In The Wake of Emmett Till, by Mike Gold – Brainiac On Banjo #269 | @MDWorld

April 2, 2012 Michael Davis 1 Comment

Back in August 1955, there was a 14-year-old Chicago black boy named Emmett Till who was visiting relatives down in Mississippi. According to reports, he either spoke to or whistled at a white and married 21-year-old girl named Carolyn Bryant. Back up north, this was no big deal: a harmless, childish act from a harmless child. The white folks in Mississippi didn’t see it the same way and, a few days later, Bryant’s husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam kidnapped Emmett from his great-uncle’s house, took him to a barn, bound him with barbed wire, beat him to a pulp, gouged out one of his eyes, shot him in the head and tossed his horrific corpse off a Tallahatchie bridge into the river below. His mother insisted on a public, open casket funeral and allowed – encouraged – press photographers to attend.

The slaying of Treyvon Martin and the resultant police leaks and cover-ups has been compared to that of Emmett Till, and that isn’t quite accurate. Yes, both were victims of racist and both were killed and both were teen-agers and the killers received protection from the local law authorities… and the comparison slows down from there.

Here’s a better one.

On Wednesday, March 21 a 32-year-old Iraqi woman named Shaima Alawadi, was found severely beaten next to a note that said “go back to your country, you terrorist.” She and her family lived in El Cajon, California; it was her 17-year-old daughter who found her mother’s body in a pool of blood. Shaima, the mother of five, was taken to the hospital and put on life support.

The following Saturday – a week ago last Saturday – Shaima Alawadi was taken off of life support. It was official. She had been beaten to death. Shaima wore a hajiba, which is more likely to get you killed than a pack of Skittles.

“At this point, we are not calling it a hate crime,” said Lt. Mark Coit of the El Cajon police. “We haven’t made that determination. We are calling it an isolated incident, because we don’t have any evidence of anything similar going on at this point.”

As of this writing, no arrests have been made. A week after the beating, the FBI offered its assistance to the El Cajon police. If Lt. Coit is any indication of the quality of police out there, I suspect they’re too stupid to take advantage of the offer.

If Alawadi “went back to her country,” she would have left El Cajon for Dearborn Michigan. That’s where she and her husband went when they fled Iraq in 1993 due to violent discrimination against Shia Muslims. Her father was a Shia cleric.

I’d say something clever like “Iraqi Muslim is the new black,” except the old black is still the new black.

I’d say something pithy like “Look at what has America has come to,” except that America has always had all types of lynching.

So instead, I’ll say this: America is a nation of mongrels. Each and every one of us belongs to at least one group that certain other groups do not like.

Watch your back.

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Pissed-off and white, media metaphysician Mike Gold performs the Weird Sounds Inside The Gold Mind rock’n’blues show, which streams four times a week on www.getthepointradio.com and is also available at that same venue On Demand. He also joins Martha Thomases and Michael Davis as a weekly columnist at www.comicmix.com.