No One Should Celebrate Racial Cruelty

There was a Leave It To Beaver episode where Beaver’s friend, Larry Mondelo took some money from his mother’s purse and threw it out on his front lawn. Larry talked Beaver into helping him find all the money and they used it to go to the movies and to buy whatever candy and treats they wanted and whatever else young white kids on Leave It To Beaver do. Larry’s mother discovered that she has been burglarized and called the Cleavers. Neither Larry Mondelo nor the Beaver went to boot camp for their less than ethical behavior.

There was an episode in the Brady Bunch where Greg Brady took the family car without permission. The mother, Carol Brady and Alice the maid discovered the car missing and called the police. The police found Greg and the car and brought the two home. Greg was never taken to a boot camp. His only reprimand was that he had to do more chores around the house.

On Happy Days, Richie Cunningham took the family’s Studebaker to the race track. Fonzie had pulled the engine and replaced it with a more powerful motor in order to make sure Richie won his race. He didn’t exactly get permission for this endeavor. Later that day, when the father Howard Cunningham went to pull the family’s wagon into the garage, he wasn’t prepared for the extra performance and crashed the car through the back of the garage. The show ended with a loud crashing sound and Richie sneaking upstairs with a guilty look on his face. But instead of going off to boot camp Richie was back the following week for the next episode.

There was an episode on Valerie where one of the twins, it was either Willie Hogan or Mark Hogan took the car without permission and without a driver’s license. Not only did the boy take the car without permission he had an accident and tried to set up his older brother David to take the fall. There was a lot of anger but no one went off to camp.

It’s true that comedic, episodic television is no foundation for reality. But it is interesting to gauge people’s reaction to the differences between a black fourteen year old stealing his grandmother’s car and the reaction the public has to the bad behavior of one of the Seventh Heaven kids. The same people who laughed at the less than ethical antics of a Kirk Cameron during one of the episodes of Growing Pains tremble in fear when they see the same behavior from black teenagers. Suddenly the behavior that all of America is quick to condone with a laugh from young whites is utterly unacceptable from the young blacks.

People respond to the post No Justice for Martin Lee Anderson with glee over the fact that a black young man has died at the hands of seven guards and a nurse and an all white jury has found this posse of the white people innocent of any crime. A couple of the comments received were so vile that they could not possibly be considered helpful to any conversation. White people are quick to accept the original coroner’s autopsy results that claim the young man didn’t die from being asphyxiated by the guards but the young man in fact had died from complications associated with a latent sickle cell trait. But regardless of how much white people may wish black people are just walking down the street and collapsing dead from latest sickle cells, the video shows without any reservation that Mr. Anderson died at the hands of the personnel at the Panama City, Florida boot camp where he stayed for all of two hours.

Too many good white people are actually celebrating the death of Mr. Anderson. Too many white people are actually saying that the fact that Mr. Anderson was denied justice is somehow karma from the fact that O.J. Simpson was found not guilty. Other people pray and give thanks for the death of Mr. Anderson and for the further execution of “his kind” and then want to assert that they are praying that his soul rest in heaven. White mindset people are asking rhetorical questions like, If this young black man didn’t deserve boot camp why was he there? Why are these boot camps so full of black people?

Martin Lee Anderson and “his kind” are victims of the same mentality that made all the field hands of the southern white plantation black during America’s institution of slavery. The same hatred that justified the enslavement of black people and saw our ancestors as a lesser kind is the same mentality that today sees young blacks as “animals” and totally unruly. The behavior that young black urbanites display is sinister and malevolent with the very fabric of descent white society in jeopardy while the same behavior from white youths is understandable. White people are more likely to be taken home for their escapades. Black people are likely to be taken to be incarcerated.

Black people have to face this prejudging mentality every time we get arrested or rejected for employment or an education. Too many white minded people, people with black skin as well as the white skinned, see our black children and make the assumption that they are fatherless, without morals or ethics, without any redeeming values, without talent other than buck dancing and gangsta rapping, without dreams, without hope, and without any future. So when anything happens to a child of the black community white people celebrate the loss as just another thug getting his or her just desserts. Until we are able to prove that we are not the typical black stereotype so ingrained into America’s psyche it is no wonder black people do not receive equal treatment. Besides, it is hard to for the black person to disprove anything once he or she fall victim to the white people’s posse.

Mr. Anderson suffered nothing less than a twenty first century version of a hanging. The guards thought Mr. Anderson was faking his collapse and wanted to gain his compliance with the dangerous application of force. Lethal asphyxiation is the same whether it comes from the end of a noose or through a combination of ammonia tablets blocking the nose and hands clinching the mouth shut. The result is the same, death.

People need to realize America isn’t safe for black people. White people are praying for the death of our children. White people are hanging nooses in complete contempt for any racial acceptance. All kinds of people are using their position of authority and privilege to circumvent any chance for racial tolerance. Any time a black person says they need some kind of assistance for help we are ridiculed as some kind of welfare royalty. We apply for jobs and are judged less competent because of little more than skin color. Black girls are attacked by police for breaking curfews and we watch in horror as they are punched in the face and sprayed with mace at point blank range. Our young boys receive death sentences for school fights with white kids. A white man can pull a gun on a black man and the black man will be charged with theft for defending himself and taking the gun away. Our elders are assaulted by police for asking questions and the police cover the crime by filing false arrest reports to justify the ass whooping. And this is just the tip of the iceberg that represents trouble for black people from white people.

Some of these events have been caught on tape and a jury of white peers will say that it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the black victim deserved what was coming. A black man walking down the street can be blasted with fifty bullets for reaching for his wallet to identify himself or for driving away from a club on his wedding day. And people will see this as nothing more than standard procedure.

This is just the beginning. With each and every passing day we hear more about the contempt white people have for black people. And instead of learning the lessons from the past and keeping note of the history black people share with our white cousins, black people are simply waiting for white people to drop the next shoe that represents their cruelty. In the twenty first century the relationship between black and white people is beginning to digress into a reincarnation of the conditions we suffered at the height of America’s institutionalized slavery.