White Bart cop gets his "justice" - as for Blacks, it's still "Just-us"

UPDATE:  "Feds to investigate Calif. train station killing" - First, let me say that I suspect their motives (mid-term elections ever closer, Kool-Aid  at-the-ready for Black folks and such).  I mean, really - NOW, they want to investigate??  And even with the video, there was no "urgency of now" coming from the Changeling, et al (apparently MLK was only talking about him & his) - they never said a mumblin' word.  Guess that would've cast an interminably long shadow over all that "Obama Love"  floating around - for more than a year.  Pity the throngs of Black folk with no video of police killing, or otherwise abusing them.  Who knows what the outcome will be, but they'll be able to wave this one around to the 'believers" saying, "At least it didn't take as long as the investigation into the murder of Emmett Till!" {smdh}

HuffPo had a clearer version of the video so I switched the one I'd originally posted because we need to see the reason white folks need niggers and injuns and spics and wetbacks and kikes and dagos and guineas and micks, and a new one I learned while volunteering in NOLA after Katrina - spicaninnies.

For cover and preservation of the - who - they really are, those "civilized," who continue (and it will continue - abetted by the not-so-surprising help of many of the non-alabaster-hued) to make the afore-mentioned groups always appear as "uncivilized" animals can then, somehow justify to their man/woman in the mirror - the animals within themselves. 

Lest we forget...



After the jury rendered their verdict, 120 Arrested In Violent BART Protest:

“We live a life of fear and we want them to feel fear tonight” an unnamed demonstrator told KTVU at the height of the violence.

And yes, there was this:  Live blog: Cops pour in to Oakland to try to stop looting.  But while the headline concentrates on the looting, the photo array of the legions of riot-gear clad, gun-carrying cops from at least five different agencies it contains stands in silent, yet powerful confirmation that, as James Baldwin said:

"The country is only concerned about nonviolence, if it seems that I'm gonna get violent. It's not worried about nonviolence, if it's some Alabama sheriff."

Or a BART officer.

Lauryn Hill's - "Mystery of Iniquity" -  kept playing in my head while I pecked this out, so I thought I'd share. For all the Marilyn Leviases (Seattle) and the more, sure-to-be Oscar Grants in this post-racial nation...



...because the beat goes on, until we say - ENOUGH! - and mean it.

Upcoming Cheney interiew - more racial symbolism over substance

I saw a clip of Wolf Blitzer's upcoming interview with former Vice President Dick Cheney to air Sunday at 11 a.m. In it, Mr. Cheney spoke about how much we've progressed racially since he came to Washington in the 60s.

He said, "When I came to Washington, we'd had Kennedy assassinated, Martin Luther King assassinated and riots in the streets. Things have changed so dramatically that now, we're preparing to swear in Barack Obama as President of the United States. " (emphasis mine)

Let's be clear, I agree with him - things have changed racially in this country. But I'm not lying to myself that Obama's selection is a reflection of that. If you want to feel that way, go right ahead. But rather than showing how far we've come, I think the former Vice President's statement does more to starkly point out how far we still have to go.

The tragic irony of his statement is that, as I sit in Washington:

• It seems 22 year-old, Adolph Grimes III was assassinated on January 1, 2009 - shot by police, twice from the front and 12 times from the back (a total of 48 bullets were fired according to CNN). Grimes did have a gun - with a legal permit to carry. Now you have to ask yourself, what you would do if you're sitting in your car in New Orleans right after the New Year rolled in and plainclothes policemen pulled up in unmarked vehicles and surround your car with guns drawn - and you have a weapon with a permit to carry. Details are sketchy because the NOPD's not answering a lot of questions right now. Good idea since they've given two versions of what happened.
  
  
• It seems 22 year-old, Oscar Grant was assassinated on January 1, 2009 - shot by a Bay Area Transportation police officer in the back.
  
  
• 
  Witnesses say police handcuffed Grant after he'd been shot, but removed the cuffs right before news reporters arrived. The officer has resigned, is at home and will speak to no one on advice of legal counsel. And there was rioting in the streets.
  
  

No, neither of these men were political or spiritual leaders, but their lives mattered - to someone.
UPDATE: I just had to say this. Sitting here watching Don Lemon on CNN as they "focus" on these shootings (and that of Bobby Tolan) in their Special Investigations series. He starts out by saying, "What is going on with all these police shootings!" (emphasis his) as if they just started happening. It took his white guest, B.J. Bernstein (she was Genarlow Wilson's defense attorney), to say, "This is not new, it happens to 1 in 4 African-American males all the time." Then he switches to the Grimes shooting and asks her if given all the crime in New Orleans after Katrina, are the police a little touchy or are the shootings warranted! I guess he realized what he said, because then he added, "not that anybody's death is warranted." Christ!!! Just because CNN just started "focusing" on young Black men being gunned down by police, doesn't mean it just started happening. It's times like these that I just have to holler Zora's words: "All my skinfolks, ain't my kinfolks!!"