Lost

Cynthia McKinney & The Lost Boys

If these were two little white girls,

would the response have been so slow? Would an Amber alert—which instantly flashes information on missing children to highway signs across America—have been sent out? Would major news outlets have carried the story? A missing 11-year old blonde girl is national news. Two missing 11-year old blonde girls would be a national obsession. But Purvis Parker and his friend Quadrevion Henning are black little boys, so the story percolated well below boiling until the national media somehow picked it up. Even now, seven days into their disappearance, the national cable networks are only paying the story moderate attention, while the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a well-off white teen lost while vacationing in Aruba, fairly paralyzed those same airways, playing virtually day and night.

Eight days into the disappearance of two Milwaukee boys, police have finally designated the case as a criminal investigation. This enables law enforcement to bring even more resources to bear to find out what happened to Purvis Virginia Parker, 11, and his friend Quadrevion Henning, 12. This enables police to finally activate an Amber alert for the missing boys, though the effectiveness of this tool—which instantly flashes information about missing children on electronic bulletin boards along highways across the country—is greatly diminished a week into their disappearance. Had law enforcement sent out an immediate Amber alert, as they’d have surely done were these two missing blonde girls, the system would have been a much more valuable resource. At the very least, it would have raised public awareness of the missing boys immediately, rather than taking more than a week to make its way into national news headlines.

Additionally, I can’t help but wonder if the Milwaukee police department couldn’t find a better face to put on the investigation than Anne E. Schwartz, a beleaguered and unkempt woman who comes across as more defensive of her police department than concerned for the boys’ welfare. Schwartz repeatedly defended the Milwaukee police department’s decision to not issue an Amber alert on the basis that there is no evidence of a crime having been committed. Well, other than two small boys not returning home for seven days.

Is it possible the Milwaukee Police Department has no black officers on it? Or no ranking black officers who can put a more compassionate face on the investigation? Schwartz’s mission seems to be (1) protect the police department, (2) find the boys. Her public statements have been condescending and defensive, as if she doubts the boys are in any danger at all. Things like, “You may think someone else has called or someone else has reported the information, but they haven’t. It’s up to you.” These aren’t precise quotes, but they’re close. “We know somebody knows more than they’re saying,” she said (or words to that effect) with an extremely condescending tone that sounded, no kidding, like, “I know you niggers know more than you’re saying.” Schwartz is a serious tactical blunder by Milwaukee PD as she comes across like a plantation owner’s wife, lacking any capacity to console grieving parents or reassure an underserved minority community (seriously, how many black people live in Wisconsin?).

I spoke to a few people at church yesterday, and they had no idea, none, about this case. The pastor never mentioned it. Nobody was passing out flyers or pointing to websites. Brothers and sisters: I know news is boring. I know you’d rather be watching Star Search or March Madness or something. But, in the name of Jesus, we really need to be better informed than this. Most especially those of us, like pastors, whose job it is to lead: we should know what’s going on in the world. I am continually saddened to discover how uninformed and, frankly, uninterested we are, as a demographic. That, in all likelihood, white churches across town were praying for Purvis and Dre while we had no idea who they were.

Additionally, we really need to stop waiting for white folk to tell us what’s going on. Stop waiting for ABC or NBC or Fox to tell us what’s happening in our own back yards. Sunday’s was a wonderful sermon from Isaiah 40, about speaking kindness and peace into our lives. But, as wonderful as church was Sunday, to me, we seemed out of touch.; comfortable in our fishbowl. For too many of us, we’re satisfied to just come in the church house on Sunday and jump around catching vapors, while injustice and evil goes on unchecked and unthreatened by those of us who claim the cause of righteousness.

The slow and inadequate and deplorable response by Milwaukee police can, in this context, hardly be condemned by a black church that marches nowhere, that embraces no cause, and that cannot even be bothered to keep itself informed.

I am grateful the police, eight days later, have finally decided this is a crime. I can only hope the national news media finally pays this enough attention to ask some tough questions about the Milwaukee police response. But, the truth is, two missing black boys simply isn’t sexy enough for national news scrutiny; not for a media that was simply paralyzed by blanket coverage of the death of Jon Benet Ramsey and the disappearance of Natalee Holloway.

I remain grateful for Sunday's sermon, but I’d have much preferred it served up with a side dish of social justice, moral indignation and compassion for the families suffering in Milwaukee. The complete mess the Milwaukee police have made of this case is a national disgrace second, perhaps, only to the Black Church’s even slower response to even acknowledge this is going on.

I can’t begin to imagine the anguish these boys’ parents are feeling. More than that, I can’t begin to imagine their fear, of whatever circumstance has prevented the boys from returning home. Our task, of course, is to pray. Rather than thinking of prayer as a last resort, we need to understand how powerful and effective prayer can be. This is, of course, predicated on us being in a right relationship with Christ [James 5:16]. But it is, indeed, a Christian’s most powerful resource.

Beyond that we need to understand, without bitterness or resentment, that life remains terribly unequal. That a little white girl’s life has more value than a little black boy, which, of course misses the point that both are God’s children. Both belong to Him, He loves and values both. He makes absolutely no distinction one from the other.

We should pray for the day when we all become so much like Him that we no longer make that distinction, either.

We love you, Purvis. We love you, Dre.

Christopher J. Priest
27 March 2006
editor@praisenet.org
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Found And Gone

The bodies of Purvis Parker, 11, and Quadrevion Henning, 12, were found in a park lagoon Friday evening. They weren’t far from the basketball court they had been headed for on the icy afternoon March 19 when they were last seen. The case of the missing boys had been all but eliminated from national news headlines as the Cynthia McKinney circus and the Lacrosse rape case dominated the small percentage of airtime news networks reserve for “black” news. Sadly, many folks at church today still hadn’t even heard of this case, let alone of its sad resolution. And, at this writing, there has still not been one word from black civil rights leadership; rather, an acceptance of a coroner’s report that suggests the two boys accidentally drowned. No one seems to be asking why law enforcement’s response was so slow, why, even now, no Amber alert was sent out, or why the boys weren’t found when police dragged this same lagoon weeks ago.

Who’s demanding an investigation? Asking for an independent medical examiner’s report—from someone not in the Minnesota District Attorney’s office, who will surely be hanged by their thumbs if it were revealed Purvis and Dre had been murdered. It completely angers me that two black boys can die under suspicious circumstances and no one—no one at all—seems to care. I honestly can’t believe not one, not a single black leader, not even Cynthia McKinney now that she’s no longer spending all of her energy accusing cops of racism, are asking even basic questions about this case. Nobody is even holding forth the possibility that the boys were murdered and the cops are covering up their slow and inadequate response. Not one person--politician, activist, journalist, or law enforcement--is asking even the single most basic question:

Why, on a cold, stormy night, did the two boys go into the lagoon? What moved them from the basketball court, more than a hundred yards away, into the lagoon? Something obviously and terribly wrong went on that night and to this date [Editor's note: May, 2105 update] no one seems troubled by these unanswered questions. No one is marching, no one is protesting, no one demanding answers. The boys drowned. End of story.

The real tragedy here is not whatever actually happened to Purvis and Dre—that we’ll likely never know, thanks in large measure to an inept and insufficient law enforcement effort. The real tragedy here is the pervasive ignorance among black America; that we have no idea, none, what is going on in our own back yard. The mere fact that you are likely not outraged by this is damming evidence of severely misplaced priorities, a culture of materialistic consumerism and me-ism.

16 days into the disappearance of the two Milwaukee boys, the big news from black America concerned a media circus surrounding Georgia Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, who was leveling racial charges against a Capitol Police officer she punched. While not from Wisconsin, Representative McKinney squandered the national spotlight to rail on about something we all know is certainly true—the unfortunate reality of racial profiling—while saying nothing about (or, worse, perhaps not even being aware of) the missing boys, a perhaps much more tragic product of racial inequity.

Last week Kelsey Lynn Stelting, a blonde teenager, didn’t return home. Her mother called police and an Amber alert was immediately sent out, resulting in Stelting being spotted and recovered by law enforcement within several hours. And her dimpled high school face was plastered over the news media, while Purvis and Dre were all but forgotten—and news outlets, even now, continue to use the wrong photo of Dre, using a photo of him when he was about five years old (Dre looked nothing at all like that photo).

Playing The Race Card

Let not your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father’s house are many mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you. 3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also. --John 14: 1-3

Fresh off of the whole Cynthia McKinney “racial profiling” debacle was the alleged rape of a black student by three white members of Duke University’s lacrosse team while other members allegedly cheered and shouted racial epitaphs. News reports refer to her only as a “stripper.” She was a student and single mother who worked as an exotic dancer. DNA crime scene evidence has come back negative for the players, but questions about the local authorities’ handling of the suspects in the matter remain.

I am, of course, deeply troubled by these allegations and the dire implications they pose for social unrest in Durham, but I’m still very angry about the missing boys in Milwaukee and the news media’s apparent quota limit for “black” news. Having shifted from the still-missing boys to the McKinney circus and now to this, my fervent prayer—and I realize this sounds horrible—is that this woman was actually raped and that this isn’t what many people—black and white—suspect it might be: an effort to extort money from well-off college kids.

Playing the race card, the Al Sharpton card, the Get Everybody Mad card, can be an avenue to a fat out of court settlement. I desperately hope that’s not what this is because— and I go back again to the missing Milwaukee boys—black people exploiting black people to further some personal agenda is a heinous sin. If, indeed, there was a crime committed in Durham, I definitely want to line up and march. But if I’m being played in a grab for a fat check, then, potentially, the blood of these missing boys is on the hands of black people who exploit their own legacy, their own blackness, for selfish reasons.

The saddest part of the McKinney foolishness (and the Tawana Brawley non-case), of blacks exploiting blacks, is how it divides us; how it makes us skittish to support the next case, the next cause. Many of us, myself included, are taking a skeptical wait-and-see approach before investing ourselves again in people who are simply exploiting us.

Most tragically: these cases pushed Purvis and Dre off the air. Now, mind you, this case was, likely, going off the air anyway since no reporter—I mean, not one—seemed even the least bit curious about the botched handling of their case. News outlets, perhaps anxious to drop the story but not having a comfortable way to do that, found their answer in the McKinney circus and Lacrosse Rape case, swapping “breaking” black news for the stifling horror of the waiting in Milwaukee.

Milwaukee police and FBI believed someone was withholding information that could aid in the boys’ recovery. They sited many examples of young blacks wearing "Stop Snitching" tee-shirts and refusing to cooperate with police. A "Stop Snitching Movement" seems to have taken hold among young blacks who, in large measure, refuse to offer any help whatsoever with the case, but the "Stop Snitching Movement" is mainly about threats and intimidation, retribution for anyone who helps the police in any way.

So, then, who cries for Purvis and Dre? I guess I will. And I’ll pray that the boys are finally home, now. Our hearts and prayers go out to their families, along with our most fervent wish for justice to be done.

The most basic thing we, as black people, owe ourselves is to simply stay informed about what’s going on in the world. Ask any five black people you know, I’ll bet three of them had only a vague idea about this case if they were aware of it at all.

Christopher J. Priest
17 April 2006
editor@praisenet.org
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In Opposition to the Resolution to Go to War in Iraq

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October 9, 2002
Statement on the Floor
of the U.S. House of Representatives
by Representative Cynthia McKinney

Thank you very much. I share the same revulsion that many others have towards Saddam Hussein. We all know that he’s brutal, and that his regime has terrorized the Iraqi people and the people of nearby countries. But there was a time not so long ago when despite all of this, we chose to allow him to be our friend. There was a time we supplied him with chemical weapons and other military technologies. If our nation really cared about Iraq’s neighbors, we never would have supplied him the military arsenal that we did. And if we really cared about his people, we would have done something to alleviate the suffering of the Kurds, who for years have been brutalized by the Iraqi military. If we cared about the Iraqi people, we would have done something to lift the burdens imposed on them by UN sanctions, which to date have claimed in excess of an estimated 500,000 Iraqi children.

But the truth is we didn’t really care about any of that suffering. Madeleine Albright even said that the price of 500,000 dead Iraqi children was "worth it." Now, however, we claim to care. Now, Saddam Hussein has just become another name on a long list of other tyrants who we once aided and abetted but now oppose. But what to do? In the past, other tyrants we’ve grown tired of were assassinated, like Jonas Savimbi, or charged with war crimes, like Slobodan Miloseviæ, or forced from power through U.S.-backed uprisings, like Mobutu Sese Seko. President Bush is confronted with a "what to do question." He appears to be choosing war to get rid of this tyrant, and of course he has to justify it. That is the public relations part of the equation.

The words "Gulf of Tonkin" have echoed around Washington this last month with many people concerned that the Bush Administration is now manufacturing an international crisis in order to launch a pre-emptive military strike against Saddam Hussein. In 1964, there were some courageous members of this House who knew that the Gulf of Tonkin incident was a political ruse, being used by the Johnson Administration in order to justify the United States going to war in Vietnam. For their courage to speak out and resist, they suffered a tidal wave of public ridicule. But we now know they were right and that the Vietnam War was a monumental mistake that cost the lives of some 60,000 brave young Americans and hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese..

And still, we have many Americans and Vietnamese who suffer the health effects of agent orange and other toxins faced on the battlefield. And all across the American and European landscape, today, veterans still suffer from Gulf War Syndrome and exposure to depleted uranium. Will we let this president create yet another generation of veterans to whom we’ve broken our promise? I see too many of these veterans sleeping on our streets. The President can see them, too, if he would just look. They sleep on the sidewalks, the benches, and the heating vents just across the street from the White House. And sadly, one of the first things our President did after he declared this war on terrorism was to deprive our young men and women who are now fighting on the front lines their high deployment overtime pay. He doesn’t even want to pay them.

Mr. speaker, do we give this President the green light to go to war on Iraq based on evidence which many weapons experts believe to be exaggerated? Are we now turning a blind eye to another Gulf of Tonkin-type incident? Shouldn’t we trust the legal and diplomatic means of the United Nations? Do we give the President the green light to go to war in Iraq because it has refused to comply with U.N. Security Council weapons inspections resolutions? At the same time Israel refuses to comply with U.N. resolutions with respect to the occupied territories. Do we have difference standards for different countries?

Mr. speaker, the Cuban missile crisis and the Gulf of Tonkin, if they taught us anything, they taught us the dangers of choosing the military option over diplomatic and legal alternatives. The current terrorist crisis facing our nation is so much bigger and complicated than this call for war on Iraq. Should we miscalculate our military actions in Iraq, we could cause many American service men and women to lose their lives. Needless to say, we could also cause untold numbers of Iraqis to be killed or injured. Worse still, instead of solving the current threat of terrorism against us, going to war in Iraq might well make things far worse for us both at home and abroad. I hope and pray that we choose our options carefully. And for that reason, I will be voting "no" on this resolution to go to war in Iraq. Thank you, Mr. speaker.

A quick scan of American history finds many other national black leaders coexisting in the same eras, be it Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglass during the abolitionist movement, or Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B DuBois during the anti-racism efforts around the turn of the 20th century. But in the 1970s and 1980s, as integration and black class division began taking root, as the devastating effects of drugs began to plague our inner cities, and as conservatives began trying to erase the very minimal civil rights victories we achieved, black leadership became not only rooted in racial protest, but unable to be self-reflective or self-critical. Embarrassingly, black leaders latched onto this flawed notion of the need for a single national figurehead. They increasingly found themselves at each other’s throats as they jockeyed to be the grand poobahs of Black America.

In spite of this trend, or perhaps because of it, more and more younger black Americans began abandoning traditional approaches, traditional organizations and even the black church as a visionary force. Aided by civil rights legislation and a desertion of the black underclass by local governments and, yes, upwardly mobile blacks as they left urban American centers, the chasm between the black professional class and the black poor got even wider. Although we’ve never been a monolithic group, there were some very basic things we held in common when we were forced, because of segregation, to live in the same communities. Increasingly, with a fragmented set of problems or concerns, the desire (much less the possibility) of a single national black leader decreased.

As someone born and raised in a black ghetto, but who is also college educated and solidly middle class today, it has been surreal at times to travel between these two extremes and hear the very different perspectives on race and racial progress—or lack thereof—in America. Many of my friends and family members in America’s ’hoods feel they are under constant siege, and rightfully so. Meanwhile, many of my friends and colleagues in the middle class either believe we are living in a post-black or post-racial America, or simply do not know what to do to support African Americans who are less fortunate.

Yet the truth is, this is not a post-racial America. When Barack Obama became the first black president in American history, he unquestionably upended the model of the single national black leader fueled by racial protest. But we do still need the racial protest model, as evidenced by the record number of black and Latino males still stopped and frisked by New York City police. President Obama’s election simply shows that multiple types of black leadership can and should exist. Like David Dinkins, the first black mayor of New York City, and Douglas Wilder, the first black governor of a Southern state since Reconstruction, Obama is part of a wave of black elected officials who don’t talk race, except out of necessity, and who have been able to secure a large bloc of white and other non-black supporters as race-neutral black leaders.

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