“This is not grieving, and this is not making a statement …this is life-threatening…dangerous…this is not about George’s death. This is about chaos being caused.”
～Tim Walz, Governor of Minnesota
Are rioters making a statement or just causing chaos? Is this the appropriate way to react to yet another racist murder? The inhumane murder of George Floyd by police has sparked protests, not only in Minnesota, but all across the United States. Recently, following (way too) many police-brutality incidents, in which cops have functioned more like private race-soldiers or bounty-hunters than public-officials concerned with protecting citizens, many believe the image of Officer Derek Chauvin—who is white—with his knee crushing a black man’s (Floyd) neck while being flanked by three officers, is the symbolic logo of what talk-show host, Zo Williams, calls “The Remaking of American Society.” Whether we examine the details of this case, Ahmaud Arbery being attacked for jogging in Georgia, or Breonna Taylor getting murked by a lynch-mob wearing Kentucky Police uniforms, it’s hard to argue with this point of view.
Dred Scott still in Effect?
In 1857, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the landmark case, “Dred Scott v. Sandford”, that the Constitution did not include blacks—regardless of whether free or enslaved—as American citizens. Therefore the rights and privileges the Constitution confers upon citizens does not apply to them.
If we compare the murders already mentioned with those of Eric Garner, Philando Castile, Mike Brown, Sandra Bland, Oscar Grant, etc., all the way back to Emmitt Till, the U.S. government has consistently demonstrated this to be the case; blacks are not protected by the law like white people. Although integrationists, liberals, optimists, and coons, are quick to explain how the rulings in the Dred Scott case were replaced by the 13th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, which supposedly abolished slavery and guaranteed citizenship for blacks, this debate is just as asinine and useless as arguing the Willie Lynch Letter is not authentic. Who cares if there was actually a letter written by a redneck named Willie? What’s important is, the strategy explained in the letter—to this day—is still being used to keep blacks fragmented, disunited, and at each other’s throats. In other words, it matters little what name is used for the ‘Divide and Conquer’ tactic because the game remains the same. Likewise there are so many loopholes, not to mention new policies being implemented every year to keep blacks in their disenfranchised state, that it can easily be argued—just ask Amy Cooper—that nowadays black lives, in fact, do not matter.
“Riots are the voices of the unheard”～Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
Minnesota Governor, Tim Walz addressed the media at about 1:30 a.m. Saturday, after another night of unrest, amidst the growing danger as rioting, looting, and fires raged on in Minneapolis.
“Let’s be very clear, the situation in Minneapolis is no longer in any way about the murder of George Floyd. It is about attacking civil society, instilling fear, and disrupting our great cities”
The governor went on and talked about the destruction of “infrastructure” and “businesses that took generations to build.”
On the surface level it almost sounds like a statement worth endorsing. That is until you take a cursory look at history and realize how Gov. Walz skipped over the most important part; he left out how blacks are at the foundation of the very infrastructure he’s referring to. Put another way, those same businesses he mentioned were established and able to thrive only because of the blood, sweat, and tears freely donated by black people. And all this occurred on land, and with resources, that was stolen from them. Therefore, understanding the majority of the folks out there on the streets of Minneapolis (and elsewhere) are comprised mainly of the descendants of those cheated ancestors, is this not a form of poetic justice? Politicians, along with historians and journalists, go out of their way to avoid admitting something we already know to be true: the fact that blacks are indigenous to the Americas. In this regard, it’s tiring to watch the “lame-stream media” paint European immigrants as Americans over blacks when numerous explorers, including their beloved Cristobal Colon (misnomered Columbus), tells us in his own journals that the original inhabitants of the Americas were “copper-coloured.”
For those who are having a brain-cramp, just compare the complexion of your average so-called African-American and so-called Native American with the color of an old penny. Who do you think Columbus was referring to? Other explorers, like Vasco Nunez de Balboa, also recorded seeing “Negroes” when he reached the New World; and this matches up with reports from Nicholas Leon, who is an eminent Mexican historian. His reports revealed accounts from natives saying “the oldest inhabitants of Mexico were blacks.”
So before you weigh-in on the rioting, please do some research on the true origin of the problem (as opposed to only what is presented by the media).
Riots to Revolution: “The Last shall be First”
For a moment, let’s imagine a world where the system of racism/white supremacy no longer exists. For many colonized subjects, at the very mention of this notion, they may start to feel anxious or even annoyed. This is due to the plethora of traumatic experiences they’ve been forced to endure in this lifetime (and perhaps others). Homi K. Bhabha, writes in the foreword of Franz Fanon’s The Wretched of the Earth: “How do the oppressed discover the enduring strength to found a free and just society, a national consciousness, if they are continuously aware of their own anxiety and fragility?” Where does this “anxiety and fragility” derive from?
Most people are familiar with how the slavemaster tortured or dismembered men right in front of their families; or vice-versa, how men were forced to watch their wives get raped, or even worse, see pregnant women get hung upside-down before having their bellies sliced open. However, not enough of us are consciously aware of how the images of blacks are being attacked on a daily basis at every level. It is this trauma which plays a significant role in the manufacturing of the petrified, buck-broken male we see everywhere. This is evident each time a black man pulls out his iPhone (instead of taking action) and points it at cops who are brutalizing other blacks—especially women. As a result the black female feels unprotected and, consequently, is forced into a frozen independent state of mind which causes her to subconsciously raise her children in reversed roles. Fearing that any young courageous man will be arrested or killed, she psychologically trains her son to be mentally weak and dependent; while conversely teaching her daughter to be like herself: strong and independent. The outcome of all this reverse-training is the beta-male and the undisciplined, unethical society we live in today. According to the Willie Lynch Letter, by continually “throwing the female slave into a psychological state of independence, by killing the protective male image, and by creating a submissive, dependent mind of the male slave, we have created an orbiting cycle that turns on its own axis forever, unless a phenomenon occurs and re-shifts the position of the male and female slaves…”
Could the riots be the impetus for this “phenomenon” to occur?
If not, what is it going to take to snap the majority of black men out of their cowardice and dependency? In any case, I salute the young warriors who are brave enough to take a stand and do something. As for anyone who doesn’t have the courage to lay the blame for the riots at the feet of the white supremacist government and, instead, claims the rioters are the problem, I leave you with the words of the most famous of the Soledad Brothers—the immortal George Jackson, himself:
“I didn’t create this impasse. I had nothing to do with the arrival of matters at this destructive end, as you infer. Did I colonize, kidnap, make war on myself, destroy my own institutions, enslave myself, use myself, and neglect myself, steal my identity and then, being reduced to nothing, invent a competitive economy knowing that I cannot compete? Sounds very foolish, but this is what you propose when you place the blame on me or on ‘us’.”
～George L. Jackson
God bless the Dead!
Takuan Amaru is the author of the trilogy, Gaikokujin- The Story
