of the police, is existentially unacceptable and profoundly defeats every avowed moral principle of American life.
Generally speaking, there may factually exist, diverse reasons behind the desire of an individual to be a part of a neighborhood, quasi-military force, and permissibly carry a pistol, club, handcuffs, and other instruments of restraint. We hope that we will be forgiven for our general assumption that the desire to have a job, patrolling the streets, scouting for wrongdoers, and carrying a loaded, weapon, may not necessarily be societally mainstream.
It is our firm view, that any person who wishes to receive the franchise for such a lifestyle, should initially be interviewed and examined by a competent, outside (viz., not police-related) professional (psychologist) and submit to written examination(s) for the analysis and determination of his suitability for this particular lifestyle and job; to be repeated periodically, for the same purpose. Trained professionals may be enabled to ferret out the potential for (aggressive) bigotry, paranoia, and other traits that may indicate an inclination for unsuitably antisocial, bigoted, and potentially lethal behavior.
-p.
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