White Supremacist Terror and State-Sanctioned Violence In the U.S. And Its Cruel Impact on African American Youth Today

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/08/mckinney-texas-black-children-pool-violence

 
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Black children are not even safe from police violence at a pool party
by Steven W Thrasher

The Guardian (UK)

Watching a young black woman, vulnerable and almost naked in her bathing suit, being manhandled by a cop made me cry

@thrasherxy

 
Tuesday 9 June 2015

Over the weekend, a video surfaced that showed police in McKinney, Texas violently controlling kids on a suburban street and pulling a gun on a young black girl. After I heard about it, it took a few hours before I could screw up the courage to watch it, because I knew it would make me cry. And it did

To view the video click here: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2015/jun/08/texas-police-pool-party-gun-black-teeanger-video

The video made me cry because it showed me how black children are not allowed to play. How they’re not allowed to just be fucking kids. How their play becomes criminalized and how they’re socialized to become black adults who internalize that their very breathing selves are criminal.

The video (and the follow up interview with its shooter, Brandon Brooks) made me cry because they showed how a public space like a pool becomes the domain of a security guard with no accountability. Who calls the police. Who quickly assume guilt on every black child in sight.

It made me cry to see a gun pulled on these children. I only had a police officer begin to pull a gun on me once, but it scared the shit out of me and altered my interactions with police forever – and I was an adult. How scarred will these children be after such trauma?

It made me cry because, even though I knew before watching that no one was going to get shot, I couldn’t shake the terror that one of those kids was going to wind among the Guardian’s count of police killings. If my terror was palpable despite only viewing what happened on video, how much terror must those poor kids have endured?

It made me cry to see a young black woman, vulnerable and almost naked in her bathing suit, being manhandled by a cop. Who tossed her around like her body was his property. Who listened to her sobbing for her mother, yet pushed her face down into the grass, kept his knee in  her back and handcuffed her.

It made me cry to think about how the black lives matter discourse (including my own) is often focused on men who are killed by police, at the expense of recognizing the many black women who face similar mortal injuries - or any number of violent, sexual and psychological assaults.

It made me cry to see how black life is simply illegal in the United States: driving, walking and now swimming while black (or even just being in a neighborhood where other black people are swimming) makes one suspect.

It made me cry because almost anything involving black people and swimming or water can make me cry, just as the scene of slaves being thrown overboard in the film Amistad made me burst out in tears in 1997. As did last month’s story about the sunken slave ship headed for the Smithsonian. One of the saddest (and proudest) stories my father shared with me was about how he learned to swim as a grown man. As a child in Ohio, he couldn’t learn to swim in the local segregated pool; and, even though he served in the United States Air Force on Johnston Island for a year, he couldn’t swim. I see these black kids terrorized around a pool, and I think of the child version of my father being told he couldn’t go to the pool, as well as the young adult Sergeant Thrasher on that dinky island in the South Pacific afraid because he couldn’t swim. I think of the terror of the black woman slave tied to a chair that the future US Senator James DeWolf tossed overboard when he was a slave runner, before he expressed regret – about losing the chair.

The Counted: people killed by police in the United States in 2015 – interactive
The Guardian is counting the people killed by US law enforcement agencies this year. Read their stories and contribute to our ongoing, crowdsourced project

It made me cry because I thought about how, in 2010, about 70% of black children couldn’t swim, while only 42% of white children couldn’t. According to US Masters Swimming: “Overall, nine people per day drown in the United States; six out of the nine are people of color.” This is racism equalling death right here and McKinney will perpetuate this.

It made me cry to see, yet again, how being black makes one guilty until proven innocent in the United States. Respectability politics fail when a polite young black man says: “Sir, we just came here,” is told what he’s doing is illegal, is treated as a suspect and is told he’s “a part of the mob.” At the same time, Brooks, the videographer, said he was “basically invisible” to the police and so could shoot what was happening without his body controlled as every black body in sight had to be.

None of this is new to anyone paying attention. Nor is the officer who pulled the gun, Eric Casebolt, a “bad apple”: he was named 2008 Patrolman of the Year. All of this is business as usual.

But each black life harmed by racism is not simply a number: it is its own precious, beautiful life. To watch these beautiful young lives grotesquely injured was heartbreaking. White supremacy in America won’t let our black young children be kids, swim or receive congratulations while graduating without having the breath, light and life smothered right out of them. 

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All,

JUST ANOTHER HEINOUS DAY IN THE UNITED HATES OF HYSTERIA, LAND OF THE SPREE HOME OF THE KNAVE, AND ETERNAL DOMAIN OF THE 3H CLUB: HATRED HUBRIS AND HYPOCRISY...

Kofi
http://www.nytimes.com/…/police-officer-in-mckinney-tex-res…
 

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U.S.

McKinney, Tex., Police Officer Resigns Over Incident Caught on Video
By ASHLEY SOUTHALL
JUNE 9, 2015
New York Times

A police officer in McKinney, Tex., who was seen on video pulling his gun on teenagers in swimsuits and shoving a young black girl’s face in the ground at a pool party has resigned, the police said Tuesday.

Cpl. David Eric Casebolt, who had been placed on administrative leave after the episode on Friday, remains under investigation, Chief Greg Conley said at a news conference. The corporal will keep his pension and benefits, the police chief said.

“Our policies, our training, our practice doesn’t support his actions,” Chief Conley said. “He came into the call out of control, and as the video shows was out of control during the incident.”

The video was taken on a cellphone and posted to YouTube, where it set off another in a recent series of debates involving race and police tactics. The police said Corporal Casebolt and other officers were responding to a call about a fight and a disturbance at a community pool in Craig Ranch, a racially diverse subdivision north of Dallas.

Related Coverage:

Protesters gathered Monday at a swimming pool in McKinney, Tex., where a police officer last week was recorded throwing a teenage girl to the ground.
Jarring Image of Police’s Use of Force at Texas Pool Party
JUNE 8, 2015
 

Corporal Casebolt can be heard shouting profanities at the teenagers, and officers handcuffed several who had followed his orders to sit on the ground. He appeared to grab the girl and pin her to the ground after she did not heed his orders to leave.

Related in Opinion:

Op-Ed Contributor: Who Gets to Go to the Pool?
JUNE 10, 2015
 

At the news conference, Mayor Brian Loughmiller said that officials recognized a need for better training for officers, but that there needed to be expectations for interactions with police.

Greg Willis, the district attorney for Collin County, said in a statement on Tuesday that his office had received numerous inquiries about the case.

“We share the public’s legitimate interest in a full and fair investigation of this matter,” he said. “We are currently awaiting the results of the McKinney Police Department’s investigation and ask for patience as their investigation continues.”

A video shows a police officer detaining a girl on Friday and pulling a gun on other teenagers after a disturbance at a neighborhood pool party in McKinney, Tex. By YouTube/Brandon Brooks on Publish Date June 8, 2015.

http://www.nytimes.com/…/texas-police-on-pool-party-inciden…
 

VIDEO:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aNpkyC65-C0



http://theroottv.theroot.com/…/Police-Cop-in-pool-party-vid…

The mayor and police chief of McKinney, Texas commented on Cpl. Eric Casebolt's resignation, calling his actions "out of control", referring to Casebolt throwing a black female teenager to the ground.

At the 50th Anniversary of the March On Washington For Jobs And Freedom President Obama Fails To Rise To the Occasion

President Obama speaks at a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Near him is a bell that once rang at the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala., which was bombed just 18 days after the March On Washington, killing four young black girls. (Evan Vucci / AP / August 28, 2013)

"One cannot change in one's head that which can only be changed in society."

--C.L.R. James

"A genuine leader is not a seeker of consensus but a molder of consensus."

--Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

"If you have no critics you'll likely have no success"

--Malcolm X

All,

President Obama gave yet another lazy, dishonest, and petulant self serving speech today at the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington yesterday which was full of empty rhetorical bromides and openly condescending platitudes that peevishly insisted that everyone else in this society (especially black people!) take so-called "personal responsibility" for their actions and behavior EXCEPT himself and his obviously evasive, aimless, and hubris stuffed administration. Substituting reactionary "tough love" homilies and skittish fatalistic pleas to his notoriously obstructionist white supremacist enemies on the right in place of advancing or aggressively calling for any semblance of a sound or concrete progressive public policy agenda that directly addresses the actual needs, desires, and aspirations of the millions of presently suffering citizens who actually voted for him in 2008 and 2012, Obama gave the embarrassingly weak impression that he was not really interested in providing any kind of real viable LEADERSHIP in the realms of domestic and foreign policy decision making that would seriously address the truly severe crises involving the State, capital, labor, political ideology, and civic engagement that is currently wracking this Republic. Instead the President spoke in absurdly broad, phony, and disturbingly vague circles about the role of "the People" in initiating and sustaining the "fight for hope and change" that wouldn't rely on "Washington" to deal with their structural, institutional, and systemic problems. Rather Obama contented himself with simply pretending that "the government ultimately couldn't or wouldn't really be responsible" for playing a major role in the transformative process of making the fundamental changes and bedrock reforms in this society's political economy, culture, and civil institutions that are absolutely essential to bringing about any real progressive changes in this nation's institutions and social/economic infrastructure worth their name.

Even more distressing is the ludicrous appearance of far too many intellectually and politically ill equipped black celebrities and extremely shallow pop culture mavens like Oprah Winfrey (!) and Jamie Foxx (!!) who mounted the dais and acted as though they are to be taken seriously in any real sense as "leaders" in this struggle. This was frankly an enormous insult to the nation's vast number of poor and working class citizens--many of whom are African American--who reasonably expect and thus justifiably demand that the government do its job that we democratically chose them to do which is protecting, defending, and strongly insisting that our human and constitutional rights be honored and given major priority over and above the rich and powerful elites. Without confronting the dire necessity of actively fighting for these changes and protections-- and all they entail--no amount of dismissively chastising any constituency within the national polity that make up the Republic will or can suffice. It is decidely NOT our job or role as mere "individuals" alone within this society to transform it. What is required is a much larger committment that requires that the entire society is engaged at the level of making, defending, sustaining, and extending these changes. That goes for the President and his administration as well as the rest of us no matter what our avowed, unrelenting, and committed enemies say or do. After all that's why all this activity is called a STRUGGLE...Stay tuned...

Kofi 

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/29/opinion/blow-the-most-dangerous-negro.html?_r=1

OP-ED COLUMNIST

‘The Most Dangerous Negro’
By CHARLES M. BLOW
August 28, 2013
New York Times
 
The Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” so disturbed the American power structure that the F.B.I. started spying on him in what The Washington Post called “one of its biggest surveillance operations in history.” The speech even moved the head of the agency’s domestic intelligence division to label King “the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of Communism, the Negro and national security.”

Of course, King wasn’t dangerous to the country but to the status quo. King demanded that America answer for her sins, that she be rustled from her waywardness, that she be true to herself and to the promise of her founding.

King was dangerous because he wouldn’t quietly accept — or allow a weary people to any longer quietly accept — what had been. He insisted that we all imagine — dream of — what could and must be.

That is not the mission of politicians. That is the mission of a movement’s Moses.

And those Moses figures are often born among the young who refuse to accept the conditions of their elders, who see injustice through innocent eyes.

King was just 34 years old in 1963.

As President Obama put it Wednesday:

“There’s a reason why so many who marched that day and in the days to come were young, for the young are unconstrained by habits of fear, unconstrained by the conventions of what is. They dared to dream different and to imagine something better. And I am convinced that same imagination, the same hunger of purpose serves in this generation.”

So now, America yearns for more of these young leaders, and in some ways it has found some, not just in the traditional civil rights struggle but also in the struggles to win L.G.B.T. rights and to maintain women’s reproductive rights.

Yet there remains a sort of cultural complacency in America. After young people took to the streets as part of the Arab Spring, many Americans, like myself, were left wondering what had become of American activism. When was the last time our young people felt so moved that they took to the streets to bring attention to an issue?

There were some glimmers of hope around Occupy Wall Street and the case of Trayvon Martin, but both movements have lost much of their steam, and neither produced a clear leader.

So as we rightfully commemorate the March on Washington and King’s speech, let us also pay particular attention to the content of that speech. King spoke of the “fierce urgency of now,” not the fierce urgency of nostalgia.

(I was struck by how old the speakers skewed this week during the commemorations.)

What is our fierce urgency? What is the present pressure? Who will be our King?  What will be our cause?

There is a litany of issues that need our national attention and moral courage — mass incarceration, poverty, gun policy, voting rights, women’s access to health care, L.G.B.T. rights, educational equality, immigration reform.

And they’re all interrelated.

The same forces that fight to maintain or infringe on one area of equality generally have some kinship to the forces that fight another.

And yet, we speak in splinters. We don’t see the commonality of all these struggles and the common enemies to equality. And no leader has arisen to weave these threads together.

Martin Luther King was a preacher, not a politician. He applied pressure from outside the system, not from within it. And I’m convinced that both forms of pressure are necessary.

King’s staggering achievement is testament to what can be achieved by a man — or woman — possessed of clear conviction and rightly positioned on the side of justice and freedom. And it is a testament to the power of people united, physically gathering together so that they must be counted and considered, where they can no longer be ignored or written off.

There is a vacuum in the American body politic waiting to be filled by a young person of vision and courage, one not suckled to sleep by reality television and social media monotony.

The only question is who will that person be. Who will be this generation’s “most dangerous” American? The country is waiting.

I invite you to join me on Facebook and follow me on Twitter, or e-mail me at chblow@nytimes.com.