Little Ghetto Boy, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

August 23, 2014 Martha Thomases 1 Comment

So, I wondered, with all the rotten news about the state of race relations in this country, what happens when a black police officer kills an unarmed white suspect.  I went to Google to find an example, and found nothing.

It’s quite possible this has happened but Google is unaware of it.  Google isn’t perfect.  Still, the links that turned up were informative.

When a white kid shoots a bunch of people, as happened in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut, the media tells us how “troubled” he was, and how he had a mental illness.  Which is fine.  I mean, we aren’t going to be able to figure out how to prevent this behavior until we figure out what causes it.

When a police officer kills an unarmed black kid, the media tells us the kid was a “thug.”  The media reports that Michael Brown was allegedly videotaped shoplifting a box of cheap cigars (total value:  $48) before he was shot.  I shoplifted a few times when I was a teenager.  It was daring and stupid, two traits that are synonymous with adolescence.  Nobody shot me six times, including twice in the face.

The message?  He deserved it.

In New York, we’re having a parallel crisis.  A black Staten Island man was arrested for selling “loosies” (individual cigarettes) and resisted.  The police wrestled him to the ground and put him in a choke hold.  It killed him.  Choke holds are illegal here, even when the police use them.

To me, the horrific part of this story isn’t only that an innocent man died (well, guilty of a misdemeanor), but that the videos show about five cops involved in the fight.  Why are five cops hanging out at a strip mall in Staten Island?  Shouldn’t they be someplace where real crime is happening?

Or is anyplace with a black man a potential crime scene?

Still, New York is handling the situation better than Ferguson.  Our police department actually talks to the community.  Our community actually acknowledges that the police have important jobs to do.

I am sad, however, that just getting people with disagreements to talk to each other is now considered a tremendous accomplishment.  It should be the beginning of the process, not the triumphant finale.

One reason the police may regard the public as the enemy, aside from simple race and class (yes, I used “simple” sarcastically), is that they are pimped out like an invading/defending army.  The Pentagon has so much equipment left over from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (not counting what ISIS took, but that’s another rant) that they simply give it to local police departments.  A cop in a tank facing a crowd is different from a cop on the beat.  A cop who can fire off tear gas is different from a cop who has to look the public in the face.

This week’s other media phenomenon is the Ice Bucket Challenge.  People videotape themselves getting drenched with a bucket of ice water, then challenge a friend to do the same or donate $100 to fight ALS, or Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Some of the videos are funny.  Some are self-indulgent.  Some people are disgusted by the display, and I get that, but I think anything that reminds us that we’re all in this life together is a good thing.  We should remember that, and try to help each other out.

As I write this, more than $30 million has been donated.  I hope it does some good.  But if we’d spent the hundreds of billions of dollars we invested in equipment for Iraq and Afghanistan (now used by ISIS and local racist police departments), we’d be able to cure ALS, and maybe cancer, too.  Certainly we’d have enough money to give scholarships to tens of thousands of potential research scientists.

Maybe we need a splash of cold water to our faces to get a grip on our priorities.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases actually never got caught shoplifting, so maybe she dodged an actual bullet.