When Baltimore police broke Freddie Gray’s neck, the president said nothing.
When the police, who had arrested Freddie Gray for running, would not arrest anyone for killing him, the president said nothing.
When the police would not say who killed him or how, the president said nothing.
When the people of Baltimore protested, day after day, the president said nothing.
When some protesters broke car windows and shop windows, the president said nothing.
But when people in West Baltimore rioted, robbing and burning a CVS pharmacy, owned by the 12th largest company in the nation, a White-owned business, the president spoke out.
He called what the rioters did “violence”, but not what the police did.
He called the rioters “thugs”, but not the police.
As if the rioters had killed someone, not the police.
As if it was the CVS pharmacy that could never be brought back, not Freddie Gray.
The president said the “violence” was “counterproductive”. He, the Drone Master himself. He who helps Israel bomb women and children.
The president was joined by the Wall Street Journal. In the 15 years from 2000 to 2014 the Journal printed only six articles that uttered the words “West Baltimore”. But after the CVS was burned, they were there talking to those affected by its destruction. The Journal of Crocodile Tears.
White people and their hangers-on love to quote Martin Luther King, but they never seem to quote what he said about riots:
“Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking. But most of all, alienated from society and knowing that this society cherishes property above people, he is shocking it by abusing property rights.”
“The slums are the handiwork of a vicious system of the white society; Negroes live in them but do not make them any more than a prisoner makes a prison. Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man.”
Or, more famously:
“a riot is the language of the unheard.”
That appears to be true even if the listener is a Black president.
From that very first day, Friday August 20th 1619, when African people first set foot in Anglo America, they came, in the eyes of Whites, as things with a price tag. Now that the price tags are gone, many Whites seem to see Blacks not as priceless but as worthless, worth less than a CVS. Most Whites seem to be more upset about riots than about police brutality.
They act just as if Black people are not people at all.
#CVSmatters is a take-off on #BlackLivesMatter, the Twitter hashtag from the protests in Ferguson, Missouri last summer. It seems that many still do not understand what that means: Black Lives Matter.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: President Obama’s remarks (2015), Martin Luther King’s remarks (1967).
See also:
- Freddie Gray
- The police
- Ferguson I, Ferguson II
- The word “thug”
- Is President Obama a Rented Negro?
- tropes
- The White racist guide to riots
541
Absolutely wonderful analysis
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[…] #CVSmatters (added April 29, 11:20 pm) […]
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*bows* — Abagond, thank you for these “500 words” today…
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A perspective that needs to sharpen everyone’s world view right here and right now.
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Please quote the President not what someone said the President said.
I would like you to go directly to his speech and include it in your post
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[…] Source: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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@ Allen Shaw
Instead of waiting for Abagond to do the legwork for you, you can do it yourself and save everyone the trouble of waiting.
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Superb post. Concise and to the point, especially about the President.
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One of the best things you have written. Well done. Gill
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Oh, and let’s not forget (or let’s remember for the first time) that it is not only skin color that makes a person “black” but acculturation: the process by which somebody absorbs the culture of a society from birth onward. Biologically the prez is black, but culturally, that’s another story. So yeah, we call him black, though he does not emerge from black culture. Sam Smith puts it this way.
[In 2008 Barack Obama] was running to be America’s first black president, which assumed that skin color and the ethnicity of one’s father outdistanced every cultural factor including who actually raised you. In fact, here is Wikipedia’s summary of Obama’s experience with his black father:
On August 4, 1961, at the age of 18, [Ann] Dunham gave birth to her first child, Barack Obama II. She took classes at the University of Washington from September 1961 to June 1962, and lived as a single mother in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle with her son while her husband continued his studies in Hawaii. When Obama Sr. graduated from the University of Hawaii in June 1962, he was offered a scholarship to study in New York City, but declined it, preferring to attend the more prestigious Harvard University. He left for Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he would begin graduate study at Harvard in the fall of 1962. Dunham returned to Honolulu and resumed her undergraduate education at the University of Hawaii with the spring semester in January 1963. During this time, her parents helped her raise the young Obama. Dunham filed for divorce in January 1964, which Obama Sr. did not contest.
In other words, in less than three years, young Obama’s time with his black father was over. He was thereafter raised by a white mother and white grandparents. But because our definition of ethnicity – whether we be black, white, conservative, or liberal – favors simplistic and visible biological evidence over actual cultural history, Obama had no trouble running as a black as long as he kept his actual upbringing in the background. And the fact that categorizing people by the color of their skin is a deeply racist concept got no attention at all.
http://prorevnews.blogspot.com/2015/03/how-mad-men-control-politics.html
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For too long, the U.S. has only paid attention to poverty in its cities “when a CVS burns,” Obama said at a news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
They were constructive and they were thoughtful. And frankly, didn’t that much attention,” he said of the peaceful protests. “And one burning building will be looped on television over and over and over again, and thousands of demonstrators who did it the right way, I think, have been lost in the discussion.”
here’s the full vid of his speech.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/politics/obama-baltimore-violent-protests/index.html
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@ Allen shaw
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/28/politics/obama-baltimore-violent-protests/index.html
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Good post. Nailed it.
Property matters: people don’t. Especially, the property of the establishment (basically older, rich, white men) matters: non-white and poor people don’t.
Racism is just one (major) aspect of the big-picture problem. Even if we were to magic that away right now, the other inequalities – class, economic, gender etc – would remain. The change must be even more fundamental than the elimination of racism, and I don’t believe that it is even possible to eliminate racism without that wider, fundamental change.
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@Buddhuu
This even applies to the rich and powerful black elite.
Are there any rich and powerful black people proclaiming that Black LIves Matter, matter more than property? Or are they afraid of offending rich and powerful white people?
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“many Whites seem to see Blacks not as priceless but as worthless, worth less than a CVS. Most Whites seem to be more upset about riots than about police brutality.”
amen. of course they are more outraged at property being destroyed than black people being killed. They care about things with price tags if they can’t buy it, own it, profit from it, and control it they will destroy it. They are upset about the riots because they don’t see a reason to, they just want the peaceful protests that they were taught in history class, anything else is wrong.
We are taught that we must wait on them to get a conscience and see something as wrong before it is supposed to be fixed. Slavery we are taught was abolished after white folks saw it as wrong and Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation. They don’t tell u about the slaves that fought and rebelled to gain freedom. They don’t tell u about some whites starting to pay attention only after the slaves started to riot and decided it was wrong. Or that slaves played a major role in their own fight for freedom. it was partly because of fear, that we were freed. fear of what our ancestors would do because there were rebellions and they were afraid it would involve more plantations. since there were more slaves than whites in a lot of areas they wouldn’t have faired too well. Then once free they started deporting some former slaves.
It is fear that they are expressing when they are more upset at stores being destroyed. Fear of people taking action and fear of people not stopping until they get what they want. Fear of karma.
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“Are there any rich and powerful black people proclaiming that Black LIves Matter, matter more than property? Or are they afraid of offending rich and powerful white people?”
They’re not afraid of offending white people. They have stakes in the status quo just like their white counterparts.
Hmmmph. Cities erupting in racial conflict. A fitting end to the fraudulent Age of Obama.
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I’m disgusted. But not surprised.
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[…] the orgies over there, thank you very much! Still, I can’t judge the participants of those. I also don’t judge, or blame the people of Baltimore for their collective rage…a rage th…. I’m putting it to use, though – anger has always been a powerful motivator, for […]
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Thank you for writing this. I linked to your post today. Please don’t hesitate to let me know if that was not OK and I will remove.
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You guys are ridiculous.
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Everything’s Obama’s fault…you are pseudo-intellectual revolutionaries who probably don’t lift a finger in the fight, just criticize the brilliant black man in the white house…and cheered on by racist white fanboys on this site.
You’re pathetic.
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Wow. I totally agree with every word you said. Thank you for saying what most ppl haven’t been able to voice.
And I didn’t know ‘the rest’ of what MLK said. My feelings have been kinda lukewarm about MLK. I’ve always been more attracted to Malcolm X’s more aggressive militant style. But I don’t know much about MLK at all. You’ve taught me a very different perspective on MLK. I like it.
It doesn’t feel good to bitch about the President. I makes me feel like a foxnews watcher. But my admiration for him is slipping in many ways, and I’m literally searching for ways to make it stop.
I cried when he was elected. Obama was the 1st president my son has seen elected. And he went with me to vote for him twice. He has the stickers to prove it.
I truly hate to criticize anything Obama does maybe it’s because I never want to be wrong about him. But maybe I was.
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Look. I sympathize. But you were wrong. The sooner Obots like Farad realize this the better.
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In a plutocratic society, it is the role of the police to protect wealth, property, and those who possess it. This is true no matter what form the plutocracy takes, from feudalism to capitalism. The outward forms tend to be superficial, for it is simply an issue of power.
Race does get conflated with class in American society. But even if this had been a black-owned national business, the police would have protected it just the same. In situations like this, property symbolizes power and the color of plutocratic power is green.
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What I realize is what I see, as well as the established facts. I don’t find a need to criticize every word that comes out of Obama’s mouth, while at the same time ignoring his accomplishments. This post is a case in point. WTF does he really have to do with what’s going on in Baltimore? Is he the mayor, governor, police chief? what change can he really enact that would you please you.
I’ll take my chances with him than with you keyboard warriors any day.
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@Farrod
No one is ignoring his accomplishments, but you have to call bs when you see it regardless of that. This is his bs. He is more concerned about a freeking cvs than even looking at or tackling the bigger issue.
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@Farrod
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DV7yx2y3TtY&w=560&h=315)
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Again, you’re only looking to criticize soundbites. What you may want to pay attention to is what the man does.
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^^^^In this case he has done nothing. So I am still good in my criticism.
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Again, what does criticizing him like this accomplish? So many black folks are quick to jump bad with Obama, but won’t say shit to or about the white men responsible for all this foolishness. Mentioning Obama in this article because of fuggen word, as Abagond frequently relishes in doing, while the governor of the state is taking away people’s rights to due process speaks volumes as to what the real motive is. You guys and Abagond operate and entertain each other in a circle jerk of bullshit that does nothing to address the issues.
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What would you have him do. He’s not a king. He’s not the governor or mayor of Maryland. And he’s not a magic negro. You’re barking up the wrong tree, but again, that’s your intent for whatever fucked up reason.
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I am sadden to hear what is going on with Baltimore with the riots and everything especially when Black men are continuingly racially profiled, harassed and murdered by the police. It seems like these riots are an everyday occurrence these days and it makes me sad. Especially when Freddie Gray should have been arrested and given due process to jury and law like everyone else instead of shooting him dead for no reason.
I know Black men are racially profiled, harassed and murdered by the police in such large and disproportionate rates nowadays. Here a recent article that points out the disparities Black men go through with the police and justice system particularly in Southern states like South Carolina. http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/blacks-are-killed-at-a-higher-rate-in-south-carolina-and-the-u-s/
But what about Black women?
Black women are also racially profiled and assaulted by the police and law enforcement officers as well. And sometimes Black women are even sexually assaulted or even raped by the police. The story of Dymond Miller comes to mind when I think about an incident where the police sexually harassed a young, Black girl. And there are even some incidents like Rekia Boyd, Aiyanna Jones, Miriam Carey, Renisha McBride and other Black girls and women that were shot and killed by the police as well. Yet their murders and plight always goes unnoticed in our communities and by the wider society. And it frustrates me because I believe Black women’s lives matter just as much as Black men’s lives do. Plus I am aware that as a young, Black woman, I am just as much at risk of being shot and killed by the police as any other Black man my own age.
I am not here to take away from the tragedy of what is happening in Baltimore or insist the, ”Woe is me” narrative when it comes to Black women however I truly believe if we believe that Black lives matter, why not address the fact that BOTH Black men and Black women are murdered in the hands of the police. And start advocating and doing more for Black women’s causes and issues in our communities. Again, this isn’t to take away from what is going on in Baltimore.
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“What I realize is what I see, as well as the established facts. I don’t find a need to criticize every word that comes out of Obama’s mouth, while at the same time ignoring his accomplishments.”
Ok Farrod, let’s hear of his accomplishments. I recall the man inserting himself in the case of that cop who abused professor Gates. You’re correct that such petty matters are outside his jurisdiction as president, but he never scrupled to avoid using them when he felt it was to his advantage. I’m thinking of the Gates, Martin and other cases. I’d love to hear of something substantive he did aside from having a beer with the cop or making Mr. Martin his son in words only! I’m not pleased with the comments on this issue because people like you want to give the Obamas and his acolytes in the black political class a pass for doing nothing. If you agree that some guy or gal with a badge has the right to kill somebody because they felt like it, just say so. Anybody who objects to such arbitrary executions should hold the political class accountable by firing the bums. Who the hell needs a gutless leader that can’t even call his employees to account for their actions?
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@Farrod
Who says criticizing him has to accomplish anything? It doesn’t have to to realize there is a serious issue with him.
First of all you are ignoring quite a few other posts addressing the white men involved in this case so your point there is without bases. Plenty has been said so you are basically passing the buck.
Secondly if he is going to be a leader then he needs to lead and stop choosing to lead when it is too his advantage. Unarmed blacks and people of color getting killed By the police at an alarming rate should be a national issue. CVS stores not so much.
So tell me the importance of Cvs? That was a big enough issue for him to addresss. He seems to be a magic negro for white dollars.
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@Adeen
Nice to see you and well said.
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@ Farrod
What has Obama done for Black people?
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@Abagond
Nice to see you again. And I agree, I haven’t see what Obama has done for Black people either but I want to ask you a question.
What about Black women who were slain by the police such as Rekia Boyd and Aiyanna Jones? Do they not matter? This isn’t to take away from the tragedy of Freddie Gray’s murder and the riots in Baltimore. But to ensure all Black lives matter, we should be intersectional.
@Sharina,
It is great to see you.
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@Adeen:
Absolutely, 100% this. Intersectionality is the big picture of oppression.
@jefe:
No, and yes, in that order.
Rich black people are still (at least) one rung of elitism below the rich powerful whites. Silence may seem expedient to them. Short-sighted and despicable, but understandable.
While there are millions in poverty, don’t look to rich people to set examples.
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@Abagond
Certainly a hell of a lot more than you have.
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@ Farrod
Such as…?
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Yeah, they are always quick to pull MLK out of their rear ends, SMDH
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Farrod, you can’t defend Obama that way, by pointing to what his accomplishments. Sure there’s some good things, like the corporate healthcare bill, but even that falls short of remedying the healthcare crisis America faces. He did reduce somewhat the disproportionate sentences for black crack offenders. But remember, he could just as well have eliminated it altogether. And then you would have to include his major accomplishments; and they’re all rather bloody and all negative. Assassinations. And starting wars. Drones are his signature death device; a program may actually be a war crime. Accomplishments like that. Best not to go there. What you have to do is take the respectable negro approach. Talk about how we should all rally around the prez because he’s discriminated against by Republicans and closet racist white liberals. That’ll work.
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@Buddhuu
I am glad that you see the need for intersection to be considered because Black women go through the same racial profiling and abuse from the police and law enforcement just like Black men. This needs to be considered.
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@Pumpkin
I feel you. I don’t see anything changing for Black people here in America either. I do have plans for myself that involves leaving this country. Black women like us need to do what is best for us.
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“Nomad”
You made a very telling statement. “In other words, in less than three years, young Obama’s time with his black father was over. He was thereafter raised by a white mother and white grandparents. But because our definition of ethnicity – whether we be black, white, conservative, or liberal – favors simplistic and visible biological evidence over actual cultural history.”
I will say right up front, I am white guy. I was born in the late 1940s on the South Side of Chicago. I grew in the Hyde Park neighborhood (aka Mr. Obama’s neighborhood) except for a two year hiatus in South Shore (aka Mrs. Obama’s neighborhood) in my early teens, right before South Shore changed racially. Given my experience, I think I know what an Africa American is. I never thought of him as an African American, but rather a biracial African. Michelle Obama is African American. His children are African American. He isn’t, except at best by adoption and a self-directed process of acculturation. I know this view is contentious, and other people might have different ideas. His origins as a biracial African in fact are biological as well as cultural. His father was a contemporary Black African, not an African American.
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@Pumpkin,
Yes, we do need to talk. While this is a great blog that talks about the racial issues Blacks face daily, I don’t regularly visit this blog since I usually read Black feminist blogs like Fed Up Black Woman and Bougie Black Girl and I find comments from racists like Bliff and Riverside Rob annoying and deflective. And I don’t have time to argue back and forth with racists. Again, I like this blog and I think Abagond is a very good writer but these racist commenters need to go.
And I believe that Black women should stick together and talk about issues that affects them as well since I believe in intersection in issues such as police brutality, Black on Black crime, racial profiling etc.
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I do agree with the PP regarding the president’s outcry wasn’t heard until the white business #CVSoverpriced burned. The wealth in the USA is by far-majority white. So the hypothetical colorblind rhetoric is not going fly-“its about protecting the green”.
I wish there was a way to just group our resources and just get out of the economic system. Doing away with money, finding another way to coexist without being psychologically harassed. My heart is hurting for my brothers and sisters in Baltimore. *sigh*
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@Anonymike
Thanks. Glad this wasn’t completely ignored. Black people don’t like to admit this about Obama. But he’s not culturally African ether. He visited a couple of times as a tourist. For all his tawny hide, he’s white pure white inside. It was wrong, in the first place, to expect him to do anything for black people that a white president wouldn’t do.
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Well its hard to believe all those who wanted a Black President are now unhappy with him. What has Obama done to make you so unhappy? Pres. Obama doesn’t represent you because he never did. In fact Pres. Obama didn’t even represent his pastor and him and his wife Michelle Obama denounced Rev. Wright’s church, Trinity. Pres. Obama denounced many of the beliefs held traditionally by African Americans like reparations, Pres. Obama feels the U.S owes African Americans no reparations. Most African Americans including political and religious leadership believes the drugs in the African American community where put there by the U.S government. Lots of reports of the CIA sponsoring the drug trade in the U.S. Yet Pres. Obama flat out doesn’t believe the U.S is responsible and that African American men are irresponsible by not getting jobs, taking care of their families and being men. The issue here I have is not Pres. Obama because the man has since day one been very anti-African American. The issue I have is with the wishy washy African Americans who are now jumping from under Pres. Obama’s skirt to now openly criticizing him.
The Presidency of the U.S is an institution it is far above any one man. There have been 44 U.S Presidents that history acknowledges and only one of them not white. The policy of the presidency and the government itself doesn’t change when the face of the president changes anymore than a cruise ship stops being a cruise ship, becomes a battleship, just because there’s a new captain. Operations in effect during the Bush administration didn’t just suddenly come to an end when Pres. Obama took office. There’s a continuation of policy, law, mood, attitude, preference, friend’s list, power list and so and so forth that doesn’t get interrupted. The office of the Presidency of the United States has always instituted policies in favor of the elite, which is rich White people. The military, which the President is the commanding chief, on down to the lowest county deputy, all back the U.S being a rich white controlled nation, and anything else is against the law whether on the books or not. Remember Jamie Foxx played, “Django”, but Django after shooting up all the white folks of the Candi Plantation had to have that piece of paper stating his wife was free. That’s because the white government went undisturbed by Django’s eruption. So have fun tearing down Baltimore and Pres. Obama but know this you will never be free until you have your own prosperous nation like White people have. Love, Sango.
http://www.oyotunji.org
http://www.gullahgeecheenation.com
http://www.buganda.or.ug
http://www.alaafin-oyo.org/main/
http://www.buganda.com/nnaabagereka.htm
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“We have allowed our criminal justice system to get out of balance, and these recent tragedies should galvanize us to come together as a nation to find our balance again,” said Clinton. – Hillary Clinton 4.29.2015 Columbia University
Really Ms. Clinton, … sigh! The criminal justice system in Amerika has never existed IN BALANCE! Right now, you’re in a position to actually take the White House, now you begin to speak the truth as if someone has recently removed blinders from your eyes. Where was you, and why didn’t either you or Bill Clinton speak out when Trayvon Martin and so many other black men were gunned down as if they were rabid animals by either racist cops or a lone vigilante? Or perhaps it was too far away from the completion of President Obombers’ second term for you to plant yourself in front of cameras for a political sound-bite?
By the way, it’s not just the criminal justice system that needs to be overhauled, the entire so-called democratic system need to be overturned and only a people’s revolution can do that.
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@ Abagond
As if it was the CVS pharmacy that could never be brought back, not Freddie Gray.
YOU SPEAK THE TRUTH ON THIS.
TOO many people are on Barack’s d.ck. It’s amazing.
He’s worse than George Bush. Yes. I did say that.
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I just don’t know how to think or feel about the POTUS these days especially when things like this break out. One part of me feels he is apathetic about the black community and is just trying to appease white America when they hate his guts.
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@Adeen: Hello, Adeen good to read you.
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http://mobile.philly.com/news/?wss=/philly/news&id=301842131
“Philly is Baltimore” protests, a couple of my fb friends went, it was a march to city hall.
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During the work week at my place of employment in our break room there is a large flat screen television with this weeks media coverage of the Baltimore situation and it was interesting to me the comments made by the white co workers concerning the cvs burning. Many made disparaging comments like “Oh well that’s nice you can’t go buy your grand mama’s medicine” I just had to take my lunch and go outside because they make me so angry sometimes. But i should not be surprised they made ignorant comments like that. It lets me know where the moral compass of most white Americans. To have more concern over property damage than a human life and the brutality of the so called enforcers of law on humans in black bodies speaks loudly. I get it they don’t really care about us. Duly noted.
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@Nomad and Anonymike
My dad said similar things about Obama and I can admit that I did not understand what he meant. He was black. The one drop rule made him black, is how I saw it. I guess now I am starting to realize what he meant. What other meant.
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Isn’t sb32199 banned?
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@sharinalr: I know right. They all come back to flatulate and stink up our space. That’s the nature of these cretins.
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@ sharina
He is banned. I deleted his comment. Thanks.
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@Mary
I find it sad how they hate everything abagond says, yet come back like they have some drug addiction.
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“The one drop rule ” A very racist (white supremacist) and fairly recent system of racial classification, unique to US of A.
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A parody on how to talk to White co-workers about the events in Baltimore:
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@ Pumpkin
I think it is a turning point. Unlike Rosa Parks, Michael Brown and Freddie Gray were both unpromising poster children, yet the protests went ahead anyway, and not just in their own cities. Not only that, some of the protests have been multiracial. It is not just Blacks alone who are upset.
The powers that be in the US are facing disruptive changes in demographics and communication technology that they are unable to manage. In time they will find a way to deal with it, but until then there is a window for change.
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@ Adeen
Of course they matter:
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The majority of those black people brutalized by the police are not black women; they’re black men. This isn’t a first place prize anyone would want but it is what it is.
http://gawker.com/unarmed-people-of-color-killed-by-police-1999-2014-1666672349
I can just be just as angry about the black mother shoved into a wall and called out of her name as I am about the black man rectally searched in broad daylight. Not everything has to fit a particular gender narrative. If we were discussing breast cancer we’d recognize that most of the people who are are risk are women, despite the fact that men are occasionally afflicted. If we were discussing prostate cancer then all of the people affected are men, even though women get cervical cancer.
I don’t get why it’s necessary to try to force a gender framework on everything.
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Oh crap. I just got around to watching the snippet. Oh crap! The president dismissed the legitimacy of the movement! No wonder he has caused the scales to fall from some peoples eyes! If you squint while you’re watching this you’ll see George Bush standing there. “Criminals”. “Thieves”. Not people with a legitimate grievance -the most legitimate of all grievances (to not be killed by the state). No whiter words could have spewn from the mouth of George Bush. Welcome to the club. I awoke to this reality long ago.
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It is fatuous to say that President Obama, born in the United States, is not a black American man because he was raised by his white mother and grandparents. Most importantly the President identifies as a Black American man. He is treated by everyone in this society as a black American man. The President has said on multiple occasions that he is Black, not biracial.
Being raised by a white parent doesn’t mean that you will automatically see yourself as biracial.
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@Shady_Grady
It is not a matter of what he identifies as such much as a matter of his mindset. A black kid raised in white society can and often do take on white mindsets of matters.
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Correction so not such
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@sharinalr, I’m no defender of PBO. Far from it. I think the TPP is a bad idea and that the President is far too fond of lecturing black people and burning down straw men. But his background doesn’t mean that he’s not black, which is what some have stated, both here and offline.
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OK, I’ll bite:
A list of SOME of President Obama’s accomplishments that benefit the Black Community (unsure if this includes any of the mythical Black Agenda that Abagond and other pseudo black intellectual butthurt revolutionaries speak of but can’t elaborate on):
http://newsone.com/1797175/barack-obamas-top-five-accomplishments-for-black-america-wiki/
A comprehensive list of the accomplishments of Abagond and his stable of Stockholm Syndrome-infected internet groupies, fan boys and trolls that have benefited the Black Community:
http://www.none.com
P.S.: I generally like your site man, and the work you put in, but, like some good honest white folk that start frothing at the mouth when you mention Obama, you lose me…
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nomad
Farrod, you can’t defend Obama that way, by pointing to what his accomplishments. Sure there’s some good things, like the corporate healthcare bill, but even that falls short of remedying the healthcare crisis America faces. He did reduce somewhat the disproportionate sentences for black crack offenders. But remember, he could just as well have eliminated it altogether. And then you would have to include his major accomplishments; and they’re all rather bloody and all negative. Assassinations. And starting wars. Drones are his signature death device; a program may actually be a war crime. Accomplishments like that. Best not to go there. What you have to do is take the respectable negro approach. Talk about how we should all rally around the prez because he’s discriminated against by Republicans and closet racist white liberals. That’ll work.
You forgot pseudo black intellectuals…like yourself, of course.
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re “nomad”: I don’t think of Barack Obama as “white pure white”. But thank to my upbringing in Mr. Obama’s Neighborhood, long before he got there, I do know that his policy concepts come from the idea of white, upper middle class elitist ultraliberals. The Hyde Park community on the South Side of Chicago is there ground zero, just as Hyde Park is ground zero for several other things as well. Hyde Park is one of several iconic ultraliberal intellectual communities in the United States, the other being Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Berkeley-North Oakland and Palo Alto. All of them are different. I have lived in three of them, so I know the ground. Of all of them, Hyde Park is the most strongly tied to the idea of patriarchy and male domination. That idea shows in Barack Obama. The basic idea of Hyde Park liberalism is that Scandinavian Social Democracy represents the ideal form of political and social organization. The concept here, I suppose, is that social democracy would make all of us into good little Swedes and Danes, the only difference being that some of us might have nappy hair and a carved antelope on our coffee table. Others lank hair and a hair carved bear or wolf, I suppose.
The only problem is, that horse left the barn long ago. Black people themselves do not believe in that idea and have not since the era of the social revolution of the 1960s. Many never did.
The other thing Barack Obama is that he is descended from a subject of the British crown, a Commonwealth subject and from a mother descended from British subjects as well. From that point of view, his election does not represent such a deviation from tradition than it at first seems. Does it?
In domestic policy, when he is under stress, he has no choice but to go back to the atavistic liberalism of his Hyde Park roots. He doesn’t know anything else, actually. What I do credit him for is keeping us out of more gratuitous wars. I voted for McCain in 2008, but I do not think I would want him running our foreign policy. Obama’s foreign policy weakness is that he does not seem to understand the antecedents of the world’s situation and geopolitical structure that well. You can see that in his attempted meddling in events beyond the boundaries of the former Soviet Union. Aside from the question of what part of the North Atlantic the Ukraine might be found in, attempting to bring NATO past even the borders of the former Eastern European satellites of the former Soviet Union is very provocative and politically tone deaf. The Soviets respected NATO because it represented a cultural community of the advanced nations ringing the North Atlantic, in addition to it being a military alliance. We have been vexed by the dangerous adventurism of neo-conservatism for several decades. Now, neo-liberalism is taking over our foreign policy and setting us off on a new round of dangerous adventures.
I consider myself a species of neo-conservative. But my idea is to acknowledge the value of the social conservative concept in building stable communities and protecting the youth from the hazards both of gangsterism and avant-gardism and to pursue traditional modes of national development. The proposal to make community college free is a great idea and one I have promoted myself as I have been able going back into the previous decade. I didn’t like the way Barack played with it though. Want to hear more on that topic, just ask.
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Reading comments about the POTUS upbringing kind of gives me some insight about why he is so reticent about what’s happening to black Americans in this country. He just has no clue about what black people go through. It explains a lot to me why he has been apathetic about the black community and it’s plight.
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@Shady_Grady
I understand that and I am in no way implying that you are defending him, but I just don’t think anyone is saying he is not black in the one drop rule sense. Just that his mindset and how he views things are white. White culturally as someone put it.
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@Farrod
You wrote two paragraphs failing to address anything that anyone said other than the 5 accomplishments (which no one denied). Of the 5 only 2 actually solely benefit black people. Yet none of them seem to fall in line with change that is keeping minorities for being killed by cops. Are all those accomplishments more important than a life? Are you basically saying that blacks lives don’t matter?
P.S. Before you start screaming butthurt, you might want to make sure none of your comments are examples of this. 🙂
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@sharinalr: He definitely has a white mindset IMHO because he doesn’t seem to sympathize with what’s happening to black men in America being brutalized by this racist police culture.
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@Mary Burrell
“He just has no clue about what black people go through.”
bingo bango!
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@Mary Burrell
I agree.
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” What I do credit him for is keeping us out of more gratuitous wars”
Are you kidding? Afghanistan? Libya? Syria? Not to mention putting us on the path to world war III. The lawlessness and recklessness of this administration is a sight to behold. I don’t know much about Hyde Park and I’m sure he honed his political skills there, but his roots art in Hawaii and Indonesia where he grew up. I take roots to mean ones beginnings. That’s where his are. Far away from the African American community.
When I say ‘white inside’ I am referring to his mind. Black body. White mind. It’s a malady many blacks suffer from. Even those who did not grow up in a white banker’s household in Hawaii.
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” Nomad”: He didn’t start new ones on the scale of Irag and Afghanistan. The ones that were ongoing already he continued on with, although actually Iraq is over with as far as ordinary enlistees being sent there. G.W. Bush’s people said the American withdrawal from Iraq was scheduled already before Bush left office, and that the withdrawal was simply carried out as scheduled by his successor, more or less. You can’t blame the U.S. president for everything that happens in the world, though presidents are judged by how they respond to events. In my estimation, the biggest problem in the world today is adult unemployment. We have in the United States about 25 million non-working adults. I have heard, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of the number, that there are 120 million non-working adults in China, about the same percentage of the total population as here.
Male unemployment is a huge issue worldwide. In some countries, adult male unemployment may be as high as 80 percent. In other countries, women either are not allowed to work, allowed only menial or repetitive work, or do not have suitable work available in the amounts needed. Seriously, would we see what we see on the street in Baltimore and what we have seen historically if there was a job, even if the work was uninteresting and the pay relatively low, for everyone in the socioeconomically distressed strata of society? Within black society, that would mean a decline in the level of every social pathology disdained by unsympathetic whites. That includes illegitimacy, failure of family formation, welfare dependency, school failure, crime and incarceration, gratuitous interracial violence and harassment, addiction and alcoholism. I don’t see why this is an issue. Too much of the political agenda is expressed in abstraction. The political system is supposed to take care of the pragmatic. People are supposed to take care of the abstract on their own. As an example, “Dr. King’s Dream” is an abstraction. How to create some millions of semiskilled jobs people with limited educations and experience can both do and get to in the morning based on the transportation resources they have at hand is an example of pragmatic issue.
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@Abagond
Thanks for the links and assurance. I appreciate it.
@Pumpkin
I will email you soon.
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” You can’t blame the U.S. president for everything that happens in the world”
You can blame him for what he did and for what he failed to do. The buck stops there.
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I (the American people) put him there to do a job. Not only did he not do it, he did the very opposite of what I hired him for. I think I can blame him for that.
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“Nomad”:
“You can blame him for what he did and for what he failed to do. The buck stops there.”
That’s what I said, more or less. The president doesn’t instigate everything that happens in the world, but the president in accountable for dealing with it. In foreign policy, he’s gone downhill of late. I think we have been going through a cycle where the presidency has been relatively weak. Maybe we expect too much out of that office. It’s the responsibility of the congress to legislate, and they can’t agree of much of anything anymore. Going back to the 1980s, we wanted to create more minority districts. That set off a process where all districts became more homogeneous. That means a congress where each representative more closely represents the voters of the district. It also mean that the members of the congress not only cannot agree with each other, but not have to get reelected. I don’t want to go back to old system of dividing up the minority vote and other voting blocs among multiple districts. But I want the people we do elect to represent us to learn how to get some business done. As long they are divided by hot button issues like abortion and by uncompromising ideological stances, they will not be able to create any consensus on anything. Will they?
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When (White)Americans fought for their rights and freedom against the British—it was bloody and violent—so why should it be different when African Americans fight for their rights and freedom?
I have been thinking about the views of Malcom X recently…here are some quotes….
“I am for violence if non-violence means we continue postponing a solution to the American black man’s problem just to avoid violence”
“I just don’t believe that when people are being unjustly oppressed that they should let someone else set the rules for them by which they can come out from under that oppression.”
And also…. interesting and thought-provoking quote for our times….
“If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it’s wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it’s wrong for America to draft us and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country.”
how does everyone else feel about these views?
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Here are the police officers charged in Freddie Gray’s death.
http://news.yahoo.com/six-baltimore-officers-charged-death-gray-one-murder-004330690.html
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I wonder if Obama’s are largely tied and would be more effective after he is no longer president. Jimmy Carter did a lot more after he left office. Obama is young enough to do 30 years more service.
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@King,
Mosby was quick to reject the police union’s plea for a special prosecutor.
Do you think that there is any chance that the federal government will consider in the cases of police induced fatalities
– prohibit the use of special prosecutors
– prohibit police departments to do their own investigation
?
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Somehow I doubt if jefe,
Of course, State Attorney Mosby is, in fact, a “special prosecutor” in that she is independent of the police department. She is not outside of the city government, but I’m not sure if that much separation would be needed to ensure an independent an unbiased outcome.
I personally think that police departments should not be allowed to have a single interdepartmental investigation. They may have their own, but it should always be accompanied by a second independent investigation.
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Marilyn Mosby
*swoon*
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@ Anonymike
I might sound blasphemous to Americans, but perhaps proportional representation is better suited to give minorities political influence than the “winner takes it all” system (what is that correctly called in English?).
@ Anon
“When (White)Americans fought for their rights and freedom against the British—it was bloody and violent—so why should it be different when African Americans fight for their rights and freedom?”
The idea that any resistance against oppression has to be non-violent is obviously a little weak. A violent revolution obviously can change things for the better. But one has to remember that the American Revolution was America’s second most devestating conflict in terms of relative population loss. Any violent revolution will probably be accompanied by massive loss in human life, property and wealth. There is also no guarantee that it will be successfull. It might as well end up like Syria or the resulting political system is worse than the one before like in France during the French Revolution.
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Dealing with ghetto thugs day in day out, police treat them with the same respect these thugs treat others!!
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Do you think the police union legal counsel will find a loophole?
Ms. Mosby has certainly acted decisively (something the president and the mayor did not do.).
Can we expect a DOJ probe?
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She NAILED it.
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@ Kartoffel
South Africa might be a better example than Syria?…..
It is an interesting moral dilemma—should life, wealth and property be sacrificed for freedom, equality, and rights or should freedom, equality and rights be sacrificed for life, wealth and property? Perhaps “morality” might depend on if one is the privileged or the oppressed…?….
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Anonymike
You also said “What I do credit him for is keeping us out of more gratuitous wars” which I think is an absurd statement. There are two things I fault this president for: gratuitous warmongering and the neoliberal assault on social security. Oh and the bankster bailout. Oh and the not prosecuting Bush. And oh the handling of the Gulf oil spill. Oh and how he handled Haiti. Oh and the national surveillance state. Oh and… well, I better stop now. I keep thinking of new things.
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@ Anon
That is the question. I think it depends on how heavy the oppression is and if there are non-violent methods to change the system.
Also I think the most important factor for a successful fight that doesn’t get out of hand (violent and non-volent) is if there is a clear objective. Voting-rights for non-whites was such an objective in South Africa, or that Mubarak and Ben Ali step down in Egypt and Tunesia. But what would be that objective in the US?
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Most of the businesses destroyed in the riots were oppressive businesses like liquor stores and sneaker shops. Those types of businesses will grow back like weeds in a city like Baltimore. So a liquor store was burned and looted? There is most definitely another liquor store less than a block away. Overabundance of liquor stores plays a key role in the high violent crime rate in inner city neighborhoods across America.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/openforum/article/Why-so-many-liquor-stores-2587315.php
Kids in the inner city spend millions of dollars annually trying to purchase self-esteem through always having on a fresh pair of $200 sneakers. Many sneakers, like popular limited edition release retro Air Jordan models, are often so coveted than many people rob and even kill over them across the nation. I don’t think these businesses by razed was a big loss to an already economically blasted community. Not to mention that the family owned Korean liquor stores in the neighborhood do not hire the locals.
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All this talk about Obama’s background, what he did or didn’t do as President for black people, is irrelevant as far as it concerns the gunning down of blacks in the streets of the USA in majority black cities. Despite Obama’s unfortunate knack for commenting on the trivial to the tragic aspects of black life in the USA, I’m thinking of his Kanye West and Trayvon Martin comments, he has no responsibility for investigating murders. What I ask myself is why do black communities produce such incompetent leaders such as Ray Nagin, etc. Diatribes about how whites hate blacks and fantasies about blacks policing black communities strike me as a waste of time. This conversation would be more interesting if people focused on how competent State Attorney Marilyn J. Mosby is to take on the conspiracy that has allowed cops to lie their way out of previous indictments. It’s one thing to put on a dog and pony show, but convictions that will stand serious challenges is something else. If the past is anything to go by, her chance of success doesn’t look good. I’m disappointed that Abagond chose to skirt looking at the entire black political class, and instead, took a few jibes at BHO in a case where his role is minimal. Abagond, if you’re going to criticize BHO in this instance, it should have been about his role in continuing the Federal program of turning the police into a paramilitary force by providing them with more lethal weapons.
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SanFranpsycho415: Excellent, Excellent points. Kudos to you for pointing that out. That is something to consider every urban city has some kind of establishment that is detrimental to the people in that community to contribute to their oppression. Alcoholism and those damn shoe stores that poor kids covet and kill each other for. And the immigrant store owners who have disdain for the people in the community.
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@ Farrod
@ gro jo
Where am I blaming Baltimore on Obama?
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Where am I blaming you for blaming Baltimore on Obama? You had stated that you’d write about the failings of the black political class when you responded to my question to you on this business. When I saw this post on Obama, I thought this was the post you said you’d do. This is what you wrote: ” on Wed 29 Apr 2015 at 17:24:52
abagond
@gro jo
I will be doing a post on the Baltimore power structure. I hope to have it up on Thursday April 30th. The first drafts for this post and the one on Freddie Gray ended with stuff on it, but I decided to put it in a separate post.” I’m sure you’ll agree that the #CVSmatters isn’t what you said you’d do.
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@Kiwi: In regard to your comment about gun stores i see lots of pawn shops that is probably where the guns come from i guess don’t know for sure how criminals get access to weapons. There are a glut of sleazy motels and a glut of payday loan stores that keep people in financial bondage. These things in my opinion are designed to keep a certain group of people mostly poor people in life long poverty.
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It is wrong to loot and burn down stores, and to throw rocks at police officers, no matter what.
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First, I want to say– may Freddie Gray Rest in Peace
and being that I lived in Baltimore for 1 year, I am not surprised by the police’s actions, nor the response.
That’s why when white people were worried about rioting in Sanford or Orlando after the Trayvon Martin case, I was like “who’s going to riot??
the KKK because it sure won’t be those laid back black people down there” (Jacksonville, maybe– Sanford/Orlando, forget about it)
The “Black Lives Matter” message and movement had a better chance of achieving their goals after the Walter Scott shooting – the MESSAGE was finally being heard, and the media had to take it seriously.
but along comes another black man’s death that gave the media what they wanted – a f’cking circus and a juicy side show!
Black folks in Baltimore did NOT let the media down early in the game.
this younger generation has the Anger but don’t seem to understand that the white powers that be don’t give a sh’t
You can cry, holler and scream all day — white Americans feel that they don’t have anything to lose by ignoring black people
because as far as they are concerned, black people achieved Nirvana (heaven) , when they were allowed to sit at the front of the bus and go to school with their white children.
noticed how the police boxed in all those “protesters” while the buildings were burning…
the police were silently letting black people know “it’s OK, go ahead and steal/burn down your OWN sh’t but you will not leave the area in order to burn down OURS”
they’ve been sending black America this message for Years!!
to me, the movement has lost it’s way and the message is LOST — all of these people’s tragic Death’s are being turned into a media circus and Nothing is being gained.
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“Mary @ During the work week at my place of employment in our break room there is a large flat screen television with this weeks media coverage of the Baltimore situation and it was interesting to me the comments made by the white co workers concerning the cvs burning. Many made disparaging comments like “Oh well that’s nice you can’t go buy your grand mama’s medicine”
Linda says,
Mary, I’m at the point that when I see the news on in the break room, I turn the channel to cartoons or sports, then ask anyone “if they watching TV”
they are all secretly enjoying the show– the media is making sure to televise every ignorant black person they can get, every rock that was thrown, and a close up of all the burning buildings…
especially FOX– they purposely ignored all the white anarchist that were getting arrested but focused on every Ray-Ray and Pookie they could find.
the Media is NOT interesting in black America getting justice or getting the laws changed. The Media doesn’t care about the MESSAGE
they want to re-confirm black America’s Image to white America, and the “Black Lives Matter” message and brand is being shredded by the media’s love of negative coverage.
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@Kartoffel
You make a good point—what is the objective in the U.S.?
I am a bit baffled about that as well….it seems that African Americans want the police to stop killing African American men…it is a good short-term goal…..but that isn’t going to solve the deep systemic problems….
Has any person or organization articulated what the African American Community wants? does anyone know?……
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Hmmm… let me preface by asking what the White Community Wants?
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http://america.aljazeera.com/watch/shows/morning-news/2015/4/promoting-black-entrepreneurship-in-baltimore.html
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@King
Perhaps the African American community should also dictate/articulate what the White Community SHOULD want—such as peace, prosperity, dignity, and liberty for all peoples…..!!!…
why should it be only whites dictating their standards to others?….
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@anon,
I am a bit baffled by your statement and question. I want the police to stop killing unarmed men, people not in the course of committing any crime, etc. What does that have to do with what “African-Americans want”?
I then have to ask the question that King asked — can we articulate what the “white community” wants?
Kartoffel asked what is America’s objective, and then you rephrased it in terms of what racial subgroups want.
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You may be asking an unanswerable question. “African-American” is not a hive mindset—it is a sociological/cultural descriptor. So there are likely many competing priorities, just as in any large, diverse, and regionally distributed group.
I think the most obvious answer is that we want what all humans want.
beyond that, it becomes a question of competing priorities and politics.
But clearly one thing we, and every other American should want is accountability for those whom we grant authority in the name of the state and weapons with which to enforce that authority. The police must SERVE the people. They are the masters but the servants. They are not the aggressors but the protectors.
And I do like your link above on entrepreneurism. That’ is important.
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@jefe
I am not an American and do not reside in the U.S. so I may have read the situation incorrectly.
I assumed that there may be people who see the killings as a symptom of a broader problem of systemic (and long term) injustice in the very fabric of American society….but I could be wrong…..considering the many lives, communities, liberties etc being lost by non-Americans….perhaps some might consider this a minor problem?….Just get the U.S. police departments in order and everything will be fine…?….
If that is the case—then this focus on reforming the police by getting justice is very appropriate response…..
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anon it’s probably a question of priorities. But the FIRST thing I’d say that is on the list is to stop cops from killing Blacks with impunity—whether they have a criminal record or not. The police are not charged with meting out instant punishments every time they feel disrespected or are put out.
At a deeper level there must be a much deeper conversation about the fabric of American society and who is defined as american and what we mean by “equality.” A lot of ignorance and stupidity has to be undone and honestly a lot of things will have to be forgiven an gotten over. But today, lets start by bringing some officers (both Black and White/ Male and Female) to justice for their crimes.
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@anon,
I think King tried to address your question. It has nothing to do with whether or not you are American or whether you reside in the USA or not. It applies to anyone anywhere.
I also do not reside in the USA.
It has to do with your assumption that any socially labelled group has a hive mentality. And any assumption that there is consensus on what constitutes “systemic (and long term) injustice in the very fabric of (any) society”. That is why your question is unanswerable.
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@jefe
Thanks for explaining….I appreciate…..
Not sure if a little humor is appropriate …
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/04/30/how-western-media-would-cover-baltimore-if-it-happened-elsewhere/
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@ King
Your ideas are a good starting point…but from what little I seem to understand about American racial tensions…(from this blog) indicates that when the momentum is lost—the solutions will be postponed….what do you think?
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Not my ideas alone, simply what people are calling for at this juncture.
Will the solution be postponed? Yes, it always is.
Only the passing of time will provide the lasting solution.
(http://scscv.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/scscv-background-cemetery.jpg)
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@ Anon
You got me wrong, I wasn’t asking what Black Americans want. I said that any political protest movement needs a clear objective which’s fulfillment can be easily verified. And I was asking what objective that could be for the protesters. A law that makes federal agencies investigate all police killings might be such an objective. That “the police has to stop killing black men disproprtionally” is no such goal, because you can only see in hinsight statistically if that actaully happened. The Occupy movement had the same problem. Even though they mobilized a lot of people and had momentum, they basically had no effect on society at all.
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@miss mary b guns are bought and sold on the street. Pawn shops if they have a gun sales license are supposed to report to the federal goverment for background check, wait period etc
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@v8driver: Thanks, V8, I know you always got your ears to the streets.
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@ gro jo
When that post appears it will be obvious. It will not be some oblique swipe. That said, Obama is not far different from much of the Black political class, being pretty much the Black face of White power.
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@King
I am late to respond, but thank you for posting the pictures of the officers involved. I am glad to see that it does not change anything in the scope of blacks wanting justice. It also goes with what has been sad time and time again that …..black cops can and will take on that racist mindset.
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Someone stated on a blog that an arrested teen looters got a 500,000 bail while the officers involved got 350,000 and under.
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@shirnalr: I saw that on a blog site too i don’t know how true it is but i saw the same thing.
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@Mary
I know all involved did wrong, but a part of me feels the cop Goodson is going to be the scapegoat.
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@sharinalr: Yeah, I had to go Google to see which one Goodson was. They say if he is convicted he could get 63 years.
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The police union and their lawyer have been vocal after the arrests. How about the police chief?
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@Jefe
I have not heard anything in regards to the police chief. I think I did read where he said that Mosby is rushing to charge.
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@Shady_Grady
“It is fatuous to say that President Obama, born in the United States, is not a black American man…Being raised by a white parent doesn’t mean that you will automatically see yourself as biracial.”
Interesting discussion. Just want to wrap up this loose end.
None of that was said. That’s just what you inferred and then substituted as my argument. The facts speak for themselves. The president was raised in isolation from the black community. I don’t suggest that that means he is not a black American man’. Obviously he is. I am suggesting that that fact helps explain his mindset and why he does not see his fellow African Americans as fully human. Thugs and thieves. Just like the average white American. Black skin. But white mind. That’s what I said. So discuss that rather than the straw man.
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well. he does think blacks of his class are fully human and will invite them to the white house for beer summits should a cop happen to abuse them
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Obama’s “Whiteness” is mainly structural, not cultural. Any Black president would wind up seeming like a Black face on the status quo, sad to say. H. Rap Brown understood this back in the 1960s:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfJFcGzXNr4)
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To Abagond:
Obama’s “Whiteness” is mainly structural, not cultural. Any Black president would wind up seeming like a Black face on the status quo, sad to say. H. Rap Brown understood this back in the 1960s.
I have to think that President Obama and the DOJ under Holder is doing quite a bit in the background. H Rap Brown murdered a black police officer for attempting to serve a bench warrant to Brown for missing a court appearance.
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“Obama’s “Whiteness” is mainly structural, not cultural”
exactly as I said when I introduced this line of argument
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“Nomad”: I think there is a little cultural misunderstanding here. Normally, when I talk about Obama’s conduct of the office, I am talking either to white conservatives who are broadly in opposition to him, or I am talking to liberals who naively support him and believe onerous things about conservative opponents. So I like to point out that he has kept us out of any new major wars on the scale of Irag or Afghanistan. Other than that, you are quite right about a number of things. Obama has supported the further development of the surveillance state and has done very, very little about the issue of mass incarceration. Or the economic problems of the bottom half of American society, any color, race, region or ethnicity. Of late, he has been pursuing a dangerous course as regards Russia and potentially is putting us on the road to a World War III. In my estimation, Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama will go down in history as a gang of three in spite of all of their protestations about each other. If Hillary Clinton get nominated and elected, a gang of four and potentially 32 years of rule under the same cabal. 36 if you toss in G.H.W. Bush. The only time anything like this happened before was at the start of the republic, when the reign of the Virginian slaveholders and the Brahmin Adamses together covered 40 years until Andrew Jackson defeated the Virginian-Brahmin dynasty in 1828. Our current dynasty is of distinctly less caliber mentally than the founding dynasty. Washington had some character. Jefferson, Madison, Monroe and Adames some intellect. A controversial argument for this blog, I know, but there is a point to it.
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CVS gave Obama $66,612 in campaign contributions and apparently used their pharmacies to promote Obamacare.
More:
http://influenceexplorer.com/organization/cvscaremark-corp/66ffd43dbebc474da1f5c7f7de27b479
http://www.politico.com/story/2013/07/cvs-caremark-will-help-promote-obamacare-94771.html
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Oops.
““Obama’s “Whiteness” is mainly structural, not cultural”
exactly as I said when I introduced this line of argument”
Forget I said that. Don’t know what I was thinking.
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Anonymike
I appreciate your thoughtfulness and I think we agree on most of those things, but I can’t go along with the idea that Obama has been keeping us out of wars. Major? I don’t know how you make the distinction. The wars he has started seem equally as bad as Iraq. And it’s not like he isn’t trying. Only Putin saved us from full scale war in Syria. Let me throw this in cause I read it yesterday and thought it was powerful.
“A laughable break from the seriousness of these events has been Barack Obama’s personal chastisement of “thugs and criminals” in Baltimore, and his heartfelt advice to protesters (mimicking the abolitionists cited by Baptist) that violence is counter-productive to achieving their aims.
Obama speaks from the highest position in a social hierarchy that, as noted above, almost exclusively used unimaginable violence, theft, and looting of Africans and indigenous people to become and maintain itself as a group that can extend its domination globally. He stands as one of the world’s more notorious thugs, criminals, and terrorists, as he personally and intentionally executes thousands of innocent people and bystanders by burning them to death with what the US calls “Hell Fire”; he presides over history’s biggest surveillance and prison system, and condones, funds, and/or perpetrates land-theft, torture, aggression, and use of chemical weapons against civilians to accomplish his aims, while he illegally devotes trillions to nuclear weapons development as water is illegally cut off to poor US citizens, and, in contrast to eight other countries including India, China, and Russia, he refuses to evacuate his own citizens from a war-zone and humanitarian crisis he is helping to create in Yemen.”
http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/05/police-caught-in-lies-charged-with-murder-homicide-in-freddie-gray-killing.html
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Anonymike
“In my estimation, Clinton, G.W. Bush and Obama will go down in history as a gang of three in spite of all of their protestations about each other.”
You are so right about that. And this is what galls me about the Obama deception. The US has been on a rightward political lurch every since Slick Willie decided that the best way for a Dem to get elected Prez is to look as much like a Rep as possible. Third way I think they call it. And we careened far right with W and his war on terror. I didn’t expect much from Obama but I thought at least the pendulum would begin to swing back left. Instead Obama outBushed Bush in pursuit of war and austerity. And got black people to go along with him. That betrayal and perversion of our civil rights heritage from standing for the poor and downtrodden to standing for bombing the hell out of them makes me angry. Turning black people in to bellicose advocates of imperialism.
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“Nomad” I am paying attention to what you are saying. For one thing, I do not watch a lot of television, can live without television whatsoever and am doing so right now. There are advantages to not being involved in television, but some detriments too. Chiefly, I am not very much exposed to a real time view of what is going on in the world, although I am fortunate also to miss out on the media’s twisting spinning of events.
I want to go on to another subject, and that is the issue of the black street rebellion going on in American right now. I think people, that to me means liberals and conservatives of my own color both, think that it is akin to the urban uprisings of the Postwar decades, or indeed of the decades between the end of Reconstruction and Pearl Harbor. I am not sure about that. I think it has some elements in common with the white conservative pushback, that of some white conservatives, against the surveillance state, elitist liberal hegemony, globalism, the militarization of the police, the prison-industrial complex, the government-media complex and other matters.
Should that idea be so surprising? A close look at American social history will show that blacks and whites in America largely have gotten involved in the same movements and issues at the same time, social, political and cultural issues all included. Even the most singularly black cultural development in American history, the creation of jazz music, might not be an exception. I suspect, if one looked closely at the history of music in America, one would find that avant garde whites at the same time were creating their own departures from previous and more conservative musical traditions. In fact, that would be good topic for Abagond to apply his considerable talents as a cultural critic to.
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Interesting. I’ll have to think about that. One thing is disturbing about Baltimore. And kind of parallels Barack Obama depredations. Our oppressors are equal opportunity employers. In earlier racial uprisings it was generally black victims fighting against white abusers. Now increasingly some of the guys playing for the other team are black.
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@nomad: You spoke some real talk and black cop doesn’t necessarily mean good cop.
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^^^^Agreed
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I am not American, so I don’t know what exactly what is happening but I want to say this; African Americans should unite and do business with each other, sponsor each other to college and work to build your communities with what you have. The only thing that may make people embrace the black community is if they have money; lots of it. The language of green bank notes is the only only language that racism listens to. One of your comedians said (paraphrasing here) that white people are actually the wealthy rich and the rest are black. These real white people will never ever accept black people. That’s my opinion.
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@ Uncle Milton
Not holding my breath,
What does that have to do with his opinion about a Black president?
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@Mary Burrell & sharinalr
Thanks. Y’all just made it worth the trip.
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and Anonymike of course.
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[…] #CVSmatters at Abagond […]
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..I’m a bit late to this post, but I really just wanted to give a major round o’ applause for this poignantly, and well-written piece here Abagond!!!
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To Abagond:
UM Said:
“H Rap Brown murdered a black police officer for attempting to serve a bench warrant to Brown for missing a court appearance.”
Abagond said:
“What does that have to do with his opinion about a Black president?”
Yeah I left that hanging, in my opinion it reflects very poor judgement on his part. History has shown that many of his assumptions did not hold. Former BP members and member of SNCC have been elected to congress. His comment about the first black astronaut was ridiculous “They killed him.. (paraphrased basically because he was black)” Robert Henry Lawrence died in a training accident and was not the first or last astronaut to die, there have been 19 black astronauts since then.
UM said:
“I have to think that President Obama and the DOJ under Holder is doing quite a bit in the background.”
Abagond said:
Not holding my breath,
Well of course you or I will likely not know, perhaps for many years or ever, what efforts President Obama has made in the background but we do know that he routinely meets with black civil rights leaders in the White house and that the DOJ sent 40 agents to investigate the Michael Brown shooting (and Holder visited Ferguson). I would say the latter represents unprecedented attention for a single police shooting.
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