VICTIM
 |
| Nia Wilson |
FROM THE NEW YORKER:
"THE VERY AMERICAN KILLING OF NIA WILSON"
The C.D.C. has found that black women die by homicide at nearly three times the rate that white women do.
In the immediate aftermath of Wilson’s killing, some members of her family, and of the larger black community, expressed uncertainty that the police would find her killer at all.
Their mistrust was not unfounded; the Washington Post has identified “pockets of impunity” in American cities where police often fail to solve homicides. Oakland has two such clusters. In a 2007 essay titled “The Missing White Girl Syndrome,” Sarah Stillman described how certain victims—typically white, upper middle class, and beautiful—become “worthy” of public fascination.
The mourning of Wilson on Instagram and Twitter is a shrewd and agonizing kind of revisionism: the ubiquity of her smiling face reframes our cultural devotion to the innocent and beautiful dead girl, who has not previously been imagined as having brown skin.
There is a blinkered symmetry
to the way Americans have been taught
to understand
violence that is gendered
and
violence that is racialized:
the victims of the former are white women;
the victims of the latter are black men.
The same violence, when visited upon black women,
falls outside the recognizable parameters of victimhood,
and thus fails to register.
According to a study by Washington University published earlier this year, black women are more likely than any other demographic to have been unarmed when killed by law enforcement...
Black transgender women are murdered at a disproportionately high rate and have an abysmal life expectancy, a fact that is treated as an aberration rather than a systemic ill. As Linda Villarosa reported in the Times Magazine earlier this year, black women are three to four times as likely as white women to die in childbirth.
And violence against black women is an often neglected part of our national history. In April, on the occasion of the opening of the National Memorial for Peace and Justice, a commemoration of lynching victims, in Montgomery, Alabama, the Yale scholar Crystal N. Feimster, drawing on the journalism of Ida B. Wells, wrote in an Op-Ed for the Times, “When most Americans imagine lynching, they envision the tortured and mutilated body of a black man accused of raping a white woman. They rarely think of a black woman ‘stripped naked and hung...’ ”
Read More: https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/the-very-american-killing-of-nia-wilson
MURDERER
 |
| James Lee Cowell |
FROM SFGATE:
SUSPECTED BART KILLER CHARGED WITH MURDER
On Tuesday, [the killer's family] released a statement saying [James Lee Cowell] has a history of mental illness and was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia before living on the streets without treatment the last few months.
Cowell was released in May from the California Men’s Colony in San Luis Obispo after serving a two-year sentence for robbery, records show. His family said he’d served part of his sentence at nearby Atascadero State Hospital, which treats criminal defendants and mentally ill prisoners.
read more https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Suspected-BART-killer-to-appear-in-court-father-13104180.php
THE ULTIMATE FACILITATOR
 |
| Ronald Wilson Reagan |
FROM POVERTY INSIGHTS:
Did Reagan’s Crazy Mental Health Policies Cause...
Within our country’s homeless population, a quarter of a million people—or one-third of the homeless population—struggle with some sort of mental illness.
For those of us who encounter people experiencing homelessness on a daily basis, this is not surprising. We see that man walking down the sidewalk angrily screaming at an imaginary person, haunted by some phantom or past memory, every day. We also see people steering their children across the street to get away from the potential danger.
In America’s cities, many of us are so immune to such disturbances that we just continue reading our email on our smartphones without even looking up. It is just another crazy part of our urban lifestyle. But when I see people like this, my first thought is always the same: Why isn’t this man institutionalized? He certainly is not living a dignified life out here on the streets.
When I ask my mental health colleagues about this, the one political figure that typically comes up is former President Ronald Reagan.
It’s like an urban legend in our field. People say the reason so many people with mental illness are homeless or in jail—one-third of all homeless individuals and half of all people behind bars—is because of President Reagan.
Really? What did he do? Let all of the mentally ill patients loose?
Well, yes, that’s exactly what they say he did.
Over 30 years ago, when Reagan was elected President in 1980, he discarded a law proposed by his predecessor that would have continued funding federal community mental health centers. This basically eliminated services for people struggling with mental illness.
read more http://www.povertyinsights.org/2013/10/14/did-reagans-crazy-mental-health-policies-cause-todays-homelessness/
So, James Lee Cowell really is mentally ill.
It seems like this was not just some lie thrown out to explain yet one more example of inexplicable violence white men aim at black and brown people, women as well.
But the fact of his mental illness does not mean he didn't select Nia Wilson and her sister to stab because their skin color was different than his.
Mental illness and violent white supremacy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they walk hand-in-hand more often than not. But every diagnosis of mental illness does not indicate a person does not know right from wrong. The tweets and mumblings of the current leader of this country should be proof enough that this is true.
But Cowell also could have stabbed her because Wilson was a pretty girl.
Non-mentally ill men, especially those raised by misogynistic fathers as well as those who have problems attracting women can (and do) verbally attack women all the time, calling us "sluts," "hoes," and "gold diggers" -- and that is a race-less reality in this country, almost a national past time among too many men.
In other words, we may never know this killer's motives. Actually, it's likely we'll never know.
The white men labeled "mentally ill" for convenience's sake immediately after they've commit a heinous crime are never allowed to speak. Cowell, truly mentally ill and criminally responsible or not, will not be allowed to tell us even if he wants to.
Nia Wilson might be alive today.
By the way, I think most black people who have spent any time at all in the hood know that our poor, mentally ill people were barely taken in by the mental institutions available prior to Ronald Reagan deciding that nobody that wasn't
As always though, the disregard shown for poor blacks usually comes to impact everyone in the country, including white people who didn't care when it was just *crazy lazy, character deficient black people* sleeping in the streets at night.
Thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan got rid of funding for state run mental health facilities he was simply throwing white people he considered worthless in the trash too.
A large percentage of the deaths of the mentally ill homeless as well as the murders committed by the mentally ill homeless can be laid at the white folks' favorite president's feet.
I'm thinking Cowell's mental illness may have been the blade that cut Nia Wilson down but, through Ronald Reagan, it was white male supremacy's cold deadly hand wielding weapon itself, as usual.
BLACKCHICKROCKED.BLOGSPOT.COM
It seems like this was not just some lie thrown out to explain yet one more example of inexplicable violence white men aim at black and brown people, women as well.
But the fact of his mental illness does not mean he didn't select Nia Wilson and her sister to stab because their skin color was different than his.
Mental illness and violent white supremacy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they walk hand-in-hand more often than not. But every diagnosis of mental illness does not indicate a person does not know right from wrong. The tweets and mumblings of the current leader of this country should be proof enough that this is true.
But Cowell also could have stabbed her because Wilson was a pretty girl.
Non-mentally ill men, especially those raised by misogynistic fathers as well as those who have problems attracting women can (and do) verbally attack women all the time, calling us "sluts," "hoes," and "gold diggers" -- and that is a race-less reality in this country, almost a national past time among too many men.
In other words, we may never know this killer's motives. Actually, it's likely we'll never know.
The white men labeled "mentally ill" for convenience's sake immediately after they've commit a heinous crime are never allowed to speak. Cowell, truly mentally ill and criminally responsible or not, will not be allowed to tell us even if he wants to.
The stigma of mental illness makes it possible for the white men of law enforcement to use mental illness as a sort of shield to stop the pubic from getting any more information after a fellow white man is arrested. Police, lawyers, and judges publicly treat the "mentally ill" perpetrator as though nothing that person has to say could ever be relevant to anybody for any reason.
So, again, we may never know what Cowell's true motive was.But the thing I think we do know is this: State run governments and families would have had a place to put Cowell, and violent, criminally inclined men just like him, once they refused to take their medication or the medication wasn't controlling negative impulses adequately.
Nia Wilson might be alive today.
By the way, I think most black people who have spent any time at all in the hood know that our poor, mentally ill people were barely taken in by the mental institutions available prior to Ronald Reagan deciding that nobody that wasn't
White male supremacy has always taken care of the white rich 100x as much as the white middle class and white poor. The white rich and powerful use them, giving them scraps, and the promise of a seat at the table. But black people are left out in the cold altogether, and that includes black folks who need healthcare and mental healthcare --especially when the black people in question are poor....was worth worrying about.
- white
- male
- upper-middle class or richer
- mentally whole
As always though, the disregard shown for poor blacks usually comes to impact everyone in the country, including white people who didn't care when it was just *crazy lazy, character deficient black people* sleeping in the streets at night.
Thirty years ago when Ronald Reagan got rid of funding for state run mental health facilities he was simply throwing white people he considered worthless in the trash too.
This may sound familiar to you because the pattern was the same with the "The Drug War" --which wasn't initiated by Ronald Reagan, but certainly picked up speed under him.
When illegal drugs were destroying black and brown families, the white national conversation said this was due to character and cultural deficiencies.
Later, when illegal drugs finally snatched 10 year old Bucky's life in Wyoming then "Just Say No" (to Drugs) became the national motto.
Now that we've admitted "Just Say No" wasn't worth the poster board it was written on -- as indicated by Buckys and Beckys still dropping like house flies due to illegal drug use-- there's federal funding for drug addiction. For the very white "Opioid Crisis" this country has money to fix the problem when there was nothing but prison for black and brown crack addicts
...as well as the black and brown mentally ill.
A large percentage of the deaths of the mentally ill homeless as well as the murders committed by the mentally ill homeless can be laid at the white folks' favorite president's feet.
I'm thinking Cowell's mental illness may have been the blade that cut Nia Wilson down but, through Ronald Reagan, it was white male supremacy's cold deadly hand wielding weapon itself, as usual.
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