I get attacked a lot for not falling in with the screamers, the anti-intellectual ignorance of Facebook and Twitter far too many of us drown ourselves in day after day. I’m used to it. Had Walter Scott obeyed a lawful command from a police officer and remained in his car, he’d be alive today. It’s an inconvenient truth, but truth nonetheless, and I’d much rather deal in truth than rhetoric. We think we're just running out to the store. We think we're just going to work. That's what these men thought. Now, both their lives are over.

Twenty Percent

I won’t be marching for Walter Scott, either. Scott, who was reportedly shot five times in the back by a North Charleston, SC police officer, was fleeing a possible arrest. Scott either knew or believed there was a warrant out for him for delinquent child support payments. Described as “a family man” by a surviving brother, Scott nonetheless claimed to be in the process of buying a used Mercedes which he claimed to have been test driving without driver’s insurance or a valid auto registration. Did Scott deserve to be shot? Of course not. There’s absolutely no question the officer was absolutely in the wrong. My point is only that, once again, Black America is coalescing around a flawed symbol. There is a terrible culture of unlawful if not criminal behavior on the part of African American men which we gloss over as it suits us, while blaming the police for the consequences of their inarguably flawed response. Not to make light of the Scott tragedy, but the first rule of Chris Rock's hilarious How Not To Get Your Ass Kicked by The Police is "Obey the law." The vast majority of police brutality incidents are initiated by the victim acting in some culpable manner and/or not simply obeying lawful police commands. None of which exonerates bad cops, but the unlawful behavior on the part of the victim clouds the community's efforts to lionize them as symbols of injustice.

A panelist on MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Matthews pointed out last week that, when aggrieved, liberals protest. We take to the streets. Minorities, including but not exclusive of African Americans, also lash out irrationally and often violently; burning down their own neighborhoods to protest some perceived wrong. How many tens of thousands marched around with “hands up,” only to be confronted with empirical evidence that Mr. Brown never assumed that posture to begin with?

We hear things on the street, in the news, on Twitter of all stupid places, and now we’re hitting the streets, ready to holler and scream and fall out and set things on fire. We’re ready for violence, for revenge; shooting cops who had nothing to do with any of our grievances. It’s what we do when we are aggrieved: we take it to the streets, we holler, we make demands.

Conservatives, on the other hand, vote. When they are aggrieved about something, they vote. They organizes, they plan, they make the time to go down to the ballot box and change things. We make our case on the street where no policies are ever changed. They make their case at the ballot box, which changes everything.

In spite of all the hollering, all the looting, all the violence, all the marching, all that “hands up” nonsense, a meager 20% of eligible African American voters turned out to vote in Ferguson, MO [The Last Word, MSNBC]. 20% is an amazing change from their usual 8% voting record, but it’s still barely one-fifth of those angry, aggrieved, disenfranchised people; of the noisy protesters making all that drama on the news. At the end of the day, we’re all talk: demanding things, accusing, preaching, pointing fingers. But still too lazy to get off the sofa and exercise rights our mothers and their mothers marched and suffered to gain for us.

Walter Scott’s grieving mother repeatedly and unceasingly uttered praises to Jesus along with Hallelujah’s, often irrespective of her own family or spokespersons speaking on Scott’s behalf. I don’t begrudge this mother her grief, but point out that, as Christians, our compassion must also be offered to the police officer. I can’t imagine what could have transpired between the dash cam video depicting Officer Michael Slager as a calm, even friendly professional who seemed to be in a pretty good mood and who demonstrated no apparent malice or grudge against Scott, and the cell phone video depicting a lunatic shooting a Taser-dazed, clumsy, fleeing middle-aged chubby fella. Slager could easily have outrun Scott or even just stood there and waited for Scott to run out of gas and give up. Instead, to our collective horror, Slager shot a wobbly, slowly-fleeing—if you even want to call it that—out of shape unarmed man in the back five times.

We want to paint Slager as a racist. Okay, let’s do that. Let’s say he’s the worst racist ever. Even the worst racist ever considers his own career and possible criminal charges before lynching a black man. Slager’s actions remain incomprehensible. He wasn’t a perfect cop, but there’s no evidence Slager was a psycho. He was, after all, rational enough to attempt to cover up his actions by rushing back to retrieve his Taser and dropping it next to Scott's body. From my chair, that was the act that changed Slager's tragic and inexplicable choice from an irrational act into a crime.

The blame for Scott’s death can, however, be spread around, starting first and foremost with the Baby Mama behind Scott’s fear of incarceration. This was the motive for Scott’s flight, something Officer Slager could not possibly have known and something I’m quite sure Slager would have advised Scott was not worth getting himself shot over.

The Child Support Mess

Child support statutes across the country are political tools used to appease irrational and clueless mommies by awarding them empty promises of financial security. Most Baby Mamas I know use their check—assuming they get one—to support themselves. They use child support as if it were alimony. Courts award ridiculous and obscene amounts of money to these women, a thousand or more dollars per child per month, while imposing absolutely no fiduciary responsibility on Baby Mama whatsoever. These huge awards condemn fathers to lives of poverty while Baby Mama—assuming she actually gets a check—lives in relative comfort, often with her mother or new boyfriend, while pocketing the cash.

I don’t know of any middle or lower-class parent who literally spends a thousand dollars a month on their kid. When I was twelve, if I went to my mom and said, “Gimme a thousand dollars a month,” she’d rightly think I was crazy. I can’t imagine what I’d spend a thousand dollars per month on a child for. Baby Mamas argue the thousand goes toward household expenses, rent, utilities, car note. The baby doesn’t pay rent. Doesn’t pay a car note. Rent and car note are spousal support, not child support. Child support is supposed to go exclusively to the child; if the parent needs housing assistance or transportation, there are agencies that address those needs. A child support check is not for you to get your hair done, not to pay your HBO or cell phone bill. That money is for the specific needs of the child only, not a dime for Baby Mama or the nail salon. Whatever is left over for that month should go into a bank account in the child’s name for educational or medical expenses. I know of no Baby Mamas who do that; they just pocket the cash. They get their hair and nails done. They gas up the new car, while the father is living on somebody’s couch.

The high award amounts are mostly political. It pleases stupid women because only stupid women actually believe these high awards are doing anything more than making a bad situation worse. For too many fathers, the high awards are simply not sustainable, and they end up falling out of the system and, inevitably, on the run, like Mr. Scott. I don’t begrudge Mr. Scott his used Mercedes—although many Baby Mamas are sucking their teeth in disgust at his choice. I don’t know what award Mr. Scott was obligated to pay, but I assume whatever it is was more than he could afford.

Courts do that all the time. They’re supposed to set child support at some percentage of (usually) the father’s income. But I know several fathers who are daily oppressed by huge, ridiculous payments they know for a fact, are not being used for the children but are routinely going into Baby Mama’s pocket.

There is usually no accountability whatsoever in these award situations. No review, no audit, no accounting, no follow-up. Here’s your check. The money should go on a Visa card and a copy of the invoice sent to the father. Anything showing up on that Visa bill that is not directly related to the children should be a criminal violation much in the same way as is the father’s failure to pay. But Baby Mama has zero, absolutely no responsibility or accountability in this mess. She gets paid. That’s it. And most Baby Mamas I know are simply too selfish or too clueless to even understand the reason they’re not getting their check is not so much that the father is a deadbeat or a bastard but that the award is set too high. If these clueless women went down to court and called off the dogs—drop the warrant, stop the collection, renegotiate this down to something reaonsable-- $300, $500 a month—they’d more than likely start receiving that check again.

If Baby Mamas had the same civil and criminal oversight placed on them that so-called “Deadbeat” Dads have on them, if there were actual parity and equity within the system, you’d see far fewer tragedies like Walter Scott makng a break for it to avoid arrest.

Collision Course: A moment of panic, a moment of rage? Between the two videos, eternity opened a door.

The Wrong Subject

None of us are talking about that. We just want to march and holler and set things on fire. As Christians, we don’t even want to show any love whatsoever to Officer Slager, who may or may not have been the nicest guy or best officer in the world, who may have stopped Scott not because of some taillight nonsense but because a black man was driving a Benz. It is the anti-intellectual ignorance of Facebook and Twitter far too many of us drown ourselves in day after day that forms this collective stupidity that White America sees from blacks and liberals.

I get attacked a lot for not falling in with the screamers. I’m used to it. Had Walter Scott obeyed a lawful command from a police officer and remained in his car, he’d be alive today. It’s an inconvenient truth, but truth nonetheless, and I’d much rather deal in truth than rhetoric.

An even larger truth, one we routinely ignore: we really are not masters of our own destiny. That privilege belongs to God alone, Who has His hand on our lives. We need to get our house in order, to be sure our relationship with God is both real and true. We think we're just running out to the store. We think we're just going to work. That's what these men thought. Now, both their lives are over.

Something to think about the next time you put an arm through a coat.

Christopher J. Priest
12 April 2015

Still Still Not

No sooner do I post on the tragic shooting death of Walter Scott than yet another unarmed black man, Eric Harris of Tulsa, OK, was shot dead by an elderly reserve sheriff’s deputy who allegedly mistook his personal .357 Magnum firearm for a Taser. The Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office protested the manslaughter charges against Reserve deputy Robert Bates, 73, claiming the shooting was accidental. Of course, had the victim Harris shot a sheriff’s Deputy by accident after having confused a lightweight, plastic Taser—which feels more like a kid’s toy ray gun than an actual firearm—with one of the world’s most powerful handguns, he’d be laughed out of court.

The deputy was released on $25,000 bail, a laughable amount given how well-off an individual Bates is, having made generous donations to the Tulsa County Sheriff’s Office over the years, including four used vehicles and a new Dodge Charger. Had the situation been reversed, had Harris accidentally shot a deputy, I doubt he’d have been granted bail at all, presuming he’d have lived to be taken into custody in the first place.

This is the weight every person of color in this country must bear every day: this incredible and obvious judicial inequity and routine devaluation of minorities and black males in particular and the overwhelming and shocking tone deafness white males if not White America has to what is so patently obvious to the rest of the planet. Whites remain a people of extreme privilege, socially, economically, politically and judicially. Whites are automatically granted every possible benefit of every possible doubt. People of color, people of low means, black males in specific, are conversely presumed to have unclean hands, unsavory motives and evil intent.

While on the ground, restrained by two Sheriff’s deputies, Harris was shot dead. Had Harris confused a lightweight plastic Taser with a .357 Magnum and shot one of those white deputies, he’d have been shot dead. Either way, Harris would be a dead man. And, had he, by some miracle, lived to see the inside of a courtroom, he’d not have been given a relatively low charge of manslaughter, not have been granted a low bail, and there’d be no protestations from the Sheriff’s Office. It simply amazes me that the Fox News types, hammering Ted Cruz yard signs into their lawns, simply refuse to acknowledge the obvious.

But I won’t be marching for Harris, either. No, I’m not waiting for a perfect candidate, but Mr. Harris was a convicted felon caught on video selling an illegal gun to an undercover Sheriff’s deputy. Harris, like Mr. Scott, chose to run from law enforcement officers and resist arrest. Did he deserve to get shot? Absolutely not. But let’s not kid ourselves: Mr. Harris was a criminal. Black people choosing to ignore or omit that fact are just as culpable as whites defending Reserve Deputy Sheriff Bates. It’s shameful and painful bigotry when whites choose to live in denial of racist culture. It’s even worse when we ourselves do the same.

Christopher J. Priest
14 April 2015
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