Attention White People: It is Time to Acknowledge our Ignorance.

Hate to say it, but far too many of us don’t seem to realize how little we know about being a person of color (POC) in America. You can tell it from the things that both well-meaning and malicious people are saying. Here is one example of the latter:

This is from an a**hole cop who is mocking the death of Mr. Garner, a POC who was choked to death by a white policeman in New York.  That is willful, vindictive, hateful ignorance, and it is all too common: here is another example.

This doesn’t mean that all white people are such evil motherf***ers: this writer is fully aware of his ignorance. Just because one has lived and worked among, say, Black and Hispanic friends and co-workers does not mean one fully appreciates their experiences, any more than a father fully understands what a mother goes through when she gives birth to their child.

Participation in an event does not necessarily mean equivalent understanding. Mrs. Blunt and Cranky doesn’t understand what a coronary bypass feels like, any more than your humble correspondent groks her labor pains. Some things you have to feel for yourself to fully grasp.

So here is the challenge to all of us white folks: be aware of our ignorance. It will make us look smarter. And if we listen to our brothers and sisters who are people of color, we might even become smarter.

Can’t hurt, and it just might help.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

It used to take days or weeks to execute an innocent black man. Now it can be done in a few minutes.

Back in 1944, a young black male named George Stinney, Jr. was accused, tried, convicted and executed in a matter of days for a crime he almost certainly did not commit. By white people. White people who hated black people:

“It took less than a day for a jury to convict George Stinney Jr. and send him to the electric chair,” NPR’S Hansi Lo Wang reports. “He was convicted of the deaths of 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and 7-year-old Mary Emma Thames in deeply segregated Alcolu, S.C.”

Matt Burgess, an attorney for the Stinney family, tells Hansi, “There were no African-American people in that courthouse. It was a jury of 12 white men. Everyone in that courthouse was white.”

George Stinney Jr. was executed less than three months after the two girls were murdered. His trial lasted just one day. After the jury needed less than 10 minutes to declare him guilty, no appeals were filed on his behalf.

“His executioners noted the electric chair straps didn’t fit him, and an electrode was too big for his leg,” The State newspaper reports. The paper adds, “It took Mullen nearly four times as long to issue her ruling as it took in 1944 to go from arrest to execution.”

70 years later, in 2014, lots of black males were murdered by racist white government employees in Cleveland, Ferguson, Staten Island, and many other places across the country. The only difference? Time.

The 2014 cops didn’t even pretend to bother with courts or silly things like due process: no, they arrested, accused, tried, judged, and killed, all in a matter of minutes. Or seconds, in the Cleveland case.

Those who say we have “made progress” in terms of equality are correct. However, that progress is NOT in a good direction. It’s going backwards. Until we as a society admit that our institutions have been made into Ayn Randian, apartheid-esque, Teabagger havens for a load of Ted Nugent wannabees, things will only get worse.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

America’s Cops Need to Get a F***ing Clue.

Now it’s the Cleveland PD’s chance to display some truly epic ignorance and stupidity:

Cleveland Browns wide receiver Andrew Hawkins took the field Sunday in a shirt reading “Justice for Tamir Rice and John Crawford III” in a gesture to bring light to officer-involved shootings in Ohio that have happened in the last three months. Now Cleveland Police Patrolman Union President Jeff Follmer is demanding an apology from the Browns for Hawkins’ actions on Sunday.
He said,”It’s pretty pathetic when athletes think they know the law. They should stick to what they know best on the field. The Cleveland Police protect and serve the Browns stadium and the Browns organization owes us an apology.”

Not that it is confined to Cleveland: the same kind of cluelessness has been on display in St. Louis, and other cities across the country, large and small. Cops don’t get it. They truly do not understand.

This is because of a long process of “othering” that has gone on for decades. Politicians and pundits have sown the seeds of mistrust between civilians and law enforcement, to the extent that we not only mistrust each other, but we are preparing to be attacked at any moment. (One example: more people wanting to carry concealed weapons, and more cops opposing CCW.) It’s now at the point where far too many people in Law Enforcement feel that anyone who isn’t a cop is a potentially deadly enemy, and they act on that mindset.

On Edit: Here is another example.

The solution is to change the way we see each other. In spite of the media, in spite of regressive jackasses on all sides, people of good will can and must re-establish communication and re-develop mutual respect. There are a lot of good cops out there, and we can start with them. Weed out the “Kill them all” a**holes and get down to business with the real professionals who actually want to protect and to serve.

But this ain’t gonna happen until the police holster their weapons, close their mouths, and open their ears. From the newest rookie patrolman, through the chiefs and up to the District Attorneys, Law Enforcement needs to understand that we have good reason to fear and mistrust them. And that cannot continue to be the case.

Get a clue, cops. Please.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Of COURSE People of Color Don’t Trust Cops. They Have no Reason to Trust Cops.

And lots of reasons not to. It isn’t a recent phenomenon that started with white officers killing black men in Ferguson, Staten Island or Cleveland: it goes back to the days of slavery, when the authorities enforced the laws by catching escaped slaves and forcibly returing them to the slave owners. It continued through the post-Civil-War era as police were used to enforce Jim Crow laws that kept people of color (POC) in another set of “chains”.

And did the Civil Rights laws of the 60’s fix things? Oh, Hell no. The cops were used to “keep order” among the minority population and protect the white folks from said minorities. Once again, the cops were and are the visible face of oppression, and the means used to oppress the non-white people of America.

Asians are likewise POC, and they deal with a lot of crap from cops as well: immigration, profiling, harassment, civil rights violations, etc. You think anybody in their communities have forgotten the World War Two internment camps? Here’s a hint, boyo: they haven’t. And who put them into the camps? Armed people in uniforms put them in those camps. Cops (and soldiers, in that case).

How about Latinos? POC they are as well, and they have likewise dealt with a history of abuse and marginalization. And yes, once again the cops were the instrument of that extra-constitutional mistreatment.

It didn’t start with Michael Brown, or even John Brown. It won’t end with a single grand jury indictment, or even several indictments. As the Prexy has said, the system can’t function if POC don’t trust that justice will be delivered in an impartial manner.

Speaking as a (formerly long-haired) hippie freak, this writer doesn’t place blind trust in the cops or those for whom they work. Comes from having been harassed, profiled, roughed up, shaken down, and driven to city boundaries with guns enforcing the officers’ orders to “Git, and never come back” on more than one occasion. Being “othered” while looking at the wrong end of a gun makes an indelible impression on a person.

But you know what made the Cranky life a lot easier? Baldness. Cops can no longer discern my political views by a glance. Indeed, a somewhat portly middle-aged white man is rarely targeted by the cops. But…

Black people can’t wash off their pigment. Nor can other people of color. They can never, ever be free of the institutionalized violence and abuse that is routinely heaped upon minorities. Their skin color makes them a target. They know it. Cops know it.

When everybody knows the system is rigged, nobody can believe in the system. We are living in a crumbling edifice, built upon a history of xenophobia and racist hatred. Unless we all get together and build a foundation that truly aligns with the notion that we are created equal, the whole American experiment will fall apart, ending in blood and ashes.

Trust is needed. Right now POC don’t trust the system. And lots of white people are deciding we don’t trust it either. Police of America, it’s time to decide who you work for, and to earn back the trust we need you to deserve.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

“Old Selfish White People”

Gentle Reader, here is a magnificent bit of prose from musician/artist/awesome dude Bob Ray Starker. Read and become enlightened, as did my cranky self:

Okay, I started out today trying to be civil and constructive, but all anyone wants to do is throw mud at each other… so what the hell, let’s get into this…

I am a 50 year old white american straight man and here is what I know for sure: Black people have never messed with me. Gay people have never messed with me. Asians, Hispanics, Native Americans, poor people, none of them have ever messed with me. 

Which group of people have repeatedly made my life harder than it had to be for no good reason at all? White people with more money than me. 

They have laid me off, closed companies I worked for, made a lot of money by underpaying me for the work I did in their employ, bought elections when I could only afford to vote in them, and, perhaps most infuriating of all, they have relentlessly messed with my non-white, non-straight, non-wealthy friends. And they continue to do it because their world is ending and they are afraid of losing control as the human race slowly evolves beyond their limited scope of understanding.

So who am I most worried about when I lay in bed awake at night? Old selfish rich white people. All in all, I could have done without them.

Well said by the Saxman. Nailed it to a tree, he did.

All y’all, googlize this fine young man. Read his words, buy his art, attend his shows: but first and foremost, read what he said today. Read, reflect, and act.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

An open letter to America’s 1%: you had better hope violent protesters stay stupid.

It’s become a cliche’: oppressed people get pushed over the edge, riot, and trash their own neighborhoods. Those in government and media who are not from the oppressed class pontificate from the comfortable safety of their communities. So it goes, again and again. Ferguson today, Watts yesterday, and no doubt somewhere else tomorrow.

Of course, it is stupid to foul one’s one nest. But angry people often do stupid things. And that angry idiocy is the oppressors’ BFF; in fact, that anger is the product of said oppression.

So, you in the 1% (aka the oppressors): whatcha gonna do when the rioters get a clue and stop burning down the slums and decaying suburbs to which you have confined them? When they realize that their destructive impulses could better be directed away from those who are scarcely better-off than themselves? When they learn to focus on the real enemy?

Because, trust-fund turkeys, that enemy is you. You are the greedy motherf***ers who have bought the government and by so doing have robbed the rest of us blind, binging on your wealth while millions starve. You are both the cause and effect of inequality, and are completely dependent on its continuance.

And like many oppressors, you fail to see how precarious your position truly is. Someday, it will happen, as it always has and always will: the foolish will see the error of their ways and will choose a new path: in this case, towards your neighborhoods, your homes, and your businesses. The flames will not stay confined to the dwellings of “those people” forever.

Don’t believe it? Ask Marie Antoinette, or perhaps the Romanovs…oh…wait…you can’t ask them, can you? Because they got killed by those they oppressed, didn’t they? And like you, they thought it couldn’t happen.

Want to avoid that seemingly inevitable fate? Stop being a bunch of short-sighted, self-absorbed greedheads and start paying attention to the plight of those whose fortunes and futures you have stolen. Their present needn’t become your future, but it most surely will if you don’t smarten up yourselves.

Because while it may be stupid of them to burn down their own neighborhoods, it’s even dumber for you to incite them to burn down yours.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Ferguson Officials haven’t learned Thing One since the Michael Brown murder.

From the racist , biased prosecutor and like-minded cops using armored vehicles and battlefield weapons intended to kill terrorists on civilians, to the heavy-handed tactics of the Nixon administration, police and politicos are just as malignantly clueless as they were the day an unarmed black kid was shot in the street by an out-of-control cop and his body was left to rot on the pavement for hours in the summer heat. And the stupidity was clearly visible in these remarks from the boss cop:

At a late news conference, as National Guardsmen watched from a distance, St. Louis County Police Chief Jon Belmar said that as of midnight, police had arrested about 30 people related to the protests and tallied hundreds of gunshots.

The magnitude of the protests caught the police off guard, he said.

“As dynamic as August was, can you imagine a night like this?” he asked. “We didn’t have anything of this magnitude, so it was very difficult, I think, to telegraph exactly what we should have expected. I didn’t foresee anything like this.” He added that police did everything they could to prevent the chaos.

Such stupid, bigoted, willfully pig-ignorant f***wits. They think they can go on with the apartheid-lite approach that Ferguson (and many other such towns) have taken for decades. Even though it hasn’t worked in this case, even though people are not at all happy, even though buildings are burning and innocent people are suffering, local officials are convinced that they can just beat down people of color and everything will go back to “normal”.

Rich, powerful white people have been trying this idiotic approach for centuries. And it always looks like it will work, for a while at least. But history shows us that oppressors will fail, no matter how many times they try.

Stupid f***s.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

When a Nixon Called out the National Guard…

Back in the day, a bunch of protesters were, well, protesting, and a politician named Nixon had the National Guard called out (by a crony of his), loaded weapons and all. Here’s what happened:

Nobody needs automatic weapons pointed at them when they are exercising their First Amendment rights. No one deserves that. And no ethical politician should EVER make that their option of first resort.

” Those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. ”

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Want to change things? Ferguson shows us the way: VOTE, God-F***ing-Dammit.

We won’t get change by rioting. Nor by shooting unarmed citizens. Those are both s***ty ideas. Instead let’s look at one of the first actions taken after the deplorable murder of Mr. Michael Brown: a voter-registration tent.

Yes, that is correct. The majority of Ferguson is black, but due to various disenfranchisement measures, only 12% of that community votes. On the other hand, lots and lots of white people vote, so guess who gets represented in city government? Yep, the people who vote.

That being the case, people are registering black voters (and anyone else too, of course) in order to use the ballot box to change how things are done in that town. If enough of the majority residents of Ferguson turn out and vote, they can get a government that actually represents, you know, the majority of the people. The way democracy is SUPPOSED to work.

The response to these voter registration efforts has been sadly predictable: racist Repubs hate it, and everybody else supports it. Repubs as a rule oppose increasing the voter pool, because they know it doesn’t work for them: higher turnout favors Dems.

We all need to do what people in Ferguson are doing: register to vote, and then vote. Use our power to get the government we want and deserve.

Register. Vote. Every election, every year.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky

Ferguson vs. Bundy -Two Differences.

This probably ain’t the message the Gummint wants to send, but it IS what they are telling us: having heavy weapons and pointing them at the cops allows you to commit crimes without paying the price for your actions, while your being unarmed allows the cops to randomly shoot your a** without them having to pay the price for their actions.

Consider: it’s been MONTHS since the BLM ran away from Bundy’s moocher militia, and no one has been arrested, no one will be arrested, and indeed, other armed groups are taking notice and planning to do likewise. Nothing succeeds like succcess.

Last week, several unarmed black men were shot by a**hole cops, and nothing has been done to punish the perps there, either. So we can expect more cops to be wasting unarmed people in the future, because, hey, why not? It worked in St Louis, LA, Ferguson, New York, and elsewhere.

The lesson being taught is: carry big guns, and lots of them, and you can ignore the law of the land. Whether you are a civilian or not, all you need is to point weapons at people, maybe even kill a few, and the gun makes it OK.

Which is bulls***. This is supposed to be a nation of laws. But when you start letting people get away with crimes, it creates a climate of lawlessness, and innocent people suffer and the guilty get off scot-free. And more people decide that having lots and lots of really big guns is the key to success in life.

It is scarcely necessary to mention the other difference: those with guns are almost all white, and those being peaceful are almost all black. But a group of African -Americans are changing that around: a black militia group is organizing in Dallas.
Not so coincidentally, they are doing this after the cops allowed white people to terrorize black people via an open-carry march.

White and aggressive (free to commit crimes) vs. black and passive (be the victims of crimes). Looks like some in the black community have had enough of that s***: they are adopting methods from the Black Panthers and waving their big guns right back at we honkies and our big guns. This is not going to end well.

Of course, the government COULD enforce the law and put Bundy and the killer kops in jail where they belong. Absent that, look for anarchy and armed citizens to bring the country crashing down around us.

Mr. Blunt and Cranky