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
editor@praisenet.org
TOP OF PAGE
