Category: Columnists

To be a black man is to eat the daily bread of injustice

To some, the epigram above would seem from a bygone era. After all, the White House is occupied by a Black man twice voted into office. His election surely was no accident. Racial progress has been made on some levels. However, the mean past dies hard because the ills of the future always try to rescue it.

What we thought was a monumental breakthrough has cheapened into a poor lithograph of what could have been; President Obama’s ascendance has been reduced to an image of an image, a compound mirage. At best, it serves as a weak foretaste of something more substantial to come. At worst and more likely, it herald the advent of a cold, calculating and compromised black leadership class: A leadership that devotes itself more to its own position and maintenance than the welfare of those upon whose backs it climbed to get into the leadership position. We are witnessing the birth of a new Black American leadership – one from the people but not of or for them.

After President Obama there shall come a long procession of black-skinned Wall Street proxies and hirelings like photogenic, articulate Newark Mayor Cory Booker who is preparing to contest for Governor of the New Jersey in the near term and has trained his farther sights on national office. Unlike the progressive Black politicians of yesterday, this man has been and will be bankrolled by the biggest financial houses and the deepest pockets America has to offer. He will receive this tainted largesse because the policies he advocates are a smooth elixir to the well-heeled but a mean tonic to the poor and broken. Yet, he will tell the people that he is doing all that can be done. Any other alternative would be too radical and unreasonable to consider. It will be a lie but Black people will believe him because he looks like them and because they figure he must be great because he has managed to get big money on his side. In their analysis, they will be partial correct and only in a superficial manner. He looks like them. However, it is not that he is great enough to have convinced Wall Street to be at his side. The truth is that he has been cunning enough to go the side of Wall Street.

With the future looming as dank as the past, Black people are trapped between the tide and backwash of a national history that refuses them respite. Forget the relatively small corps of entertainment and sports figures who have attained affluence. In the antebellum period, a few blacks were slaveholders, some of them viciously so. They were the nadir of social derangement, the perverse quiddity of a racism that ultimately makes a man make a slave of himself. There are few evils greater than this.

A subtler yet dangerous evil tracks modern Black America. Four decades of minute accumulation of average Black household wealth has totally dissipated since 2008. The drainage has yet to cease. Black children in parts of the rural South are so ravaged and impoverished that European humanitarian nongovernmental organizations have been plying these straitened communities with the same type of assistance normally reserved for Africa or Haiti.

Joblessness and underemployment touch close to one in three Black men. More likely a Black man will see the inside of a jail or prison than that of a university classroom, unless he is fortunate enough to be employed to provide janitorial or other menial services to the learned institution. Black America suffers higher rates of almost every disease with its causality primarily linked to a person’s living environment or diet. Violence has become one of the ghettoes leading forms of recreation. Our people kill each other at a higher rate because we place little value on our own lives, as only a degraded people do. The rich and powerful despise the sight of the poor and the wretched, but they rarely hate themselves. It is only the poor and degraded who compound their misery by despising themselves in the same way that others despise them.

To add injury to prior insult and injury, instances of racial violence and discrimination seem to be waxing.

A bright light in the Black community has been the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU’s). These schools have been outlets for higher education for a Black community starved of learning and immersed in the ignorance that accompanies political and economic powerlessness. Without these schools, the malaise in Black education would have flared into utter catastrophe. If these largely government-funded institutions are shuttered, the number of Black youth attaining tertiary education will dwindle significantly.

As a candidate, then Senator Barack Obama spoke to audiences at HBCUs extolling their work and vital service to a struggling community. He positioned himself as a staunch champion of their cause, promising their endangered status would change under his presidency. For years, there has been a slow erosion of government funding for these institutions. Some smaller, financially weaker schools have already receded into the pages of history. Many others are on the chopping block, and with them the hopes and aspirations of thousand of Black students for higher education and a better life. Given the disheveled condition of the Black community, if there were a time to give the HBCUs a vitamin boost, it is now. Instead, the leeches have been liberally applied and bloodletting has proceeded apace.

Under President Bush and Republican-controlled state governments, HBCUs had been a favorite target for budget cuts. It was hoped President Obama would change this. He did: he made things worse. A slow draining under the Bush Administration has become a geyser under President Obama. While talking sweetly to HBCU officials in their private meetings, the Obama Administration has presided over HBCU budget cuts and other measures clipping 300 million dollars in funding in the past two years.

This stands as perhaps the most severe diminution HBCUs have experienced within any comparable timeframe. While trying to maintain their composure because they still believe it is out of school to publicly criticize the first Black President, the leaders of HBCUs privately scream betrayal. Like the community at large, they have found out the good fellow in the White House is a man who is Black but is not really a Black man. Thus, he sides with the Republican conservatives in choking this important asset to the Black community. For conservative racists, this is a symbolic but relatively small victory that will not ingratiate the President to them. For the Black community, it is strangling defeat that will render cinereous the educational aspirations of many Black youths.

The teenage Trayvon Martin might have been fortunate enough to have been included in that shrinking number of Black male university students. Unfortunately, he was killed by George Zimmerman in February 2012. Charged with second-degree murder, Zimmerman recently stood trial in Florida. Zimmerman pled he shot the lanky teenager in self-defense, allegedly fearing the boy would beat him to death with his bare hands.

The trial has ended; a jury now deliberates the matter. Zimmerman will likely receive a lesser sentence of manslaughter in the end. In some ways, this might be considered justice. A few decades ago, Zimmerman would not have been tried and, if tried, would have likely have been acquitted. As with most things American, race factors into this case. At first, the police did not arrest or charge Zimmerman with a crime although he had killed an unarmed teenager. They let him go quietly home and would have left him there. Only after the public outcry of the Black community, did the justice system move to provide a semblance of justice by charging the man with a crime. Had a Black man shot an unarmed White teenager in similar circumstances, that man would have instantly been arrested and charged with heinous murder.

We shall never know all that transpired on that evening sidewalk in Sanford, Florida. Only two people know what occurred. One of them is died and the other has a vested interest in a rendition of events that depict him as the victim. Zimmerman’s version is what the mainstream wants people to believe. In America, an unarmed Black male can be fatally shot yet the common perception is that he was at fault. In killing a Black male, a White shooter is presumed the victim and presumed to have been under threat by reason of decedent’s color.

What we know about the case is Martin was walking home after going to a local store to purchase snacks. Carrying a bag of candy in one hand and soft drink in the other, he strolled home. An unofficial neighborhood crime watch volunteer, Zimmerman somehow considered Martin suspicious but never could articulate why he assumed the teenager was a threat. Against the instructions of a police department operator with whom he had communicated, the armed Zimmerman left his car to follow Martin on foot.

A confrontation ensued. When it ended, Martin was on the ground, dead from a fatal gunshot at close quarters. The stocky Zimmerman had a few superficial lacerations on the back of his head and a swollen perhaps broken nose. Zimmerman’s excuse was that he shot Martin because he feared the boy might beat him to death.

Under the Florida law of self defense, a person does not have to attempt to flee before using lethal force it that person was under a reasonable apprehension of fear of death or grievous bodily harm from an assailant. Thus, Zimmerman claimed he had killed in justifiable self defense.

The claim is ludicrous in two parts. First, Martin was traipsing homeward with snacks in both hands and talking on the phone to a friend. This hardly fits the aspect of a criminal on the make, let alone someone intent on attacking a burly man like Zimmerman for no reason. Moreover, Zimmerman had pursued Martin. Without Zimmerman stalking the boy, the fatal exchange would have happened. If anything Zimmerman was the aggressor, not Martin. If Zimmerman aggressed then self defense should be unavailing and Zimmerman should face prison.

Second, Martin had no special martial arts skills that would have turned his hands into lethal weapons. He was a lanky teenager that is all. Rarely do we hear of a teenager bare-handedly beating someone to death because such a thing rarely happens. For Zimmerman to claim he was in fear of his life because he received a few punches from a teenager does not jibe with normal human experience. If Zimmerman’s position becomes the standard, then every schoolyard skirmish is now a life and death situation where a teenager is legally within his write to shoot dead his rival classmate. Of course, this would be tragic and silly. However, it would be the inevitable fallout of a verdict confirming Zimmerman’s theory of defense.

Additionally, Zimmerman claimed Martin severely bashed his head multiple times against the sidewalk. However, the medical testimony showed the head wounds to be superficial at worst. The wounds were inconsistent with Zimmerman’s testimony of severe bashing. None of the wounds rose to the level where one should fear for his life or be in apprehension of severe injury.

In a pretrial statement, Zimmerman disclaimed knowledge of Florida’s self-defense law. However, it was uncovered that the man pined to be a police officer to the extent of taking criminal justice courses at a local community college. The course instructor testified self defense was a major component of the course and that Zimmerman was one of his best students. Zimmerman lied when he feigned ignorance of the law, perhaps for good reason: to save his hide. Knowing he had killed the only other witness, Zimmerman could well have fashioned a tale he knew would accord with the provisions of the state’s self defense law.

There were other lapses in Zimmerman’s account. In pre-trial statements, he said Martin grabbed Zimmerman’s gun. However, there were no fingerprints or DNA attributed to Martin on the weapon. Also it seems unlikely that Martin was straddling Zimmerman and pounding Zimmerman as claimed yet still allowed the man to reach to his waist, extract then gun and then get off a clean, deadly shot at such a close range that the heated muzzle of the fired weapon singed Martin’s clothes. If Martin had established such physical dominance over Zimmerman when matters were at the level of fisticuffs why would Martin suddenly become lax and give Zimmerman wide quarter when the man had a gun in hand?

The trial will send a powerfully wrong signal should Zimmerman walk free. The trial will become a standard for the crafty and the criminal genius. The plea of self defense will be a strong, available cloak whenever a person is sufficiently cunning to lure their victim to an isolated placed occupied solely by the two of them. Once the victim is done in, the killer may contrive any tale that suits him so long as it fits within the contours of the self-defense law. This controversial law will become a legal invitation for premeditated murder. Be assured, a disproportionately large percentage of Black males will be the victims.

Fearing possible race riots in some Florida cities once the verdict is reached, local authorities have their police forces on high alert. The more time changes the more it goes backward. In 1980, parts of Miami Florida went aflame as the Black community combusted after several policemen were acquitted in the homicide of a Black motorcyclist. The motorcyclist had led the police on a chase through the city before surrendering. The man died of multiple skull fractures after the apprehending white police officers pummeled him multiple times with nightsticks and flashlights through he offered no resistance.

2013 is still 1980 in some ways. A racially-charged court case is in hand. Again, the dead Black male appears to have been dealt a punishment much more terrible than anything he might have done. Unlike the fearful local authorities, I doubt the Black community will erupt if Zimmerman is exonerated. The Black community has lost its spirit and drive in many ways. There is little fight left in the community except for its people to fight among themselves.

In the end, this case is a human and social tragedy. Zimmerman thought the boy suspicious for one reason only. Martin was Black. Thus, Martin died because of his skin color. For many Whites in America, this is enough of a defense to set Zimmerman free, no real questions asked. Thus, they feel Zimmerman is being persecuted. The case serves to remind Blacks that in America, the self proclaimed land of the free and home of the brave, they are not as free as their white counterparts but that they must act braver because the legal system and society deems them culpable even when the wrongdoing is perpetrated against them. The current paucity in Black leadership means injustice will grow. In America, to be Black is still to be blamed.

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