Making the rounds is a video showing some Baltimore policemen purportedly having fun as they show how Freddie Gray died. If this video is not a fake, one has to ask what type of mentality does the police choose to become law enforcement officers. How can ghoulish acts like these be a cause for celebration? They likely would have gotten away with it if there wasn’t a camera recording their actions.
While we are at it let us ask why is it that many Black men and women on becoming police officers descend into depravity and participate in the wanton and casual decimation of their own kind? Is that a police thing? Don't they know that they too can be subjects of police brutality and die needlessly once they are not in uniform? Don’t they understand that being Black is the main qualification for police terror to rain down upon you? It made me sick to realize that there are three Black officers among those indicted.
Is it impossible for reality to dawn on some of us to understand the high price this society demands of us just for being Black? Please don't assume that this is only an American problem! Check out the conditions of our people in whichever part of the world we're in to realize that essential truth.
Yet so many of us prefer to drink and smoke and party and squander the amazing talents that our Maker endowed us with. Don't get me wrong in thinking that I am condemning having a good time. How can I? From time to time we all need a relief from the pressures of life. But, shouldn’t there be a balance? Shouldn’t we always remind ourselves of the slogan that says "A mind is a terrible thing to waste." Shouldn't that mean something to us? Which brings me to ask, aren't we obligated to our ancestors who sacrificed so much not to mention suffered unspeakable evils, to honor and make them know that their suffering was not in vain? At the end of the day as so often is the case, all we have to show in return is doing time in Uncle Sam's big houses, or wantonly killing each other with little regard for life.
Why are we so much our own worst enemy? When will we learn? When are we going to rise as Maya Angelou reminded us (God bless her soul), to show the world what we are made of? Why are we limiting our amazing innate prowess mainly to the physical? What about the mental? When will our Martin Luther King Blvds be roads that really honor the memory of Dr. King? When will we make society be proud to send their children to a George Washington Carver school without immediately assuming the worst?
Never mind the slings that are being hurled at Bill Cosby. He was berated for addressing similar thoughts, so I won’t be surprised to be likewise attacked. Sooner or later though, we will have to face up to some hard truths once we start asking who are we.
