By Calvin Hill
In a dramatic scene from THE GODFATHER, hotel and casino owner Moe Greene tells Michael Corleone, “You don’t buy me out, I buy you out!” Determined to ignore the indignant and angered Greene, Michael tells him that he will be leaving Las Vegas the next day, “Think about a price.” Thus is the conundrum that black men are facing in America wherein hypocritical bigots such as Rudolph Giuliani seem to always assume that being disrespectful to police officers gives them a license to kill.
Giuliani, and much of the conservative illiterati, also seem to forget that just because a police officer carries a badge and a gun that it does not remove the fact that they are ‘public servants’ and have a civic responsibility to be respectful to the public – black men included. When a black man is stopped, it is perfectly respectful to refer to the person as ‘Officer’ instead of ‘Sir.’ We are no longer in the 1860s South. It is disrespectful for the officer not to tell an American citizen why they were stopped. It is not disrespectful for an American citizen to simply ask a police officer what was their ‘probable cause’ for stopping him. It is disrespectful when the public servant refuses to answer the citizen and asks for their identification.
From coast to coast black men and women are being told to be respectful of taxpayer payed public servants who treat them with absurd levels of disrespect. These black Moe Greenes, who want nothing more than to live their lives with the dignities, protections, liberties and rights of an American citizen are having those dignities, et.al. ignored, trampled on and disrespected by a Corleone like mob of public servants who make them an offer they can’t refuse – Comply or die! Even the most basic question is often viewed as a refusal to comply and may be met with death. Even worse, black parents feel compelled to advise their violated and disrespected children to just sit there, or stand there, and take it because the consequence of having to bury their child frightens them. Thus the 1860s mentality is allowed to flourish and thrive toward black men in 21st century America.
Noting the level of crime and murders in black communities is not only a false equivalent, it greatly shines the light of bigotry on those who would use it as an excuse when a police officer guns down an innocent, unarmed black man. The only time the Giuliani community members even mention these black folks killed at the hands of other black folks is when they feel the need to defend an indefensible shooting of a black person by a, usually white, police officer. Why don’t they care on the night of, or the morning after those killings occur? Why don’t they care when those communities meet to try to come up with solutions to stem the violent deaths in their neighborhoods? Why don’t they care when those American communities gather for STOP THE VIOLENCE rallies and marches?
When the Giuliani types focus on the crime in black communities in defense of unnecessary police killings of black men, these ‘law and order’ advocates offer no reasonable solutions. They are fully aware that guns are being acquired illegally to foment these crimes, yet they are unwilling to fight for legislative solutions to prevent the carnage plaguing communities inhabited by black and Latino American citizens. Their solution is to systematically violate the rights of hundreds of thousands of people, millions nationwide, who live in those communities, under the guise of effective policing with full knowledge that effective legislation, with well-funded effective enforcement, will stop more illegal gun trafficking than the hundreds of thousands of Stop & Frisks that come up empty.
Of the many peaceful protests and marches featuring BLACK LIVES MATTER, among other organizations, conservative media uses one march wherein unarmed protestors are heard chanting in unison, the reprehensible, “What do we want – dead cops!” to malign BLACK LIVES MATTER as ‘racist’ and, according to Rush Limbaugh, “A terrorist organization.” However, the same verbal flamethrowers attacking BLACK LIVES MATTER were clearly supportive and complimentary when heavily armed, white, ‘militiamen’ stood in defense of Cliven Bundy and threatened to kill those “jack booted thugs” who wore the uniforms of agents of the federal government. There is universal consent that policing is a difficult and often dangerous job. And it would be impossible to find anyone that would dare to admit that all cops are good cops. Yet it is virtually impossible to weed out those bad cops. The black community is merely asking of police departments what the police departments ask of them – help us get the bad elements from among your community.
Unfortunately, the assistance is mostly one-sided and black people and black communities in America are left to suffer the indignities and disrespect of being treated less than American and less than free. Also unfortunate is that that has been the policy of politics and law enforcement for hundreds of years. And as much and as often as whites like to sing the praises of America and what our country represents, they were quite willing to deface and defame their own country by lynching, burning, torturing and castrating the bodies of black men dressed in the various uniforms of the American military. For those who would commit such heinous acts, as well as those acts committed by police officers recently seen on video, and for those who would defend them, one can only conclude that, for far too many people in this country, being white is much more important than being American.
The Op-Ed Alternative 