As you look at some of these images what goes through your mind? How do you feel? What is your immediate reaction?
Toddler killed in car seat riding with his mother.
Teenaged son killed by drive-by coming from the football game.
Grown daughter killed at work by disgruntled ex-employee.
Black boy killed by police.
Black girl killed by mother’s boyfriend.
Mother killed by husband.
Father killed by unknown assailant.
I could go on and on to the break of dawn.
These are just some of the headlines we see all the time. It’s getting to the point that everyday somebody’s child young or old, black or white, boy or girl, woman or man has been killed. Most are senseless, void of rhyme or reason just in the wrong place at the wrong time, minding their own business, walking home, sitting in a car, or on their porch.
Now you could get killed just about anywhere. There are no safe places anymore. As we all have seen you could be at church, at a concert, at work, on a plane, in the hospital, at school, on a bus, or even at home. Lord help!
For the first time ever politicians, lawmakers and others are starting to agree with the scientists who recognize the importance of good mental health in society. They have always studied the effects mental health has had on society, but never to this degree.
Why now? Grant Money, skyrocketing shootings in some of the predominantly white areas, and just plain scared and don’t know what else to do. Some of us have our suspicions as to why people’s mental health has been on a downward spiral and that is ISOLATION! Man was not made to be alone, because we are social animals. God made us that way. So that we can be helpers one to another. In that movie where Tom Hanks is all alone he made a volleyball his friend, just so he could talk to it. Studies have shown that when prisoners are in isolation some commit suicide, because they can’t take being alone and that’s why some people in society want that to stop, because it wreaks havoc on your mental state and sometimes you can’t come back from that.
COVID, loneliness, joblessness, racism, substandard education, violence, extreme poverty, homelessness, and injustices; just to name a few, are contributing factors to what we all are experiencing in the world today. Shootings and killings used to be what black and brown communities dealt with on a daily basis, but now with the availability of guns on the internet and the extremists groups getting more and more fanatical to say the least, we have mass killings all over the world, at any given time, for any reason, and everywhere with no place being exempt.
2 dead, at least 12 injured in shooting at Kroger grocery store in Tennessee
Chicago Gun Violence Spikes and Increasingly Finds the Youngest Victims
Granted there are not as many shootings and killings in the white neighborhoods, but that is slowly changing, and will continue to escalate, if nothing is done. Your neighborhoods will soon be just as bad as it is in the ghettos of America.
Statistics back this assumption up when you look at the data that suggests what is really happening, although it may be for different reasons the inevitable end is that somebody’s loved one is killed.
Declining mental health, racism, drug abuse, poverty, and unemployment has a tremendous part to play in these shootings. Poverty being one of the main causes.
Look at how some poor people are living.
Poverty anywhere hurts people everywhere!
This country has got to make some drastic changes in order for us to be this great nation they say we are, but none of this is possible if some people live like this and others live in total poverty.
WE GOT TO MAKE A CHANGE OR WE ALL WILL PERISH!
So a black parents fear is real.
According to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office, Minniefield was one of 875 people who died from gun violence last year; 78% of the victims were Black.
That is by far the highest total of gun-related homicides we have ever had. The only time we came anywhere near that was in 1994 when we had 838 homicides due to gun violence,” said Natalia Derevyanny, Spokeswoman for the Cook County Medical Examiner’s office.
Gun violence deaths were not the only record-breaker for the year. Cook County also recorded a total of 16,049 deaths in 2020, which was also a record. (data tracked by Chgo tribune)
This the world; white, rich, powerful people created by ignoring the obvious, which is a community that has been covertly neglected and destroyed through gentrification, veiled with systemic racism put in place to diminish the culture of black people and castrate the black man and make him out to be violent and lazy. This is your outcome you get but didn’t expect. It’s like the jack in the box that pops out when you least expect it, or the Trojan horse that shows the outside, never revealing the inner weapons of mass destruction.
What does this sound like? It sounds like what white people have done to generations of black, brown, or any minority for centuries and that is portraying partnership only to take the idea and develop it as their own. However they didn’t think it through, not realizing that it would affect their children in their gated communities and private schools.
What they didn’t expect was young people not caring about what race you are and began dating that very group you didn’t seem to care about, which brought a mixing of the cultures; so therefore we have a lot of culturally mixed children living in an environment that is not only dangerous, but very prejudice as well; based on the color of their skin and the type of hair they have.
Just like drugs don’t care who you are or how much money you have or where you live. Oxy, Percocet, heroin, and fentanyl is just as deadly to rich white kids as it is to poor black and brown kids. Drugs are drugs, and poor uneducated people who feel they have no other choice, but to sell drugs to feed their family will do what they have to survive. Just like bullets don’t have no name on them. It don’t care if you are rich and white or poor and brown or what neighborhood you come from.
THEY STILL KILL
I know this was not the world you wanted to create, but here we are anyway. Now our children are living in this powder keg we call America, with all its volatile erupting, hate filled rhetoric being spewed all over the place. Where our children have to learn how to survive in a world filled with tactical training for an active shooter like they the FBI in order to live.
And that’s a damn shame on all of us, because we deprived them of being a kid with all its wonder and awe to enjoy, to be naive like we were. We ought to be ashamed of what we have stolen from them and yet we still can’t act like adults. Look at us in congress, REALLY REALLY. We criticize the young people, but look at how foolish we act in public over the simplest thing like wearing a freaking mask to save lives. Stop saying it’s about freedom. Real freedom is what we as black parents want for our children. Free to drive a car and not get murdered by the police or drive-by shootings. Real freedom is when we as black parents can send our children to school and not worry if they will make it back. Real freedom is when your adult child can go to work, enjoy a show, or go shopping without worrying about some white boy shooting up the place because he was bullied or they fired him.
Let’s talk bible. God said we have been redeemed and we are free. What we didn’t know was we will always be struggling to be free in a country that we fought and died for and was built on our grandparents backs as slaves and yet we are still treated as 3/5 human, aliens in a country that was supposed to be ours. This great country my tears are thee. NOW you want change.
When people are in poverty and treated like animals guess what, they act like animals; so don’t be stupefied when you see people out of control. Those with the money, power, positions and titles have got to make a change if they want to see a change. You can’t be so blind and ignorant and think staying in your gated, police controlled neighborhoods will keep you safe, because as we see a lot of wild animals are coming into the cities, because people have gentrified their habitat and they have nowhere else to go. So you see a bear, snake, even an alligator, in your garbage looking for food to eat, in your toilet trying to find some clean water, in your pool just taking a refreshing dip.
They don’t always stay where they belong do they?
So we must end poverty to end the violence. We must stop the classism, the racism, the stigmatism that says that black people are violent, stupid and lazy. You can’t just live in your beautiful houses and manicured lawns and act like nothing is happening, while the streets are filled with black parents all over the world crying tears of blood for their children. You say well that aint my fault, that’s not in my neighborhood, that’s not in my city, not now but it’s coming soon to a theatre near you. Poverty affects us all. Don’t fool yourself. Racism is a health crisis. Black parents are constantly worrying that their child will be the next Trayvon or drive by shooting EVERYDAY!!!
Covid aint got nothing on these killings, whether it’s the police, or a random incident, it still has devastating effects on our mental condition, and it causes us as black parent’s to grieve, worry and stress.
Did you know that stress is the leading cause of death; especially among black people? We are stressed about our finances, we are stressed about our families, we are stressed about our jobs, we are stressed about our health and if that’s not enough we are stressed about politics, injustice, racism, new laws, economy, climate change, clean water, fresh food, wars and rumors of wars, and nuclear bombs. Whew! I’m out of breath just saying all of that.
After decades of Civil rights marching we still got to fight for simple dignities enjoyed by our white counterparts on a daily basis, like voting. They trying to bring back the era of marching just to vote. They have gentrified just about all our neighborhoods, in every major big city to benefit them, and now they trying to set them up (gerrymandering) so they could win in the election. You know it’s bad when we are going backwards to the reconstruction post slavery Jim Crow era, where you wasn’t allowed to give a person a glass of water, while they standing in line to vote. What’s next men on horses whipping us and making us go back to a country that wants to kill us?
No wonder so many black people are dying of natural causes but none of that is natural.
Willie Lynch had a way to keep black people in check; unfortunately it still holds true in some cases. He was a white slave holder from Jamaica. We are still being controlled by the powers that be and they are three. Fear, envy and distrust. His ways of how to make a slave keeps us at the bottom of the totem pole of society, even at this day of being so-called WOKE. Lynch uses some common elements such as age, color, size, sex, whether you live on the East side or west side just like now. Growing up in Chicago on the west side we was always called the country people and the south side was the bougie stuck up blow dried side, so I guess he knew even in 1712 that he could pit the light skinned against the dark, the old against the young, man against the woman, good hair versus bad hair, the rich blacks against the poor blacks; so much so that we would be so busy fighting about that menial situation that we would completely miss what’s more important and wouldn’t recognize the need to get the voting rights act into law, or change the constitution that says, if you are a criminal you can become a slave for the state, or create a new law that stops discrimination against an ex-con just trying to get a job, or get a place to stay when he has done his time. It’s these changes that could make a pivotal difference in our black and brown Families.
It is a fundamentally sound sequence of events that will create law abiding, upright tax paying citizens, while adding value to the world and to our communities. Families would be whole and communities would be safe. Lynch knew if he could just get us to trust and depend on the white slave owners and not each other he could guarantee our destruction. He could guarantee we would never be in a place of economic independence, but would always be dependent on the master and still be a slave as he said for hundreds of years. Our actions towards each other, and in our minds, and in our communities would cause us to never be free, or be all that God has for us to be, even if we are the chosen people.
We have black lives matter people marching and it’s a good cause as John Lewis said getting in good trouble and yet we are killing each other like raid on roaches.
John Lewis suffered a cracked skull from the police and he carried that scar with him everywhere he went to remember why he do, what he do as he said getting in GOOD TROUBLE. There have been more black on black killings than the Ku Klux Klan; imagine that.
I GUESS THE BLACK LIVES DON’T MATTER AS LONG AS IT’S US KILLING EACH OTHER.
Every day we see something that is not right. The FBI says; if you see something say something. Well we should feel a moral obligation to do something. We can’t be afraid to do what’s right. The young lady who took the video of George Floyd stepped in and did what she could. The other people did all they could, unfortunately it didn’t help George. However; because of him new laws were made, but for his family they still don’t have him.
Everyday black parents live with the fact that they took a black man’s life just because they could. This causes a powerful fear of reality that it could one day be your child, so when our children leave out, whether they are kids or adults, we break out into a cold sweat and not the one James brown sings about. What do we do? We pray.
Doing right is not as popular but it is necessary. Matter of fact; it is sometimes hated. Even though George and Sandra wasn’t our children, we still felt the loss, the injustice, and the anger towards the people who were responsible and that feeling never goes away. So every time we hear about anybody getting killed, we get this sick knot in the pit of our stomach and this guilt feeling of thinking; thank God it wasn’t my child. Yet hoping and wishing that we could do something about it and that’s when we have to get in good trouble.
Sometimes if you want change you can’t keep quiet even if it doesn’t affect you. We have to be the change that we want to see in this world for our children and grandchildren. We are sick of the powerful oppressing the poor, and the innocent being found guilty in the courts. The poor don’t get justice, because they can’t afford a lawyer; so they languish in prison while the rich criminals live in their gated communities, in their mansions, with lush yards, in protective police custody.
ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! BUT WHEN!
