The Fallacy of Police vs. Black America

The truth is there is no cop on Black problem in America. That might sound like an odd statement to make given the recent events of the last few days but it’s true anyway. For one reason or another, two more blacks could be shot by cops today and it wouldn’t change that truth.

Whites get shot and killed by cops all the time and no one gives a crap. Hispanics, Asians, Eastern Indians – we all take the bullet and it isn’t always the case that the police officer or officers are justified in using the deadly force they are legally authorized to use. In fact often they are not justified. But unless you’re Black no one gives a shit. Boo-hoo that’s the price of living in a free society.

Across America it seems that police departments have gotten a lot more militarized. It isn’t just the frightening way they look with their tanks and assault army gear and machine guns. Christ, when I was a kid, it was 2 guys in a squad car.

The most significant change over the last decade or so is the tactics they employ. They tell you to put your hands up and then they take you to the ground like a cowboy taking down a rodeo calf of almost anything. A lot of these guys also looked all pumped up on steroids. You can bet they are consuming something that “pumps them up”.

Some of them are ex-military so fresh off the boat they think they are still in Afghanistan. Their police academy training in 2016 sure is a lot more military than Sheriff Andy Taylor too. You couldn’t have set a better stage for excessive violence on behalf of police officers who somehow got it in their heads that they “enforce” laws. They do not.

But this tinderbox of failed procedures and unnecessary military training effects all Americans negatively not just Blacks. All of us are potential innocent victims of the police. All of us are potential victims of unjust prosecution and a cop abusing his/her power.

So what is Black Lives Matter doing? Perpetuating and justifying crime as if the Black community doesn’t have a big enough problem with its young Black men, and more recently young Black women going to prison, is exactly the problem.

As if fighting a negative stereotype by encouraging worse behavior than the stereotype will, on a cold day in Hell, ever make anything better for anyone.

Black Lives Matter and The New Black Panthers are the side show that prevents any significant change for the better and they are the tools required to not make our society better but to make it worse. Much worse for Black Americans and much worse for the rest of society. That is simply shameful.

And I hope I don’t have to say that no matter who the victim of excessive police brutality is, violence is never the right answer.