Black Lives Matter Is Not Actually About Black Skin

Sandra Bland, Michael Brown Jr., Eric Garner and now Sam Dubose.

These are the black lives that might have mattered if they were not quite so black.  I'm not actually referring to their skin color, though I'm certain that melanoma played a role in their deaths.  I'm referring to their black characterizations that quickly became the narrative reason why losing these lives didn't really matter as much because of THC in the blood, taking or selling tobacco products or driving without a license.

When the young white lady got killed by a Mexican illegal, Fox News ran that story as though little white girls in America are getting accidentally killed by Mexican illegals every day but we just don't hear about it.  The criminal that admitted to the crime was sufficiently blackened for his five time, illegal return to America, while the victim and her family were treated with the grace and dignity that they deserved.  Her background wasn't publicly besmirched like Trayvon Martin was after George Zimmerman took his life.

The real idea of black lives matter is the notion that a white boy suspected of murdering the Emmanuel 9 gets the kind of dignity that Sam Dubose was begging for when he asked University of  Cincinnati  police officer  Roy Tensing to simply run his name and confirm that he was a licensed driver who lived in the area.

Was Dubose concerned that a minor incident was quickly escalating towards the demise he endured when he tried to start his car and drive away? Officer Tensing was forcibly attempting to remove the driver from his car  just as Dubose appears to think to drive away instead of standing clear of the door and requesting the driver to exit the car as is normal procedure with non-violent confrontations. If there was any damage to Tensing's arm that happens from the car pulling away (he claims a tingling in his arm after the incident), it appears to happen after Tensing has already shot Dubose in the head and as his limp body presses on the accelerator which then forces Tensing to the ground when the car takes off. Apparently, driving without your license was concerning enough to this officer to the degree of forcibly figuring out why.

When Walter Scott ran away from an officer for reasons that only he could answer if he were still alive, his fleeing was about to be characterized as fleeing while struggling for the officers taser gun if a video didn't change the story.  The video bleached away the blackening of Scott that made the previous explanation of a long distance kill shot from the back plausible somehow.

Black lives matter is an attempt to stop making black people responsible for being church going people who are also in church at the time they get killed type church going people: who also have family that are full of grace and dignity in the face of hate and terror, before we feel the compassion it takes to empathize with the black legislators in South Carolina who reminded us for years that the Confederate message and the flag was both offensive and dangerous.


White Lives and Lion's Lives Matter Too?!?!

Black lives matter is a recognition that no man would persist to achieve something for someone else that they don't insure exists for themselves.  Black lives don't seem to matter at times because no lives really matter that much any more. What appears to be white derision towards disadvantaged blacks is more accurately described as subjugation of blacks in the pursuit of the green.  Poor people of every color are unfortunate victims of capitalism's engine. Post blackening the reputation of the victims of oppression is often times more about economics than racism. yet to fix this we must recognize that our weakest links are not responsible for the persistence of perception.

 This is a hard thing to digest because how exactly do you repair innocent victims from being stuck at the wrong end of the lens? If you have a blackened view of black people, it doesn't matter how pure white or young and innocent they actually might be.  Even 12 year old Tamir Rice couldn't get a customary "drop the gun or we'll shoot" command that could have saved his life.  Without this horrendous video, God only knows how blackened the reputation of this 12 year old boy would have been beyond the blame of being too old looking and playing with a pellet gun in the park which white boys apparently have never done.  Without the bleach of video, Rice would have been blackened with an accusation of pointing the gun at police to justify his killing.

Sam Dubose is the most recent killing and the Cincinnati prosecutor is trying the officer with murder.  He probably should be trying for a conviction that could be achieved, like manslaughter because the battle is now over whether or not this black man, who had no license and could have been driving away with the officers hand stuck in the car, deserved to die since the officer feared for his own life.  Because of the blackening of people who deserve better, half of America will see this video one way and the rest another.

Black lives matter is the dream of the day when most of us will see Dubose, the only one who didn't have a lethal weapon, fleeing the escalating aggression posed by the only person who did have a lethal weapon and see the exact same thing. What a dream.

WARNING!!  THIS VIDEO IS GRAPHIC

FULL LINK TO 27:52 CHEST CAM VIDEO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FicsKuLfpiw

Clementa Pinckney Might Be Eulogized Beneath Same Confederate Flag That Killed Him

Great men evidence themselves by the reverberation of their life and the lives they move when suddenly they're gone.

South Carolina State Senator Clementa Pinckney was the pastor of the church that Dylan Roof terrorized, killing Pinckney and 8 others. No terrorist deserves to be memorialized or even remembered outside of the information WE can gain about ourselves in their confessions. The 8 people who died with their pastor deserved to be remembered. They, alongside their pastor, are the lives that shook the ground beneath the South Carolina legislature who are moving like the wind to make sense of the loss of a loved one. If they fail and some special accommodation  is not made, pastor Pinckney will be buried beneath the flag that killed him.

Never before, in the face of so many previous tragedies, have we seen solidarity behind change like we are seeing with the Confederate flag conversation. Pastor Pinckney shows US that God's messengers will be called to unusual places to break stubborn chains, occasionally to the state Senate, but sometimes even home.

This conversation is making me feel like I need to make sense of the conservative soul that under girds my proactive socialism platform. I love God and country just like the next red-blooded American. Apple pie is not my favorite because some people don't know how to properly cook the apples, but that's nothing that vanilla ice cream can't fix, regardless of the apple texture.  I also can't wait to replace my old Chevy pickup that I inherited when my dad died. Eventually it died too, but don't blame that truck for my former lack of automotive prowess. Like any real conservative American man, I've learned to fix a lot of stuff on my Made In America Jeep, mostly because I know dad would be proud, even though my American truck is not a Chevy anymore.

The bust of the Klan's founder is in the state house of Virginia
and on the 1-65 Highway entrance into Tennessee along with
several confederate flags

I wish America would have boldly conserved God as a confessed, guiding part of our daily lives including school and government, and not just the mystic, androgynous small print on our money that we curse or call to during times of tragedy. Mother Emmanuel is a shining example of what you can overcome when keeping God first. I'm also conservative enough still to hate the necessity for abortion, but not for any religious guilt reasons as some of my fellow conservatives. I just dislike what the necessity of abortion says about the degradation of the family, which is scary enough to encourage more abortion's than ever before. That being said, young people protect themselves better when they have sex these days. I'm not conservative enough to equally hate abortions as much as those liberal condom distribution programs that some conservatives protest just like abortions, but I understand the chastity argument too.

Virginia is banning confederate flags on license plates,
but this Klan statue will welcome you to Virginia instead.

I  admit however, that I might have given in on insuring that heterosexuals are the only people miserably married, but I'm  still strongly in support of the free market.  I just don't know how to make sense of the imbalance between profit and wages any better than the next conservative.

I struggle reconciling my conservative leanings during these pivotal moments in history that demand change instead of  conserving a tired way of thinking. Maybe black, God loving conservatives like me need to  take some blame for letting the crazy crackers keep the Confederate flag alive for so long. Quietly, it sort of made sense to quietly allow flag rebellion masquerading as pride because it helped to quiet my own retributive hate.  For me, continuing to say, "you hated first" is an immature response to being hated, so I tacitly accepted the hate and the flag as justification for my own sour heart. 

And then one day I lost my twisted white hatred and found a way to be polite or rude to people of all colors equally. Polite people of opposing color have been quietly hating while smiling in each other's face for a long time because freedom allows for things we know exist, but never know in who.  From all reports, pastor Pinckney was  more than just a polite person, he was someone everybody knew as a man of deep integrity and conviction. Just the kind of man who could lead an historic church and a battalion of its soldiers into the army of the lord to do what the Union army couldn't complete after the Civil War.

Mississippi State Flag

If you don't believe that God is still in the miracle business, look at these weaponless soldiers from Mother Emmanuel AME church of South Carolina, lead by General Pinckney, who are posthumously storming the stairs of state capitol building's nationwide to finish the war against General Robert E. Lee, that the Union had previously won, but with an asterisk. In Mississippi, republicans are hoping to invoke a ballot initiative to shield their campaigning conservatives from having to do the right thing with their confederate flag, which is a part of the state flag. Soon, more states will follow.

The founder of the Klu Klux Klan is revered in Tennessee. 

Until recently, I had no clue like most people who actually honor this flag, that this was the flag of Lee's N. Virginia army, not of the entire Confederate army. The modern use of the image was created and adopted in memory of the confederacy by people who celebrated and honored this image with cross burning and lynching and defiance of America.  Those folks who made it a rallying image that inspired the killing of black people, did this under popular support that existed not so long ago if you check the history or the memorials that continue to be inspired by the confederate movement.

The terrorist themselves and the people terrorized by these Confederate flaggers are not all dead and gone, nor is the memory of the flag's connection to terrorism.  Moreover, the fight to get rid of the flag never died either, but it started to feel like one of those fights that take so long you start to forget what you're fighting for.

That was the fate of the debate before a black president made hate emerge from the shadow's and rise up to kill a friend that he must now eulogize.  Should America continue to allow states to wave the flag that emboldens the racist cause right along side our red, white and blue, which one murderous confederate chose to burn in private?

Waving an enemy flag should be a  personal and private act protected by America's respect for free speech, not one supported by the government of the people, by and for ALL people.  As obvious as that seems,  it took pastor Pinckney to deliver one more reverberating message- that's still rumbling throughout the entire congregation and beyond.

Lay your burden down pastor. This message is being written for you.