There is this silent, automatically understood thing in the black community. Do not do anything to put a black man jail. I know where this comes from. I think we all know.
We all know that black men are over represented in jail. Some of us even know that black women are heavily over represented in jail too.
 |
| BLACK AND WHITE VARY LESS THAN 1% IN ILLICIT DRUG USE MOST YEARS (note Latinx use less than both, then Asians even less) http://www.samhsa.gov/data/sites/default/files/Revised2k11NSDUHSummNatFindings/Revised2k11NSDUHSummNatFindings/NSDUHresults2011.htmhttp://www.samhsa.gov/ BUT NOW LOOK AT THE DIFFERENCE IN ARREST RATES BETWEEN BLACK AND WHITE FOR MARIJUANA  |
Black men go to jail for things white men get their wrists slapped for. Since the days of Jim Crow black people go to jail for grand theft auto and white people go to court for "joy riding." Racism is even codified into our laws.
Until President Obama came along, white people who more often preferred powder cocaine could have 100x more cocaine on them than black people who more often preferred crack cocaine before they became entangled in the web that is federal mandatory sentencing.
I'll never forget Charlie Sheen being on television, higher than a kite, getting fired from his television show, and people talking openly about his getting briefcases full of cocaine. I remember plenty about Sheen ranting about "tiger blood" and waving a machete, but there was virtually nothing on prime time news about this white presenting man possibly going to jail.
So yes, black men can also go to jail for almost nothing.
But black men also go to jail for something too.
Black men prey on black women just like white men pray on white women. Most crime is intra-racial because criminals prey on who they live and work around. America is still fairly de-facto segregated. That's just the way it is.
But the thing that's different in the black race is has been already described above.
More of us know that black men go to prison
a lot more often than they should
without knowing that black women
go to jail more than they should too.
And that's just one facet of "racism against black men matters more."
When "racism against black men matters more" black women are supposed to be quiet when a black man hurts them. In some fantasy land made up by hoteps and the hotep adjacent, black women are supposed to wait for the black community to take care of it internally in some way.
This mindset is so common in the black community, so ever present, that I remembered while watching a scene in a movie totally unrelated to the subject of black women's supposed responsibility to protect black men even as they lay bleeding on the ground.
I was watching an X-men movie, listening to Magneto say to Charles Xavier, "You know what they'll do to me" if they get me.
Always ready to kill us regular humans, Magneto had just tried to kill the President of the United States and had already shot an ex-girlfriend mutant because he thought it advantagous. In response, Charles Xavier, the black woman in this little scenario, nods in agreement and lets Magneto go. Charles Xavier is indeed afraid that Magneto will be tortured and killed if the authorities get him.
I was a little distracted watching the end of that X-men movie, thinking Magneto ought to be hella grateful he was talking to Charles Xavier instead of me because I'd have let the authorities chop into steak size pieces after all the damage he'd already done to me and mine much less knowing the plans he had for me and mine.
I must say, I feel pretty close to the same way about men who attack women. I feel even more strongly about black men who attack black women.
After all the crap we've all been through? If you, as a black man, attack a black woman, you go to jail and do not pass go. And if your rape conviction winds up being the rest of your life due to white racism when it the same rape only costs a white man 5 years of life, then black women are luckier than white women for a change.
Hallelujah!
No comments:
Post a Comment