It seems that certain elements in left-wing, progressive, racially conscious circles are jumping the shark in their attempts to convict police of racism. Officer.com reports:
In a new report by Charlotte’s WCNC TV, closely following the events as they unfold after the shooting of Keith Lamont Scott, a spokesman for the Charlotte-Mecklenberg branch of the NAACP insisted that the race of the officer doesn’t count because black officers “give up their blackness” when they become police officers; when they put on the blue uniform.
“Many black people who become police officers become blue, not black,” the organization told the station. “In order for you to survive in a police department, you take on the police department’s ideology, ways of life, and culture.”
The implication of that statement is twofold: first, that black police officers ignore their own background, heritage and culture once they put on a police uniform. How insulting. That individuals who take on one of the toughest and most thankless jobs in the country today could be so soft of will that they bury their own values and beliefs to assume those of the agency that hires them is an insult to those doing so. Further, the implication that every law enforcement agency coast-to-coast embraces a racist outlook and uses such as motivation for performance is appalling. Following that logic, then every officer who is forced to shoot any criminal is motivated by the race of the criminal to do so.
. . .
As has been reported, representatives of Black Lives Matter, and now apparently also a part of the NAACP, have said that the justification or lack thereof in the shooting of any black man no longer matters. They now claim that the shooting of any black man for any reason, even if it’s fully legal and justified and required to save the lives of others, is racist. They’ve also now specified that it doesn’t matter what the race of the officer who pulls the trigger is.
There's more at the link.
To call such attitudes on the part of BLM or the NAACP 'grossly insulting' is an understatement. To call them 'racist' is nothing more or less than the truth. Unfortunately, these people are no longer interested in the truth. If they were, they would have reported - and accepted - the truth about the victim of the Charlotte shooting: that he was armed, that he didn't obey police instructions, and that he was shot because his behavior was perceived as threatening. They would have accepted that so-called 'witnesses' lied when they said he had a book, not a gun, in his hand (when all the while the gun was clearly visible on the ground as police tried to save the injured man's life). They would have acknowledged that the officer who shot the victim was black, not white, and that racism therefore didn't enter into the equation at all.
They did none of those things, because they don't care about the truth. They care only about inflaming emotions, so that they can lead the mob in its rampage and use it as a political pressure tactic to accomplish their ends.
The truth is not in them . . . so why the hell should I, or anyone else, have any respect for them, or pay any attention to their lies? And why the hell should any of us have to permit them to invade our cities and suburbs, destroy and loot and steal and threaten and assault and lie, and do nothing to stop them? As Gavin McInnes put it, to them, rioting has become an 'unbeatable high'. If the police are going to pull back and give them space and time to riot - as the Mayor of Baltimore so infamously put it, '[giving] those who wished to destroy space to do that as well' - why shouldn't we protect our own neighborhoods, by any and all means necessary?
I suspect more and more Americans are asking those questions . . . and I suspect most of us are coming up with pretty similar answers.
Peter
9 comments:
American african cops give up their african-ness (according to the blm types, along with the entire obamalicking media types) because of the savage nature of the blm types. It be why many American africans have not assimilated or cannot assimilate into white society. Dey be makin they own troubles. Look to the dark continent for confirmation...
I was in Lowes, in TN, this afternoon. I commented on the open register light being blue which was unusual. The cashier said it was to show blue to show support. We neither actually mentioned cops or police, but we both knew.
The bit about cops becoming "blue" may be a good point, however. Cops become Cops. The "Blue tribe", as it were.
I don't think they are racists, mind you, but the line becomes cops vs all others.
So there is something to the argument.
Having said that, one must realize that decent people generally don't have the issues that Mr. Scott had.
They aren't criminals, to begin with...
They obey instructions when pulled over.
They don't argue or fight when caught doing something wrong. If arrested, they go more or less quietly and wait to be bailed out and then let the courts deal with the issue of innocent or not.
These folks who get shot generally have a record, they run or fight when stopped. They seldom are empty handed when shot.
B, unfortunately, has a good point about the Blue Tribe. It is most definitely an "us against them" mentality inherent in most depts. It works two ways. Cops against "civilians" (yeah, I know they are also, but THEY don't think that), and cops standing with cops, no matter how corrupt. They are very much like a street gang, in that if you don't hang with them totally, you will be an outcast, which can be very hazardous.
I have worked around them at various times in my life, and it just seems to have gotten worse over the last 40+ years. Then again, what hasn't?
There IS a fix for the problem, I think, but no one seems to be interested in addressing the situation. The downside will be when wide scale unrest sweeps the country. The police, having put themselves in a separate category above the citizens, will find they have little popular support. That will not be a good position.
The premise here that blacks 'give up their blackness' when they become cops
has more than a grain of truth to it. LEO are really not particularly racist.
They don't care if you are white, black, red, brown, yellow or green. ALL that
matters to them is 'you ain't blue', meaning you are not part of their brotherhood,
you are not a member of the club, you are the enemy. Racism really has little to
do with the issue. The issue is one of accountability, not race. The fact that
blacks have far more negative interactions with LEO is not due to racism but to
the inherent criminality of the black mind and black culture.
Fred Reed's column is a must read this week and touches on this issue.
http://fredoneverything.org/undocumented-shopping-legacy-of-an-african-president/
I'm afraid we've gone past mere racism and illogic and embraced full toxicity. It's been widely commented upon, at least from sources outside the MSM, that Soros & Co. are involved in funding, and most likely, directing, the anti-Americanism of BLM. There are almost certainly other tribes receiving Soros money and advice, but for now the visible part of the iceberg is black.
I agree with Peter: this is leading us nowhere good. I'd suggest following Anon at 0326's link to Fred Reed's column, and reading Angelo Codevilla's recent piece at Claremont Review of Books After the Republic (http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/after-the-republic/).
Will's point about the Blue Tribe is accurate; there are LEOs I worked with, lost sleep with, sweated with, who won't speak to me because i've commented about the unspoken malignancy of what goes on inside police agencies, namely, protect the tribe at all costs. My judgment is that such actions have had a severely negative impact on the public's perception of police, who they are and what they do, much to the detriment of performing actual police work; they disagree.
I think - and fear - that we're descending into the abyss of tribalism, doomed to become isolated enclaves, isolated geographically, economically and socially, all of which is the antithesis of what America is, or perhaps, was, supposed to be. When we become a collection of tribes we will no longer be a country, except perhaps in name only.
Some of that, infortunately, is probably unavoidable. Fred Reed's column points out the near impossibility of rectifying the cancer of slavery; what began, almost totally unconsidered at the time, - and with complete disregard for its immorality - as an unavoidably short term economic benefit, for it could not continue once the Industrial Revolution began, has metastisized into a disease with no potential cure in sight.
"May you live in interesting times" is on the verge of being a couple century's worth of understatement.
The complaint for a long time was that white cops couldn't understand the black communities they patrolled, and they needed black cops to engender trust in the community. Eh - fair enough.
Now, it's black cops aren't good enough - they've been co-opted by the "blue"
(read: white) "tribe".
It seems that they don't really want what they say they want, they want to be left alone to break laws as they see fit.
I like Walter Williams term for the NAACP, "The Klan With a Tan."
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