This past
month has exposed the myth of law, order and justice in our country. From George
Floyd, to handcuffing a teenager for jaywalking in Tulsa, Oklahoma; to an investigation
for 2 young men found hanging by a rope from a tree in California and with a drive-by shooting in Georgia. With
so much sadistic murder and hate, in all parts of our country, it’s difficult
to keep track with all occurrences. This essay addresses racism, capitalism and
the excessive use of police force in our country.
Man has been
dominated by man, because he can, since the beginning of recorded time. According
to Carl Jung, we are born with a collective unconscious which stores latent
memory traces inherited from man’s ancestral or real past. In other words, man
is born with a predisposition or memory trace to be dominated or by submission
to another as well as a predisposition or archetype for freedom, aggression, or
with a sadistic-masochistic character style. In our collective unconscious- our
archetypes, are the Hebrew slaves that built the great Pyramids in Egypt.
Eventually with the help of Moses and God our people gained freedom. In
America’s troubled past, slavery occurred between the Native Americans Indians,
the early European explorers and the colonists. The location of this
exploitation occurred in Spanish Florida sometime during the 1500s. According
to historical records, the first African slaves arrived to either the Georgia
or Carolina coast in 1526.
401 years ago, in 1619, 20 to 30 African slaves
set foot at Point Comfort, Virginia. These people were on a Portuguese slave
ship that was captured by English WASP privateers. In essence, capitalism prospered. Now, the
WASPs had free labor to produce, grow, harvest and market their worldwide
cotton commodities trade. These private owners privatized their cotton
production for economic profit. Don’t get about sugar from the Caribbean,
tobacco and the textile mills located in
industrial centers like Lancashire, England and
the trade hubs in London and New
York that accelerated worldwide markets; created a demand for innovative
contracts; increased novel financial products in modern forms; and created
insurance and credit. This paved the way for the invention of futures contracts
which are still in use today.
Further,
profits from productivity were harnessed through the punishments of the
enslaved. In other words punishment rose and fell with global market
fluctuation. When prices increased in the English market, the poor slaves immediately
felt the effects. They were harder
driven and the sound of the whip left its mark. Unrestrained capitalism held no
monopoly on violence. Personal fortunes of the WASPS came at the expense of the
black workers. Cash and greed were supreme and ruled moralistic ideals.
In order to
protect and control their “subhuman “property and wealth, the WASP’s
established an early form of American racist policing. They created slave
patrols. The first slave patrol was formed in South Carolina in 1704. Their job
description was to capture runaways, defiant slaves, and slaves attempting to
escape by boat by whatever means. These WASP vigilantes were cruel, sadistic
and enjoyed hunting their prey. Of course, there were no consequences for rumbustious
behavior because none of their behavior was considered inappropriate. They were
the law, judge, and jury and had the blessing of their closed system employers.
Thus, the basis for today’s sadistic racist police force was established.
Pres. Andrew
Jackson, a wealthy enslaver from Tennessee, championed the Indian Removal Act
of 1830. That act removed numerous Indian tribes from their land and facilitated
the opening of open lands in the Southwest. The new land areas were the
capitalistic enterprise for agriculture and slave trade by the white wealthy.
In essence, there were experienced WASPs that bought, sold, owned, rented and
mortgaged approximately 1,000,000 humans with black skin. Texas became the West
cotton slavery stronghold. The black people made up about 30% of that state’s
population in 1860. Lesser numbers of black people located in California, New
Mexico, Montana, Colorado and Oregon in the 1860s and thus assisted in the
settling of the West.
The emancipation
in 1865 severely diminished, but did not eliminate, the power of exploitation
by the Confederacy. They created state
and national laws to further the practice of slavery. These states enacted laws to criminalize
“so-called inappropriate” behavior by people with black skin. This practice
allowed the ruling party to call a black an outlaw under the law. The free
blacks were no longer free. They were slaves again. The wealthy capitalists
controlled the slave population and had free labor once again. Additional
sadistic exploitation occurred with the forming of vigilante groups like the KKK.
These groups were given the power to assault and lynch the so-called subhuman race
without due process. These practices had nothing to do with law and order. It
was about greed, exploitation and sadism.
In the1880s and going into the 1900s, we had
an influx of European immigrants. The Northern or Nordic immigrants were WASPs
and desirable while those from Italy, Spain and Jews from Poland, Germany and
Russia were less desirable as they were not WASP’s. Capitalism flourished with its
cruel use of the labor force. Low wages, horrible working conditions and child
labor were the norm. Subsequently, the abused workers fought for their freedom
and power by forming labor unions. The
capitalist propaganda machine countered and claimed that unions were un-
American, dominated by dangerous people who were socialists, communists and who
would disrupt and strike at any time. In order to control unions and the
“undesirables,” the WASP power structure established so-called police enforcers
in the major cities by the 1880s. In
fact their job description was to break the labor strikes. They fought the
strikers and protected the scabs that allowed them to cross the picket lines.
Law, order and justice was for the wealthy capitalists .This force had nothing
to do with serving or protecting the public.
Political
machines came into being and hired the police to protect their interests. The wealthy and local party ward leaders hired
police captains, and sergeants to harass opponents of different political
parties. These police characters received payoffs to ignore illegal drinking,
gambling and prostitution. Now the police had additional opportunities to
increase their pay. Let’s add bribery to their job description.
In 1929,
Republican President Hoover created the Wickersham commission to investigate the
ineffectiveness of law enforcement nationwide. It wasn’t about ineffectiveness it was an
attempt to control the political party ward leaders by prohibiting police involvement.
The police are still ineffective and aligned
with the Republican Party. Let’s move to 1989 with the Republican Rehnquist
Court. With the Graham versus Connor decision, it stated that if so-called
objective reasonableness was used, by the police, then law enforcement characters
could use excessive force. It should be clear, by now, that the laws protect despicable,
sadistic and murder behavior by the police. The police are simply accomplices,
collude and protect the Republican political party and their neo liberal
capitalism.
There are
numerous examples of discrimination in sports racism. For instance, Tom Darden
excelled in all high school sports in Sandusky, Ohio in the 60s. According to
Darden, he believed that football was his second or third best sport. However,
his high school basketball and baseball coaches did not facilitate, encourage
or market him beyond high school. However, his high school football coach did.
Darden was recruited by Bump Elliott the University of Michigan head football coach.
Elliott also recruited a number of other black athletes the most ever by the
University of Michigan in 1968.
While at
Michigan, it took at least four games during the 1969 football season for their
new head coach Bo Schembechler’s racially integrated team to become a team.
During that 1969 season, the Wolverines upset the number one ranked Buckeyes
and their 22 straight victories.
With the
loss to the Wolverines, the two top college teams were now the all-white Texas
Longhorns and the integrated Penn State Nittany Lions. Republican President
Richard Nixon arbitrarily selected the all-white Texas football team to play
the all-white Arkansas football team for the college football championship.
Incidentally, that was the last year that all-white college teams played for a
national championship.
Darden
excelled at Michigan, was an All-American and a first round pro-draft selection
by the Cleveland Browns. He was their single-season and career interception
leader and was considered one of the top 50 Cleveland Browns players.
Roger
Goodell the NFL Commissioner just admitted the league made a mistake when they
didn’t allow San Francisco quarterback Collin Kaepernick to knell to protest
police brutality during the playing of the national anthem. Trump, was a major
influence when he erroneously made patriotism and the flag as the issue instead
of admitting police brutality. The NFL buckled until recently when Goodell
apologized for his mistake and said that Kaepernick should play again.
The following statements have been addressed
in previous essays to highlight injustice, discrimination and blatant racism. We
know why that in the LA budget, the police force receives 54%. We know why the
police unions have so much power. We know why we have a law, order and justice slogan
and illusion. We know why Richard Nixon created a war on drugs. We know why we
have a privatization of prisons. We know why blacks are arrested and
incarcerated at least three times more than all others. We know that Trump is incompetent and has a
malignant narcissist mental disorder. We know why Trump and his father
discriminated against blacks in 1973 with housing applications. We know why
individuals with black sounding names are discriminated against in hiring
practices. We know why at least a third of Covid 19 deaths, in our country, are
people with black skin. We know why that a person’s ZIP Code correlates with
limited and poor educational opportunities, high unemployment, poor health,
high drug use, lack of mobility, and shortened life span. We know why Cory
Booker’s family had difficulty buying their first home. We know why Kamala
Harris was bussed to school during integration. We know why there is systemic
racism in our country. We know why the police departments require reorganization,
diminished role descriptions, along with internal rules and regulations with
consequences. We know why that in 2017, a citizen had a 40 % chance of getting
away murder. We know why that a citizen had over 50% chance of getting away
with severe assault. We know why that a cop can get away with a hate crime. We
know why our US police have far more suicides than any other police force. We
know why our US police force kills far more than any other police force. We
know why we experience hate before love.
PS
Tom Darden
and I are working with our screenwriter to tell a story about racism,
perseverance, and excellence.
Reference
The New York
Times Magazine, The 1619 Project. August 18, 2019
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