No Ally Of Mine

Over the last several months generations the weaponization of ytness has become more and more common. One might say that it's become a fad. White women have taken to calling 911 for Black people for infractions ranging from waiting while Black to mowing while Black and bbq-ing while Black. And now, even as I was trying to organize my thoughts on this issue, we seem to have graduated from calling the popo, to murdering POC for merely existing as Black. Enter the case of Botham Shem Jean. While the 'why' of this weaponziation is fairly obvious, the 'what to do about it' is less so.

The why
The why, as I said, is fairly obvious. The monsters in the House of White (supremacy) have tacitly given permission to the masses to be as nasty as they wanna be. Ugliness of this kind needs to have permission to express itself especially after so many years of ‘political correctness’. Permission has been granted. 

All the talk for the last eight years, about "taking their country back" it has now conclusively been shown, was the preamble to this: being able to set in motion the death of any n*gger that got in the way of nice White people (NWPs); the right to call the police to do that work while NWPs watched; and the gleeful enjoyment (by NWPs) of the consequences of those calls. When caught out or exposed to public disapprobation, tearful non-apology apologies would be offered, but changed behavior? Not so much. Apologies are performative.

The truth is that what we have here is twenty-first century lynchings, or attempts at same. As I wrote in my piece on The En Word, civilians want the fun of lynching without the bloody hands or the stained consciences. They want consequence-free murder. Civilians want what the police currently have: the right to kill and go home to their families without challenge. This is the thing they’ve been wanting to bring back. Rosewood. Sunday afternoon lynching. Domestic terror.

Anyone calling the police for a 12 year old cutting the lawn, is seeking his death. Everyone knows what happened to Tamir Rice. He too was 12. Bullshit excuses for making these calls are just that: bullshit. You make the call, you are seeking the death of a POC. There is no wiggle room there. I'm done trying to find a way to explain this shite. Don't tell me you didn't know or that wasn't your intent. 

Inevitably, because this is where this has been headed all along, someone ended up dead and another hashtag memorial must suffice when real justice seems so far off. #BothamShemJean

What to do

The only solution is action. And the only action that matters is White people's action. Sorry to be the harbinger of those bad tidings but that is the reality.

The malefactors here? White.

The power holders (the investigators of these crimes)? White.

The system that will determine whether those committing us to the ground are to be held accountable? Built by and for White people. 

And how do I know that justice will remain afar off? From the words and actions of so-called "allies", the people who might be best placed to move the needle (cuz let's face it, ain't nobody listening to Negrus). 

Yesterday, someone on social media shared this .....

“'They' kneel”? "We support 'them'”? My objections to this language couldn't be any stronger. 

First off, why aren't you kneeling? What exactly would need to happen to cause you to kneel? Next, why do you still think this problem is theirs and not ours?

The death of Botham Shem Jean (hashtag number 6,284) ought to drop us all to our knees, but it won't. Non-allies will find justisplanations galore; while so-called allies will separate themselves from the problem because it’s “their (Black folks')" problem and not "ours".

My former choir director used to say, “Until all have crossed, none have crossed and some we will have to carry.” Well right about now I'm saying "Until all are safe, none are safe. Too many are dead already." That’s where we are now. I think it’s where we’ll likely stay because allies ain't in it to win it. Apparently it's my problem not Becky's or Chad's.

Far too many people who claim to champion social justice manage not to see the issue of extra-judicial murder as a national crisis rather than a problem Black folk are having. Too many latte liberals frown and shake their heads, and then take another sip of their chai. Too many SJWs find ways to be OK with America's myriad sins because those sins don’t leave their people bloody, dead or dying. You'll forgive me (or not, cuz I no longer care either way) if I'm not just going to excuse America's "oopsies" and keep drinking my tea.

When a Black man cannot be safe in his own home; when the police can execute a warrant on the decedent's home but not on the killer's; when the killer doesn't spend even as much time in a cell (for causing death) as Sandra Bland did for insisting on her right to be and you still won’t kneel and you're still claiming that the problem is 'theirs" not "this nation's", you are no ally of mine. You are worse than the White moderate of MLK's Letter from Birmingham Jail.  

I am not Beto O'Rourke. I will not seek a nice way to disagree with you here. That is not my job. I will not challenge your patriotism but I will challenge your humanity, your decency and your Christianity and definitely I will challenge you on any suggestion that your country is great. Because when the choices are "lynching is bad" and "lynching, what lynching?" there is only one side that is humane, decent, Christian or signifying a great country and I know which one it is. Do you? 

May Botham Jean Rest In Peace and Rise in Power and may his death be the last of these abominations.