Zoosermom. I totally agree and I have no problem with this moms behavior. None at all. I would totally have her back.
Interesteddad.
What is your question?
More of an ironic head scratch than a question.
At least on paper, the “African American community” has an unprecedented number of “leaders” and has had for quite some time. Take Baltimore, for example. Police Commissioner, City Council President, Mayor, US Representative, Attorney General, and President of the United States are all African American “leaders”.
It could be argued that the problems stem from a lack of “leadership”, but it’s hard to suggest that it’s a lack of “leaders”. If anything, the African American community in Baltimore should probably consider the option to get rid of their leaders and try a different approach, but given election results in Baltimore for many decades, that is probably unlikely. I would respectfully suggest that Baltimoreans look to the leaders they have elected to address their problems.
“The same people who say “violence isn’t the answer” are the same people who stand by in silence when brothers are killed, same people who want to blow up each member of ISIS after an American is beheaded, same people who want 50% of our taxes to go to the defense sector, etc.”
What are you talking about? Almost anyone with a brain is saying that “violence isn’t the answer”.
So you don’t want to destroy ISIS? Think we can work out a peaceful resolution with them? Maybe if we just stand by and give them the go ahead to execute men, women and children, and sell them into slavery.
Who wants 50% of our taxes to go to the defense sector? Little exaggeration, there?
“It baffles me when white people try to tell black people how to respond to the killings of black people by white cops. Complete BS, Those who stand with us, we love you. People ask “How could rioters do this to their neighborhood” but will never ask How cops could do this to their neighbors. Racism is still apparent through stereotypes”
Absolutely. You are certainly stereotyping an awful lot of people here, based upon your prejudices. You really think you can speak for what you generalize so many people think? You think there are plenty of people who are not asking, “How could cops do this to their neighbors?” Amazing that you can keep track of what every person has or hasn’t said.
Stereotyping and generalizing can go many ways, and you sure are doing plenty of it. Hyperbole doesn’t help anything.
At least the gangs are getting together on this, instead of fighting among each other. I guess that’s a positive for them, though not so good for the businesses and people they are attacking.
Interesteddad.
I understand what you are saying.
Obviously this is the latest in a series of public abuses by police all over America against the black community. Someone, someone, has to stand up and help bring people all over the country together in a positive fight for change. One city after the next has to deal with these injustices. One community alone is not going to be enough to change this behavior. A national movement is needed. A movement that states "we will no longer allow this to happen. We are organized and we are watching the way you conduct yourself.’
I do not believe President Obama is currently in a position to be THE leader the black community needs. He can certainly help. Maybe he can be that guy next year.
How about someone like Robert Johnson, founder of the BET network? He is is a" businessman, media magnate, investor, executive and philanthropist".
Read more: http://www.richestlifestyle.com/richest-african-americans-of-2015/7/#ixzz3YdLNv3Og
I don’t know. Im like momcat…middle age white woman sitting at my computer…I don’t know who would be a good leader. I do know one is needed though.
It feels like the black community is floundering.
If there are abuses by the Baltimore police, I would expect the elected officials in Baltimore (mayor, city council pres, police commissioner) to be held responsible. If they are not doing their jobs, then the residents of Baltimore have the option of voting them out of office.
As for “latest in a series of public abuses by police all over America”, that is open to some debate. For example, the charges of police abuse in Ferguson proved to be unfounded. Is the emphasis on that narrative, before facts are even known, a failure of the leaders elected by the African American community? Fanning the flames, so to speak?
Interesting article and perspective http://www.forbes.com/sites/dandiamond/2015/04/28/why-baltimore-burned/
I think that Ferguson is an example of people feeling marginalized and not knowing what to do. So they had a national spotlight and just ran with it. Were they right.? Was this the case to stand behind? Probably not. Did people lie? Absolutely. To what end? What were they hoping for? Why did they feel the need to lie?
That is why the community needs a leader. They need to feel heard. They need to know someone is looking out for them. They need someone to say “Yes. Your rights are being violated and we,together, as a community, are working to end that injustice.”
I once read a comment that said the reason OJ was acquitted was because the black community finally had the power to be heard. OJ’s “not guilty” was not about OJ. It was about all the injustices that black America were feeling for years and this was their national spotlight. This was their stand.
It is an interesting thought.
In context of her full remarks, that’s not what she said and clearly not what she meant. This is the problem with grabbing sound bites off lousy TV coverage. The mayor was making the point that when you give people the “room” to protest, you are inherently giving them the “room” to be violent. When the police stand back to allow peaceful protest, some will take advantage of that posture. It’s a dilemma. I’m no great fan of the mayor, but there’s no reason to perpetrate slander of her. (I’m guessing it was Fox News that started this nonsense, given how distortion of the news is their specialty.)
Please take what you see and read with a healthy dose of skepticism. The TV coverage has been just awful, showing the same building burning on a loop for hours in order to give the impression the whole city was in flames. (One CNN reporter kept going on about the crowds of rioters down the block when the camera clearly showed a mere handful of people milling about. Talk about outside agitators!) My S lives in Baltimore, and not in a luxury area, and his daily life has been untouched by any of the rioting. He mentors in an after-school program that was closed today, but other than that, he may as well be living in another city entirely. I wish the media would offer some perspective (apparently not Forbes–the title “Why Baltimore Burned” suggests the whole city was aflame–ridiculous). Those of us who are old enough to recall the 1968 riots know the difference between true widespread chaos and what happened in Baltimore last night.
Not going to happen, as this is nothing new, and it is not financially advantageous for too many. Even Booker T. Washington figured this out over 110 years ago. This situation is never going to change as long as the people depend on others to tell them how to think and vote.
Booker T. Washington wrote in the early 1900s:
From the sounds of that editorial, we can only conclude that Baltimore’s elected officials have failed to address the needs of their constituents. Whatever policies the elected officials have been pursuing have, apparently, not been working. There’s absolutely no confusion or mixed political messages in Baltimore. All fifteen members of the city council are from the same party. Every mayor for the last 48 years as been from the same party. The US Congressman and both Senators from the state are from the same party. If poverty and joblessness and poor education and high tax rates and lagging development are issues in the Baltimore community, then the elected leadership should be held accountable. There is, literally, nobody else to blame.
Agreed, ID. Baltimore’s elected officials need to take ownership of this problem.
DH was supposed to speak at a conference in Baltimore on Thurs. and Friday and it was canceled early this afternoon.
Unfortunately the rioting and looting have served the interests of the police department. Now all of the attention has been taken off from the crimes that the police officers committed.
I wonder if things might have played out differently if, after Gray was injured, it had been announced immediately that the officers involved had been suspended WITHOUT pay while the incident was investigated. The police drove a handcuffed and shackled man unrestrained for 30 minutes while deliberately driving in ways to injure him…if this were a civilian driving someone in those types of circumstances that person would be facing charges of reckless homicide or something more serious.
Yes, Gray had multiple drug violations and should have been in jail. But that doesn’t justify what happened to him. Toss him in prison, but don’t become judge and jury and sentence him to the treatment he received in your police vehicle.
BTW, I spent the night about a mile from the rioting on Saturday night, blissfully unaware of what was happening (arrived at my daughter’s friend’s house about 1 a.m. after a plane trip and a week’s vacation). I have tickets for two baseball games in early June…
There are leaders, but I’m not sure those being led want to follow. Injustice, perceived or real, is no excuse for criminal behavior.
“In context of her full remarks, that’s not what she said and clearly not what she meant. This is the problem with grabbing sound bites off lousy TV coverage. The mayor was making the point that when you give people the “room” to protest, you are inherently giving them the “room” to be violent. When the police stand back to allow peaceful protest, some will take advantage of that posture. It’s a dilemma. I’m no great fan of the mayor, but there’s no reason to perpetrate slander of her”
I agree. I think it is obvious that she was saying that they were trying to give the protesters room, but they gave them so much room that people took advantage to be violent. However, she should have clarified that immediately, when there was a question about what she said. Nobody would say they were trying to give people room to destroy. It seems a valid critique that she didn’t ask for the help she needed immediately, however. If that is correct, that is a massive failure of leadership.
In fairness to the Mayor, I believe that her inartful wording led to a sound byte with a meaning that she didn’t intend. She was trying to say that in giving people room to protest, they inadvertently gave them room for rioting.
Having said that, her “leadership” over the last several days warrants a grade of “F” and that’s probably being generous. Her press conferences on Saturday night and yesterday were complete disasters.
The governor said last night that they had tried to get in contact with the mayor for hours to get her formal request so that a state of emergency could be declared, kicking into place National Guard options and other relief efforts.
I appreciate the ability of most of the posters on here to speak in reasoned shades of grey. Far too much of what I’ve been hearing about loses all hope of nuance, empathy, and rationality.
I’d like to think that there are people out there who are horrified that the police would ever treat a person the inhumane way the evidence points to Gray having been treated but who are also horrified that this could justify threatening the lives and livelihoods of others who had nothing to do with that tragedy. I’d like to think that these people can make meaningful change in this arena, to bring about a resolution that promotes equitable, humane treatment of all by the police/other government institutions while preserving the well-being of uninvolved parties. Viewing photos of the peaceful protests and the Baltimore residents of all kinds who are working to help each other through the past week gave me cause to think that my hope is not in vain.
Yet, in the conversations about this problem, I see these perspectives too often lost. Reading comments on social media and news articles today, I see camps of people who only too happily accept this situation as “proof” of blacks’ supposed laziness and criminality, all the while failing to recognize that these character flaws are no more inherent in the African-American community than they are in any other group–and that, even if they were, it couldn’t excuse brutality on anyone’s part. Lining up against them are the people who find a way to justify violence against bystanders’ livelihoods and potentially their lives, who would almost certainly be singing a different tune if it were their own town serving as the backdrop on the nightly news but speak confidently from a distance. And both groups are perfectly content to paint each other in broad strokes, screaming words like racist or thug and assuming that the other person is the reason this problem exists.
We will never get anywhere as long as our conversations look like this.
Sorry for getting too wordy. I just have nowhere else to talk.
It is beyond my comprehension how that could even have happened. When a gun is discharged, people always know that someone could be killed. But HOW could someone be killed this way? I am completely at a loss on that. It’s like the Abner Louima case here in NYC. Some things are simply inexcusable and, frankly, horrifying. Which is a separate issue from the looting and riots.
To clarify, the police brutality was unacceptable, but the inability to contain the writing is equally if not more unacceptable and the frustration of the residence is, from reading articles, sadly understandable to a certain degree
Finnlet, I’ve become cynical over the years enough to bet that there are too many people in police departments and politics that get a sick thrill out of the rioting, because it helps to justify the abuse of inner city minority members.
I am also old enough (barely) to remember the Watts riots. Frustration from poverty, being lied to by politicians who abuse the poor under the guise of “helping” them (like KS legislators thinking that welfare recipients could ever afford a cruise) and the like does not justify rioting, but frustration mounts up and becomes addressed in negative ways. Simple suffering does not get attention. Kids learning nothing in public schools does not get the public’s attention. If you get out of an inner city school with no education, there are no jobs to be had, and the drug culture provides an opportunity to get your hands on fast money so you can feed a family and get those products that the media convince us that we have to have, like the latest phone and tv. Rioting does get attention - but no resolution to the problems at hand.