Here we go again. Two black men get shot by police and a black man retaliates by taking the lives of five white policemen. The protesters go out and protest, sometimes peacefully; more often than not with rocks and bottles and taunts of the police. The police then retaliate by arresting protestors, often with little restraint, and the circle of mistrust and hatred goes on. The President of the United States, The Man, The Honcho, The Big Cheese shows up at the memorial service for the white policemen and he says that something must be done to improve race relations in the United States. The black man should not fear the white policeman but he does and he will, and we must change this, he tells us. Then he says that he’s going to bring all sides together to discuss ways in which we can make this change happen.
I sit back in my comfortable recliner in a neighborhood where the only black people are those who are nannies or coming to do housework or take care of the lawn and I think to myself, “What a bunch of bullshit!” Nothing is going to change, period, end of report. Nothing is going to change because as long as we have gangs of black kids and as long as we have white cops, there is going to be mistrust and even hatred. In addition, we will have gangs of black, Latino, Asian, and other gangs just as long as there is a quick buck to be made by selling illegal drugs or performing any other illegal task that will make them money without having to work too hard to get it.
So, will breaking up the gangs and putting all those lawbreakers away make a difference? No, it won’t and for several reasons. The first reason is that the gangs are better organized than the police? Why? Because towns, cities, states, and the federal government won’t fund the law enforcement community to the extent that they need to be funded to eliminate the gangs. Perhaps some of you remember when one of law enforcement’s major complaints was, “We can’t arrest them because we can’t get near them because they are so much better armed than we are.” It was true then and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if the same argument held true today.
Another truth is that gangs are allowed to flourish because communities allow ghettos to remain. A manufacturing firm in Detroit moves its production facilities to Mexico, China, or even to somewhere in North Carolina because it’s more cost effective. What happens to that manufacturing plant in Detroit? It’s allowed to turn into a rusty, old mass of concrete and steel; home to drug addicts and homeless people, and then as a hangout for drug dealers and eventually a group of young men and perhaps a few women who move in as part of a gang. Why aren’t these buildings demolished? The communities cannot afford to demolish them and if they do, what do they do with the detritus that’s left behind?
The problem of race relations in America is not a problem of trust or mistrust. It’s not a problem of better training for police. Take a hard look at Dallas. Race relations in that city were probably as good as you’ll find anywhere in the country. One dissident person whose skin happened to be black messed that situation up for probably years to come. That’s another one of the tragedies that happened in Dallas. And the same damned thing is true of Baton Rouge, Falcon Heights, and wherever in Georgia, Tennessee, and other parts of the country.
No, we cannot solve the problem of race relations in this country with just a couple of proposals or by throwing a few million dollars at the problem. The problem of race relations in America is a problem so complex that you can’t even say “race relations” is the problem. Race relations is a condition that is made up of myriad problems. In order to begin to eliminate the condition, we have to identify the problems that are causing it and eliminate those problems one by one by one.
My next question, and I have a ton of them, is, ”Who are the people who can actually identify the problems that make up this condition we have branded “race relations?” Is a White House conference the answer? Of course it isn’t. It looks pretty. They even flew in the son of Alton Sterling to participate, and his comments about peaceful protesting made all of the major news channels. Tell me, however, what does a 15-year old know about race relations in Oakland, or New York City, or anywhere other than what he has seen in Baton Rouge? I’m not trying to play the hardass here, but problem solving 101 is first identify the problem. It may have to do with any number of things, but one thing is for certain, using the term “race relations” and trying to classify that as the problem makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
So we will have our conference and we will hear all sorts of bullshit recommendations, most of which will lay the blame at the door of white cops. And then it will be back to business as usual except that the cops will get more pissed because of the bullshit recommendations, and the gangs will go back to being gangs, and the ghettos will go back to being ghettos, and America will go on being America…until the next time, and then we’ll begin the process all over again…what a goddamned shame!
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