Michael B. Moore
A1
February 21, 2004 8:09 PM
WOW. That's a very powerful piece - at a number of levels. Thanks so much for sharing!
There is no passion to be found playing small, in settling for a life
that is less than the one you are capable of living. - Mandela
sunnubian
A1
February 21, 2004 9:42 PM
This is a very eye-opening piece. I feel nothing but compassion for anyone who suffers such a great loss. Please allow me to add to this saga:
"We rarely wonder about or discuss the brother who shot him because we already know everything about him. When the call came, my first thought was the same one I'd had when I'd heard about Rosa Parks's beating: a brother did it. A non-job-having, middle-of-the-day malt-liquor-drinking, crotch- clutching, loud-talking brother with many neglected children born of many forgotten women."
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I would wager that he probable took his first drink when he was a teenager, a drink offered and given to him by an ADULT; that he too may have been neglected, therefore, not only would he have no good parenting skills to draw on, something else that may have been given to him by an or many ADULTS in his life, and he probably does not even see his neglecting his own children as neglect, after all he made to adulthood or teenagehood without essential parental envolement.
Also, as long as women will date and marry men who have children that they neglect, there is not incentive or not enough for men like this to do anything different---a man that neglects and does not provide for his own children in this country rarely see any immediate consequences for such behavior (unlike women, who's every move, life choice, mistaken, or just plain ignorance to certain facts, who are scrutinized thouroughly, and her abilities are often overemphasized and her efforts are extremely miminized whenever she has a child that turns out bad--especially if she is black, or poor, or single, or does not live in the best neighborhood.
Even in this essay, she never mentions the shooter's father, yet, out of habit immediately had some blame to place on the "mothers" of boys like him.
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"He lives in his mother's basement with furniture rented at an astronomical interest rate, the exact amount of which he does not know. He has a car phone, an $80 monthly cable bill and every possible phone feature but no savings. He steals Social Security numbers from unsuspecting relatives and assumes their identities to acquire large TV sets for which he will never pay. On the slim chance that he is brought to justice, he will have a colorful criminal history and no coherent explanation to offer for this act. His family will raucously defend him and cry cover-up."
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Maybe its where I live, but it has been my experience that black people generally do not defend what is wrong, even their own children---unless they actually believe the child is right or is being framed, etc.; ---not in something of this magnitude. All the time I worked in a law office or in social service agencies, I rarely saw parents defending an obvious wrong their child had done. Now, they may have a "where do we go from here attitude and hope of mercy from the court, etc. I just have not seen a lot of Black people hollering "cover-up" when there is none.
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Some liberal lawyer just like me will help him plea bargain his way to yet another short stay in a prison pesthouse that will serve only to add another layer to the brother's sociopathology and formless, mindless nihilism. We know him. We've known and feared him all our lives.
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Whether a lawyer is liberal or not should not have anything to do with how he will defend a client; if it does, the lawyer has breached his duty (by law) to diligently represent a client.
He will get a short sentence, if he gets one, because it was Black on Black crime, or prison over crowding, or because we still have a justice system that does not care about crimes perpetuated on Black people, or because the person he shot was not white or lived on this side or town or is from this or that background; or, he may not have to do any long sentence or real time or no time at all because of the "plea bargain" system, where he may have "information" to give the police in exchange for a shorter sentence or not sentence---often, some or all of which are lies, and they usually know; all they need is a "witness" or an "informant" to "swear" to a statement or a happening (their choice), as being true.----all of this is the workings of a conservative dominated and controlled legal system.
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" At 27, he got my 17-year-old sister pregnant with Johnny and lost interest without ever informing her that he was married. He snatched my widowed mother's purse as she waited in pre- dawn darkness for the bus to work and then broke into our house while she soldered on an assembly line. He chased all the small entrepreneurs from our neighborhood with his violent thievery, and put bars on our windows. He kept us from sitting on our own front porch after dark and laid the foundation for our periodic bouts of self-hating anger and racial embarrassment. He made our neighborhood a ghetto. He is the poster fool behind the addening community knowledge that there are still some black mothers who raise their daughters but merely love their sons. He and his cancerous carbon copies eclipse the vast majority of us who are not sociopaths and render us invisible. He is the Siamese twin who has died but cannot be separated from his living, vibrant sibling; which of us must attract more notice? We despise and disown this anomalous loser but, for many, he is black America. We know him, we know that he is outside the fold, and we know that he will only get worse.
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I am sad to say that this is so very true.
However, we must remember that monsters are not born, they are created by the society that they live in, created by indifference, intolerance, hate, dispise from other people.
I do know that some people are absolutely born sociopaths, but not all sociopaths are born, the majority of them a made, produced by the greater society that the sociopath is born and raised in.
Hate will not cure the world of sociopaths. Society must stop doing what it is doing to create them in the first place. The description this writer gives so automatically, is exactly what the majority of America thinks of young black males, whether it is true or not; while the young black male is growing up under a cloud of contempt, assumptions, stero-types and hate; there is not wonder that some will buckle, give in to the labels that have been placed on them from birth. And if you are born and raised all your life to think, to feel, to know (either concisiously or uncounciously) that the world holds so much contempt, indifference, and hatred towards you, how will you then see the world, life, others, how much would you care about anything, how angry would you be, how desparate would you be to prove that you are somebody, that you are worthy of something, would you, given the right circumstances, be willing to do anything just to prove something?
I am not condoning what this boy did, and personally think that he should be a very old man when he gets out of prison.
I just believe that we as a society, as a race of people need to look deeper than absolute blame sometimes, and search for the the cause in order to change what is happening. The boy is not the cancer, the boy is suffering from the cancer; when can locate and eliminate the cause, then and only then, will we be cured from this cancer.
Norland
A1
February 21, 2004 9:45 PM
Hysterical "black" mothers, Palestinian mothers, African mothers, Haitian mothers, Jewish mothers, Arabian mothers, "white" mothers, all mothers crying everywhere. Guns have become penile extensions; firepower has become the ejaculation. This has always been the case. Until the war over here becomes settled between Europeans and Africans, Africans should take a War cease/breath over there (wherever "there" is). Every African man should unite and hone these crazy/out-of-their-minds African sons in. We're all one blood; we've all been separated through slavery, and that brother you're killing/shooting/ridiculing/despising is YOUR RELATIVE. Forget the monetary/possessions you think you're going to obtain. You have to work on developing your SOUL.
The History Channel had a 5 hour series on the "Big Houses" in America this past week. You have to be out of your damn minds to want to spend your entire lifetime there, because of your craziness. That's the true slavery. PRISON is the true SLAVERY. African Man, you have to be a DAMN retard to want to exist THERE. It's a trap for your dumb azzes. WAKE UP AFRICANS-IN-AMERICA. STOP YOUR MADNESS. YOU AREN'T CUTE. YOU'RE INSANE TO THE MAX!!!!!!!!!
***********
Africans have made no advancement in America without shedding their blood. Yet, they are so confused that they are the first to shed blood for the system which made them shed their blood. African soldiers knew nothing of Iraq or Kuwait, nothing of Zionism. All they knew was Saddam was a monster. Nevertheless, the African in America represents the most instinctively revolutionary group in the country because of the position they are in. It is time for us to get conscious.--Kwame Ture
sunnubian
A1
February 23, 2004 6:06 PM
Every African man should unite and hone these crazy/out-of-their-minds African sons in. We're all one blood; we've all been separated through slavery, and that brother you're killing/shooting/ridiculing/despising is YOUR RELATIVE."
________________________________
This is true.
But when all of them are honed in, please do not forget all of the ADULTS that make it possible for the majority of these young brothers to obtain weapons in the first place, to obtain drugs to use or sell in the first place.
I for one am sick of all the blame being put squarely on the shoulder of the young black males (not to excuse their blame) without even a thought given to all the aider and abedder of juvenile delinquency in this country that are adults.
It is my position that every time an underaged youth shoot or kills someone, there should be just a much effort waged in ruting out the ADULT that allowed a child access to a weapon in the first place; every time a young person goes on trial for possession and/or intent to distribute drugs, the ADULT that is responsible for the teenager to gain access to the drugs in the first place should also be on trial.
With the exception of stealing the guns or drugs in the first place, there is no way that a young person can ever get access to guns or drugs in the first place without and ADULT being responsible somewhere down the line.
When ADULTS that add to the delinquency of minors begin to receive the long tough prison sentences that they deserve, only then will you see a change in the juvenile problems we have in this country, especially in the Black community.
The publics is going to have to damand that the ADULT aiders be ruted out and held accountable for assisting or encouraging or brainwashing young, ignorant, impressionable minds into possessing guns and drugs and involvement in illicit behaviors, in the first place.
When has anyone heard of an ADULT being put on trial and sentenced for selling a teenager a gun or drugs or for giving a minor drugs to sell in the first place? When is the last time anyone has seen ADULTS prosecuted for adding to the delinquency of minors' illicit behaviors?
Norland
A1
February 24, 2004 1:47 AM
Ah, yes, sunnubian. That ADULT line. Is there an UP to that DOWN line?? How far UP??
***********
Africans have made no advancement in America without shedding their blood. Yet, they are so confused that they are the first to shed blood for the system which made them shed their blood. African soldiers knew nothing of Iraq or Kuwait, nothing of Zionism. All they knew was Saddam was a monster. Nevertheless, the African in America represents the most instinctively revolutionary group in the country because of the position they are in. It is time for us to get conscious.--Kwame Ture
James Wesley Chester
A1
February 24, 2004 7:11 AM
EbonyRose:
I saw Debra Dickerson on bookTY discussing her most recent book. I also thought her take was a little "head-in-the-sand-the-sand." She stated her basic position on racism as "Just don't get in my way." I can sympathize with that. It was my position for twenty years. "Just leave me alone." I was disappointed considering the title of her most recent book "I Am Not Black."
I also found the position to be shallow for a 21st Century intellectual.
Which she is.
PEACE
Jim Chester
James Wesley Chester
A1
February 25, 2004 1:17 AM
quote:
Originally posted by James Wesley Chester:
EbonyRose:
I saw Debra Dickerson on bookTY discussing her most recent book. I also thought her take was a little "head-in-the-sand-the-sand." She stated her basic position on racism as "Just don't get in my way." I can sympathize with that. It was my position for twenty years. "Just leave me alone." I was disappointed considering the title of her most recent book "The End of Blackness."
I also found the position to be shallow for a 21st Century intellectual. Which she is. I found it shallow, because "blackness" was not replaced with an improvement in identity. It was replaced by further sinking into the slough of despondency that has ragged us for centuries.
I thought her presentation "went nowhere" from there. I expected her to offer an alternative. Instead, her position was "Leave me alone."
PEACE
Jim Chester
[This message was edited by James Wesley Chester on February 25, 2004 at 01:23 AM.]
sunnubian
A1
February 25, 2004 9:33 AM
After locating some of her other writings, the only thing that I could gather of her true mission is that she is just another writer capatilizing on the sellability of criticizing and demeaning Blacks and African America, under the guise of "rational thought."
One way to catipult career in politics, writing, or get a talk show on HBO (Chris Roc) is to stand on a soap box and criticize and stero-type African America.
I guess it's like comedians that have no talent, therefore, their entire comedy routine consists of nothing more than profanity, volgur statements, and insults----writers that have no true ability/talents, or intellectual dept to draw from, usually do similarly---write about African America and have nothing to say but the most profane, volgur and insulting; completely ignoring all else, because they do nottruely possess what it takes that a write has to have to be able to express anything but the most lower based in writing---rationalization of self-hate; criticizing; insulting; . . .
James Wesley Chester
A1
February 27, 2004 4:48 AM
I recently saw Debra Dickerson on "Real Time With Bill Maher." She again has little impact on the discussion. By that I mean, she seemed to bring little to the discussion. Her comments did not lift, nor change the direction of anything being said.
But, that can be said for the other two panelists as well, one of whom Hughley. They weren't bad, just of little consequence. Bill Maher carried the weight of the discussion.
PEACE
Jim Chester
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