This writer reflects on the issues arising following the August 9, 2014 shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a white police officer of the Ferguson Police Department, Missouri, United States of America, and the subsequent failure of a grand jury to commit the police officer to trial. Many of the issues he raises are peculiar to the United States, but there are striking similarities between the stereotypes in the US where you are Black or White or Yellow, and in Nigeria where you are Nupe or Itsekiri or APC or PDP. Ajibola Robinson posted this on his Google+ page as well as on his blog.
***
The elephant remains in the room.
The
verdict is out, Darren Wilson walks, the streets burn, the media talks, and
activists shout. The family hurts and everyone else talks and yet at the end of
the day, work done will equal ZERO.
I
am watching CNN's complete coverage of the second night after the Ferguson
decision covering the protests from all angles and in all cities and all I can
do is shake my head. Does even the highly respectable Anderson Cooper not get
it? Does Chris Cuomo not get it? Does Don Lemon not get it? I don't know, but
it seems they don't.
How
about the protesters? They are walking, shouting screaming, wailing to where?
To do what? To vent to display their frustrations and to complain about a
perceived injustice. Understandable and fair. But they also don't seem to get
it.
But
what is the crux of this issue?
As
I write this, media reports indicate there are protests around the country in
about 37 cities. Atlanta, Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Baltimore, and many
more, but that is not the issue.
The
young angry black youth shout for justice, the mayor of Ferguson to the president
to the grieving father asks for calm and peace. The the CNN polished
professional black TV pundits seems to be speaking a different language from
their polished professional white TV pundits about the same incident. Close!
But that is not the issue.
Everybody
has a cellphone and a camera, everybody has a blog, everybody is a citizen
journalist, everybody is aware and everybody is enlightened. Everybody takes
videos and pictures and uses Facebook Instagram and twitter, but that is not
the issue.
Was
he armed or unarmed!? Was he eight feet or twenty feet away!? Were his arms
raised or not raised!? Did he charge or not? Did Officer Wilson fear for his
life...!? But! That is not the issue.
Guess
what, in three days’ time, most of those on the streets will be in the shops
looking for a great deal ahead of the Christmas holiday, but that is not the
issue.
Within
a few weeks, as happened as far back with Rodney King, and recently with
Trayvon Martin and now to Micheal Brown, life will go on. The streets will
become peaceful once more, the burnt buildings rebuilt, yet the elephant
remains in the room.
The
elephant will remain in the room of Black, White, Asian, Latino and other
families even as they gather in two days to enjoy a fantastic meal and give thanks
at Thanksgiving.
A
few months or even a few years from now, it will CERTAINLY happen again, sadly,
this we know for a FACT. it might be Los Angeles, or Baltimore, New York, or
New Orleans, or elsewhere.
What
is the elephant in the room?
Police
brutality? No. Cops killing unarmed Black kids? No! Prosecutors seemingly doing
a weak and biased job? No! Grand Juries coming to unpopular decisions? No.
Black on black crime? No.
The
elephant is...
The
elephant is... Why does the white woman still clutch her purse in 2014 when the
young black man gets into the elevator, and why does the highly educated black
father need to warn his black son about this?
The
elephant is... why does a white father teach his son to seek and trust the
police when in difficult situations and why does a black or Latino father feel
the need to teach his son NOT to trust the police in a difficult situation?
The
elephant is... Why the young black or Latino youth man feel the need to wear
pants made for the waist on the backside and expect to be taken seriously?
The
elephant is... Why does a white politician get asked if he has any black
friends? Any why does the politician NOT get asked about having European
friends?
The
elephant is... Why does an African American woman feel the need to pen an
article to ask gay white men to stop acting like black women?
The
elephant is... Why does an average black or Latino man feel he needs to work
twice as hard for the same paycheck as his white colleague?
The
elephant is... Why do African Americans asking their fellow well-spoken upper
class African Americans with differing opinions to stop "acting
white"?
The
elephant is... why did a white gunman who shot Gaby Giffords critically
wounding her, and THIRTEEN others and killing SIX people get captured but a
young black man with a toy gun, mistaken to be a real gun gets shot AND killed?
The
elephant is... thinking we can live our racially separate lives in our various
cocoons with minimal interaction with each other outside our places of forced
interaction like at work, and expect to have a full fulfilling happy and
incident free lives.
Finally,
the elephant is... a 6 feet 2 inches tall officer now telling us for a FACT
there is no way an unarmed 6 feet 2 inch tall black male would have survived an
altercation with him, BUT a white man who shot and killed two policemen flees
into the woods, is a trained marksman, armed and dangerous hides for weeks but
DOES survive, comes out of the situation alive and will get his day in
court...?
The
elephant in the room is that which is preventing us from creating a true and
real society of equals for all people of all races with as minimum as possible
racial bias. One where a clear and identifiable majority of the people, not law
enforcement, not the justice system, not government, but the people have chosen
to live equally stand side by side, have similar opinions, goals and
aspirations and coexist peacefully in the same space, governed by true laws of
equality and thus benefiting all of society, not just part of society based on
majority race or religion, gender or anything else.
The
elephant is our society, it is the imbalance and lack of mutual understanding
and tolerance in our society as a whole on BOTH sides of the divide.
Does
anybody really and honestly want to get along? How many want to break the
stereo types and take a chance at a better society? Or are we just satisfied
scoring points, getting great ratings and remaining in our various colored
cocoons?
Dealing
with the elephant is beyond the cops, beyond the prosecutor and beyond the
justice system. The work to be done is not on the streets but behind closed
doors, at the dinner table, at the club, at department store and at the game,
at the elevator and on the sidewalk. It is right there in our various living
rooms, our colored cocoons where the elephant resides that the solution to the
issue will be found.
The
question is, is ANYONE really interested in dealing with the elephant in the
room? Or is it easier to continue to ignore it and deal with the incidents as
they flare up periodically?
No comments:
Post a Comment