The Color of Persistence by Arame Richardson

Author:Arame Richardson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-63814-881-4
Publisher: Covenant Books
Published: 2022-08-12T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 22

The Broken System

There was a time when many high school and middle school students came out to the streets of Baltimore. According to commentaries from the radio, the youth used social media to organize it. People were fed up with discrimination and inequalities including imprisonment and murder especially because their friend and neighbor Freddy Gray had just died in police custody while being transported to jail.

No one knew what happened with the exception of the group of six cops who were involved in his arrest and transportation. It is well known in police cultural/ethical understanding that they don’t tell on each other including when they plant drugs in youths’ pockets and cars or when they make a silent stop.

According to a close source, later they’ll make officers make shady stops to beat, curse, punch, and kick him. Then they’ll clean up the dude and take him up to central booking where the rest of the corrupt/racist judges and prosecutors finish the job by sentencing him to the maximum time possible for the cause.

For instance, ten grams of marijuana is at least ten years of jail time with a plea bargain. The plea will give the judicial system and white institution carte blanche to cast the victim as persona non grata, a social undercast for the rest of his life. All rights to live, eat, work, and prosper, including taking care of their children or sick parents, are taken away from them; and let’s not forget the right to vote. Many people in America are bystanders—some by choice but most by culture.

It is a society based on the term “politically correct.” People know the truth. Mothers know that every mother loves her child dearly, siblings love their siblings, and grandma and grandpa would die for their grandchildren. Nevertheless, when a Black man or Black boy dies at the hands of the people who are supposed to protect them, no one sees anything. I was watching a documentary made on PBS by Bill Moyer, and I must commend that Bill Moyer did an excellent job of interviewing different people from many countries. He wanted to figure out what hate was about. In his documentary, Mr. Moyer asked a Black gang member about hate. How does he kill other gang members without any remorse?

The gang member replied, “We strip the humanity psychologically. The other person means nothing. We demonize them so badly that they don’t have a face the way we do. We reduce them to nothing, and then it is so much easy just to go ahead and kill them.”

Another member from the Ku Klux Klan said something similar, but he added, “We are everywhere—social media, technology, in government-making policies. We are in the police force.” Oops! I got my answer—infiltration in the police force. No wonder! You’ve got a gun, a blue suit, and a license to do as you please on the streets of Baltimore in the neighborhoods of the poor and disadvantaged. You’ve got a license to kill.

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