White Privilege on Parade
Just what #Ferguson needs. A bunch of guys carrying assault rifles. Legally. http://t.co/6Gv09UQABA pic.twitter.com/sWNZhx01I3
— Jim Roberts (@nycjim) August 11, 2015
This is white privilege on parade. Every last bit of it.
Imagine if you will if a bunch of heavily armed black men just happened to show up claiming to protect the protesters from the cops.
Do you think the cops would allow them to do so? I think not. There’d be arrests, and quite possibly shooting too. After all, blacks in the Greater St. Louis area are shot and killed without so much as being armed (see Michael Brown), let alone waltzing around with semi-auto guns and body armor.
This is the problem in a nutshell.
This is why the whole #alllivesmatter is BS. Because it’s abundantly clear that not all lives matter equally. For the police, whites matter more than blacks. Blacks are still stopped more, even though the MO Attorney General’s office repeatedly found throughout the state that police found more contraband with whites than blacks.
Minorities are targeted. Year after year.
Minority communities are levied an open tax on their existence - police fines, fees, arrests, and lost time trying to fight the deluge. It just isn’t called a tax. It’s just the cost of living while black.
And this has to end. Justice demands it.
But the Missouri legislators and governor aren’t about to put their feet down and end the inequities. Nope, they aren’t. They are allowing the STL area police to continue doing what they’ve always been doing, and last night’s non-event with the Oath Keepers is proof.
Blacks protesting peacefully results in state of emergency and cops breaking out the riot gear with every intention of using it (as they did last year). Whites carrying semi-auto guns openly gets a mere shrug of the shoulder from cops - in part because it is legal to open carry in Missouri (think about that for a moment when you realize how many blacks are killed by police who are unarmed in the state).
Random white men w/ guns: No problem. Black activists (@Nettaaaaaaaa and @deray) w/ questions: Problem. #Ferguson pic.twitter.com/eqCb0BlgTC
— Dab Aggin (@DabAggin) August 11, 2015
While the police departments need to be gutted, filleted, and shuttered - especially the FPD and STL Co. PD - change must come from the politicians governing the state to enforce change on the muncipal governments that maintain the status quo. We’ve already seen that Ferguson has reverted to type in treating the community as a piggy bank after a short reprieve.
As it is, we’ve got the same cast of characters pushing support of the officer who killed Michael Brown, including Rep. Jeff Roorda.
Former state Rep. Jeff Roorda wrote a book called “Ferghanistan: The War on Police:” pic.twitter.com/DQOAREEydA
— Jason Rosenbaum (@jrosenbaum) August 11, 2015
They’re still in office and still pushing to maintain the status quo or expanding police protection against being charged with a crime for excessive force. Roorda led one of those efforts to expand police protection against being charged until he was asked to back off.
The spotlight is insufficient. This requires still more action. It requires voting in people willing to change the system for the better and to hold police accountable when they engage in excessive force. It means requiring better police training and improving community relations.
For comparison’s sake:
This is how one of the African American men who turned out not to have a handgun was arrested in Ferguson last night pic.twitter.com/Z4WIfc6o2E
— Jon Swaine (@jonswaine) August 11, 2015