An Essay On Race
Recently I’ve been asked a reoccurring question. Jay why are you upset? Is everything OK? What’s wrong? So let me share my thoughts. There’s been a lot weighing on my mind in regards to everything we’ve been seeing in the news lately and how we got here.
The murder of George Floyd by the so called officer Chauvin and his associates was a tragedy and a devastating visual, but don’t blame the smoke for the fire. It was the straw that broke the Camel’s back. As a News Junkie, I come across stories like this far too often. This one just happened to have a well shot video to go along with it.
How did we get here?
I’ll tell it like a Marvel movie and start with an origin story. A large portion of Blacks in Canada, United States and the America’s came from backgrounds descending from slavery.
It was illegal for these slaves to know how to read. They ate scraps, if you notice many of our traditional dishes are pigtails, neck bones etc...things that would have been fed to animals or tossed to the garbage. They were subject to beatings and rape at any time. It’s written in the United States constitution Blacks counted as 3/5 of a man. They had no control over their lives or bodies.
Question, How do you think you get the National Football League of today? It’s from slavery. The biggest strongest Male Slave being bred (like horses) with the biggest strongest female to produce these Supermen to work the fields from the day they’re born until the day they die.
During the civil war in 1863 President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war all the slaves are released. The Government paid Slave Owners the equivalent of 7500.00$ per slave. The slaves are then released with nothing and nowhere to go, many headed North. In the South slavery is replaced by sharecropping and convict leasing. Many of these same slaves ended up in permanent debt sharecropping for their old masters. However those without skills went to jail for doing whatever was necessary to feed hungry mouths only to end up as rented out plantation labour by the state.
Still they fought on.
Blacks build communities, join the Army and fought for their country in World War 1, only to come home to Race riots and lynchings. Hundreds of Blacks died, many still in their army uniform.
Marie Turner, a black woman 8 months pregnant, spoke out the day after the lynching of her husband. In response she was hung from a tree, covered in tar and set on fire with her stomach cut open to set the unborn baby on fire as well.
June 1st 1921, Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma the wealthiest black neighbourhood in America up to that point is burned to the ground and bombed by private aircraft leaving 10000 Blacks homeless.
Still they fought on and the world is changing.
World War 2 comes and again Blacks answer the call of duty. They fought in the Pacific, and were part of the victorious army that liberated Europe from Hitler and The Nazis. Black soldiers were also part of the U.S. Army of Occupation in Germany after the war. Serving strictly in segregated units, they were sent to democratize the Germans and expunge all forms of racism. How ironic...
When Hitler came to power in 1933, African-American activists and the black press used white America’s condemnation of Nazi Racism to expose and indict the abuses of the "Jim Crow" laws at home.
Those laws included such gems as:
"It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment."
"All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void."
"No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms or hospitals, either public or private, where negro men are placed."
"The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons."
Disgusting right?
When they returned from World War 2 President Roosevelt’s G.I Bill was passed to help Veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. Unfortunately the law was designed to accommodate Jim Crow laws and of 67000 mortgages insured by the G.I Bill in the Northeast fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
If you’ve made it this far keep on rocking with me.
In the 1950’s we start gaining some momentum with the Civil Rights Movement. We also get the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman. His eye was gouged out, he was shot in the head and had barbed wire tied around his neck before being thrown in a river. Google his image. His name is Emmett Till. You’ll never forget it. The two men arrested for Emmitt’s murder were acquitted.
Time passes and we now advance to an era of heightening discrimination and violence. Non-Violent acts of protest began to occur. Sit in’s, marches, boycotts. We’re in the 1960’s now. The Martin Luther King Jr era. This is the where the photos of vicious police dogs being unleashed on crowds and Blacks being sprayed by hoses come from.
In 1963 Dr King gives his famous "I have a dream speech" in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial as part of The March for Jobs and Freedom. 250000+ people attended. The march is credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964( the act was proposed by then President John F Kennedy. President Kennedy was assassinated by a Sniper in Dallas before this bill passed) and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
1965 Malcolm X is assassinated.
In 1968 President Kennedy’s brother Robert Kennedy who was following in his footsteps was assassinated.
In 1968 Martin Luther King is assassinated.
Still they fought on and the world is changing.
This leads us into the Black Panther Party era of the mid 1960’s to mid 1970’s. Revolutionary Socialists. They preached black empowerment, open carry and legal gun ownership for Blacks, Cop-Watching (essentially policing the police in a pre-cellphone world). The Black Panthers opened community health clinics and created free breakfast programs for children. FBI COINTELPRO (a system of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment and many other tactics designed to undermine leadership) eventually had them self combust.
The world goes on.
It’s now the 1980’s. The crack era. It decimated the Black Community. Mothers and Fathers went to jail or just didn’t come home at all or exposed their children to things they should never see.
Where was all this crack coming from? Neighbourhood gangs didn’t own airplanes. Have you heard of Rick Ross? Not the rapper, the real Rick Ross. His plug was a CIA operative funding a secret war in Nicaragua through the sale of cocaine...Lots of it! The operation was grossing 3 million dollars per day at its peak. Wholsesaling quality cocaine across the country. It was Costco for drugs. They destroyed families. The fallout created crack babies and the spread of disease that society is dealing with the effects of til this day.
1992 we get the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict. He was beaten on camera by 4 LAPD Officers after a high speed chase with the police. They tasered him, struck him dozens of times with side-handled batons, kick stomped him in his back and tackled him to the ground before handcuffing him and hogtying his legs. 63 people were killed, 2300+ injured and 12000 arrested and there was 1 billion dollars in property damage. The officers who beat Mr King were acquitted on all charges of assault and excessive force.
Let’s jump forward to today. It’s what seems like a whole new world. You can go a lifetime and not encounter direct in your face racism. There was a black president who was elected not once but twice. Michael Jordan is everyone’s hero again. Dr Dre is a billionaire. The Kardashian family have made a black boyfriend the must have fall accessory and everyone and their mother went to support Black Panther in the theatre. Wakanda forever!
Black exceptionalism is at an all time high but what about the other end of the spectrum?
They’re still facing the same problems they were marching for 50 years ago. Underfunded and overcrowded schools. Inadequate healthcare, but they’re in bad health because they’re living in food deserts. Trying to do groceries at the corner store doesn’t lead to the healthiest of diets but they’re shopping there because they don’t have enough money to make it through the month but the guy at corner store extends you credit but by the time you pay him the next month you need credit again by the end of that month. So just get a better job they say and make more money, but you can’t get a better job because you have a criminal record from when you were young and dumb because the police were stopping and frisking minorities in places like New York at an 8:1 ratio to whites so that time you bought a dime bag and got caught (even though black drug use is similar to that of the majority) you actually ruined your future. You apply anyway but applications with black sounding names are 50% less likely to receive a callback. If you do get hired that same charge from your younger years may still be following you with extensive probation. Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested. Once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted, and once convicted, they are more likely to be given a longer sentence, 19.1% on average. So now you’re criminalized at a young age and left on the outside looking in. You want something better for yourself so you decide to save up and try and start a new life in a new neighbourhood but when you arrive to see the new Appartment in the nicer neighbourhood guess what, it’s rented so you check out another one but they all seem available when you call but rented once you arrive and they get at a look at your black face.
It’s a big problem.
You want black people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps but you keep on tripping them.
To quote the late Black Panther Stokely Carmichael
"It is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it."
Personally I could care less if a random member of the majority is saying the n word in his bedroom while he raps along to some song or makes a provocative joke to a friend. I do it myself. All the time. The problem is when there’s power behind it. I’m not hiring/approving you for this bank loan/accepting you to this school/renting you this building because I believe _______ about people who look like you.
It’s that same institutional racism that brings us to not only the death of George Floyd but however many before him whose names pop up as a hashtag for a while, maybe you see them on a Tshirt but then it’s on to the next one. Black man gets killed by cop, cop is not arrested until we find out about it and put some pressure on them. The same old civil rights lawyers show up to the town and give a speech on camera next to the family. The GoFundMe page goes up. We tweet. They put out a sketchy autopsy about why the victim died. They look back through the persons entire life to discredit their humanity and sell you on maybe they brought it on themselves. The usual suspects talk about it on their Facebooks. The people in whatever city march with the candles, sing we shall overcome. Months later the officers either get off or get a slap on the wrist and the process repeats itself.
This time is different. John F Kennedy has a great quote “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Black people only have so many cheeks to turn. The Irish, Jewish people, Hong Kong right now. People fighting for their freedom and respect.
I’m glad it’s different. It’s not going to go away because it’s not just a pain in the ass to the people it directly affects or the people most drawn to this type of story. There’s no getting away from it. You can’t turn your head the other way. The world is a burning car crash right now and you have no choice but step out of your comfort zone and look. Hopefully enough are curious as to ask why is this happening.
It’s a shame for all the property owners though. It’s a devastating thing to go through in a time like this but I’m willing to take a bet that the next time this happens they will be on their local law enforcement and politicians asses to act quickly to avoid these type of problems again based on defending some random solitary police officer acting out his Robocop fantasies with a bad record of complaints and two other shooting deaths (cause that’s not weird).
R.I.P FLOYD
Gone but not forgotten.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"
MLK JR
Recently I’ve been asked a reoccurring question. Jay why are you upset? Is everything OK? What’s wrong? So let me share my thoughts. There’s been a lot weighing on my mind in regards to everything we’ve been seeing in the news lately and how we got here.
The murder of George Floyd by the so called officer Chauvin and his associates was a tragedy and a devastating visual, but don’t blame the smoke for the fire. It was the straw that broke the Camel’s back. As a News Junkie, I come across stories like this far too often. This one just happened to have a well shot video to go along with it.
How did we get here?
I’ll tell it like a Marvel movie and start with an origin story. A large portion of Blacks in Canada, United States and the America’s came from backgrounds descending from slavery.
It was illegal for these slaves to know how to read. They ate scraps, if you notice many of our traditional dishes are pigtails, neck bones etc...things that would have been fed to animals or tossed to the garbage. They were subject to beatings and rape at any time. It’s written in the United States constitution Blacks counted as 3/5 of a man. They had no control over their lives or bodies.
Question, How do you think you get the National Football League of today? It’s from slavery. The biggest strongest Male Slave being bred (like horses) with the biggest strongest female to produce these Supermen to work the fields from the day they’re born until the day they die.
During the civil war in 1863 President Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. After the war all the slaves are released. The Government paid Slave Owners the equivalent of 7500.00$ per slave. The slaves are then released with nothing and nowhere to go, many headed North. In the South slavery is replaced by sharecropping and convict leasing. Many of these same slaves ended up in permanent debt sharecropping for their old masters. However those without skills went to jail for doing whatever was necessary to feed hungry mouths only to end up as rented out plantation labour by the state.
Still they fought on.
Blacks build communities, join the Army and fought for their country in World War 1, only to come home to Race riots and lynchings. Hundreds of Blacks died, many still in their army uniform.
Marie Turner, a black woman 8 months pregnant, spoke out the day after the lynching of her husband. In response she was hung from a tree, covered in tar and set on fire with her stomach cut open to set the unborn baby on fire as well.
June 1st 1921, Black Wall Street in Tulsa, Oklahoma the wealthiest black neighbourhood in America up to that point is burned to the ground and bombed by private aircraft leaving 10000 Blacks homeless.
Still they fought on and the world is changing.
World War 2 comes and again Blacks answer the call of duty. They fought in the Pacific, and were part of the victorious army that liberated Europe from Hitler and The Nazis. Black soldiers were also part of the U.S. Army of Occupation in Germany after the war. Serving strictly in segregated units, they were sent to democratize the Germans and expunge all forms of racism. How ironic...
When Hitler came to power in 1933, African-American activists and the black press used white America’s condemnation of Nazi Racism to expose and indict the abuses of the "Jim Crow" laws at home.
Those laws included such gems as:
"It shall be unlawful to conduct a restaurant or other place for the serving of food in the city, at which white and colored people are served in the same room, unless such white and colored persons are effectually separated by a solid partition extending from the floor upward to a distance of seven feet or higher, and unless a separate entrance from the street is provided for each compartment."
"All marriages of white persons with Negroes, Mongolians, members of the Malay race, or mulattoes are illegal and void."
"No person or corporation shall require any white female nurse to nurse in wards or rooms or hospitals, either public or private, where negro men are placed."
"The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons."
Disgusting right?
When they returned from World War 2 President Roosevelt’s G.I Bill was passed to help Veterans adjust to civilian life by providing them with benefits including low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans and financial support. Unfortunately the law was designed to accommodate Jim Crow laws and of 67000 mortgages insured by the G.I Bill in the Northeast fewer than 100 were taken out by non-whites.
If you’ve made it this far keep on rocking with me.
In the 1950’s we start gaining some momentum with the Civil Rights Movement. We also get the murder of 14 year old Emmett Till for whistling at a white woman. His eye was gouged out, he was shot in the head and had barbed wire tied around his neck before being thrown in a river. Google his image. His name is Emmett Till. You’ll never forget it. The two men arrested for Emmitt’s murder were acquitted.
Time passes and we now advance to an era of heightening discrimination and violence. Non-Violent acts of protest began to occur. Sit in’s, marches, boycotts. We’re in the 1960’s now. The Martin Luther King Jr era. This is the where the photos of vicious police dogs being unleashed on crowds and Blacks being sprayed by hoses come from.
In 1963 Dr King gives his famous "I have a dream speech" in Washington at the Lincoln Memorial as part of The March for Jobs and Freedom. 250000+ people attended. The march is credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964( the act was proposed by then President John F Kennedy. President Kennedy was assassinated by a Sniper in Dallas before this bill passed) and passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
1965 Malcolm X is assassinated.
In 1968 President Kennedy’s brother Robert Kennedy who was following in his footsteps was assassinated.
In 1968 Martin Luther King is assassinated.
Still they fought on and the world is changing.
This leads us into the Black Panther Party era of the mid 1960’s to mid 1970’s. Revolutionary Socialists. They preached black empowerment, open carry and legal gun ownership for Blacks, Cop-Watching (essentially policing the police in a pre-cellphone world). The Black Panthers opened community health clinics and created free breakfast programs for children. FBI COINTELPRO (a system of surveillance, infiltration, perjury, police harassment and many other tactics designed to undermine leadership) eventually had them self combust.
The world goes on.
It’s now the 1980’s. The crack era. It decimated the Black Community. Mothers and Fathers went to jail or just didn’t come home at all or exposed their children to things they should never see.
Where was all this crack coming from? Neighbourhood gangs didn’t own airplanes. Have you heard of Rick Ross? Not the rapper, the real Rick Ross. His plug was a CIA operative funding a secret war in Nicaragua through the sale of cocaine...Lots of it! The operation was grossing 3 million dollars per day at its peak. Wholsesaling quality cocaine across the country. It was Costco for drugs. They destroyed families. The fallout created crack babies and the spread of disease that society is dealing with the effects of til this day.
1992 we get the Los Angeles riots after the Rodney King verdict. He was beaten on camera by 4 LAPD Officers after a high speed chase with the police. They tasered him, struck him dozens of times with side-handled batons, kick stomped him in his back and tackled him to the ground before handcuffing him and hogtying his legs. 63 people were killed, 2300+ injured and 12000 arrested and there was 1 billion dollars in property damage. The officers who beat Mr King were acquitted on all charges of assault and excessive force.
Let’s jump forward to today. It’s what seems like a whole new world. You can go a lifetime and not encounter direct in your face racism. There was a black president who was elected not once but twice. Michael Jordan is everyone’s hero again. Dr Dre is a billionaire. The Kardashian family have made a black boyfriend the must have fall accessory and everyone and their mother went to support Black Panther in the theatre. Wakanda forever!
Black exceptionalism is at an all time high but what about the other end of the spectrum?
They’re still facing the same problems they were marching for 50 years ago. Underfunded and overcrowded schools. Inadequate healthcare, but they’re in bad health because they’re living in food deserts. Trying to do groceries at the corner store doesn’t lead to the healthiest of diets but they’re shopping there because they don’t have enough money to make it through the month but the guy at corner store extends you credit but by the time you pay him the next month you need credit again by the end of that month. So just get a better job they say and make more money, but you can’t get a better job because you have a criminal record from when you were young and dumb because the police were stopping and frisking minorities in places like New York at an 8:1 ratio to whites so that time you bought a dime bag and got caught (even though black drug use is similar to that of the majority) you actually ruined your future. You apply anyway but applications with black sounding names are 50% less likely to receive a callback. If you do get hired that same charge from your younger years may still be following you with extensive probation. Black Americans are more likely than white Americans to be arrested. Once arrested, they are more likely to be convicted, and once convicted, they are more likely to be given a longer sentence, 19.1% on average. So now you’re criminalized at a young age and left on the outside looking in. You want something better for yourself so you decide to save up and try and start a new life in a new neighbourhood but when you arrive to see the new Appartment in the nicer neighbourhood guess what, it’s rented so you check out another one but they all seem available when you call but rented once you arrive and they get at a look at your black face.
It’s a big problem.
You want black people to pull themselves up by the bootstraps but you keep on tripping them.
To quote the late Black Panther Stokely Carmichael
"It is institutional racism that keeps black people locked in dilapidated slum tenements, subject to the daily prey of exploitative slumlords, merchants, loan sharks and discriminatory real estate agents. The society either pretends it does not know of this latter situation, or is in fact incapable of doing anything meaningful about it."
Personally I could care less if a random member of the majority is saying the n word in his bedroom while he raps along to some song or makes a provocative joke to a friend. I do it myself. All the time. The problem is when there’s power behind it. I’m not hiring/approving you for this bank loan/accepting you to this school/renting you this building because I believe _______ about people who look like you.
It’s that same institutional racism that brings us to not only the death of George Floyd but however many before him whose names pop up as a hashtag for a while, maybe you see them on a Tshirt but then it’s on to the next one. Black man gets killed by cop, cop is not arrested until we find out about it and put some pressure on them. The same old civil rights lawyers show up to the town and give a speech on camera next to the family. The GoFundMe page goes up. We tweet. They put out a sketchy autopsy about why the victim died. They look back through the persons entire life to discredit their humanity and sell you on maybe they brought it on themselves. The usual suspects talk about it on their Facebooks. The people in whatever city march with the candles, sing we shall overcome. Months later the officers either get off or get a slap on the wrist and the process repeats itself.
This time is different. John F Kennedy has a great quote “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." Black people only have so many cheeks to turn. The Irish, Jewish people, Hong Kong right now. People fighting for their freedom and respect.
I’m glad it’s different. It’s not going to go away because it’s not just a pain in the ass to the people it directly affects or the people most drawn to this type of story. There’s no getting away from it. You can’t turn your head the other way. The world is a burning car crash right now and you have no choice but step out of your comfort zone and look. Hopefully enough are curious as to ask why is this happening.
It’s a shame for all the property owners though. It’s a devastating thing to go through in a time like this but I’m willing to take a bet that the next time this happens they will be on their local law enforcement and politicians asses to act quickly to avoid these type of problems again based on defending some random solitary police officer acting out his Robocop fantasies with a bad record of complaints and two other shooting deaths (cause that’s not weird).
R.I.P FLOYD
Gone but not forgotten.
"Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere"
MLK JR