I was planning to write a column for Easter Sunday as a way to pay homage to Dr. Martin Luther King on the anniversary of his assassination. But I could not — the horrors broadcast all week from the trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer charged with the gruesome killing of George Floyd, filled my head and my heart. Dr. King and Floyd — their senseless deaths by violence bear similarities that tell a devastating, and too often sadly recurring story.
There has always been a war against Black men in America — from the early days of slavery during which Black men where brutalized and defenseless to protect their women from being raped or their children from being sold.
History has shown that any time Black men tried to forge a better life for their families by building their own communities, they were deemed “too uppity” and those places — like the Greenwood District in Tulsa and Rosewood in Florida — burned to the ground and the residents massacred.
The question of how to keep Black men “in check” and deferential began with the proliferation of lynchings. They were hunted down, beaten, assaulted and sentenced to death by whites who played judge, jury and executioner. The reason was usually the old standby, “he disrespected a white woman.” Thank God a black woman, activist and newspaper editor Ida B. Wells, launched a powerful one-woman crusade to draw attention to the horrors in a bid to stop the lynching atrocities.
As lynching waned, prisons became the next vehicle of choice for keeping Black men “in their place” and often in perpetual shackled servitude.
Even as they fought for a nation that had enslaved them and assigned them and their families to poverty, Black servicemen were denigrated and debased. The Civil War’s famous 54th regiment was denied pay and even uniforms until their white captain refused his pay in protest of his men’s treatment. Our first Black war hero was William Carney of the 54th, who received the Medal of Honor for his brave feats in 1900. From WWII to Vietnam, Black troops cleaned the latrines, picked up and buried the bodies of the fallen. Even the famed Tuskegee Airmen, the first Black military airmen who won over 150 Distinguished Flying Crosses in WWll, had to fight against segregation in the armed forces.
Centuries later, Black men still crowd our prisons for even the pettiest of crimes. Today we confront the odious concept of “qualified immunity,” a disgraceful shield that protects law enforcement who have killed Black civilians. One only needs to say, “I feared for my life.” If you are a large Black man, you instantly have a target on your back. The “angry black man” is being used as Chauvin’s defense in his trial — a well-worn racist trope demonizing and dehumanizing Black men as intrinsically scary and threatening. Thankfully the prosecution is reminding the jury that Floyd was a human being. The question remains — will it make a difference in the end? Will it change the indignities and brutality that Black men bear disproportionately?
Black men have long expressed, in exasperation, that they wish white folks would get their “foot off our necks.” That phrase was brought into stark reality in the most abhorrent way possible with the killing of George Floyd. But as we know, he is one in a long list of Black men who’ve died at the hands of law enforcement.
The question remains: When will the war on Black men end?
Joyce Ferriabough Bolling is a media and political strategist and communications specialist.
"Stop" - Google News
April 07, 2021 at 04:27PM
https://ift.tt/3dDsJXq
Ferriabough Bolling: America’s war against Black men must stop - Boston Herald
"Stop" - Google News
https://ift.tt/2KQiYae
https://ift.tt/2WhNuz0
Bagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Ferriabough Bolling: America’s war against Black men must stop - Boston Herald"
Post a Comment