Are all violent crimes hate crimes?

'Sup.

How's your 2014 been so far? Mine's been...interesting. Not bad necessarily, just interesting. But I worked out this morning, so my blood is pumping and I'm ready to write a new blog post. Sweet.

Maybe you've heard and maybe you haven't, but a white guy shot and killed another white guy recently, because the first white guy wouldn't stop texting on his phone at the movies. In Florida.

Florida, what is the deal? You have been in the news for all the wrong reasons lately. Pull yourself together, (wo)man.

Here is a link if you'd like to read more.

Lots of thoughts about this, so let's just do it stream of consciousness style...

--If the guy who was dead was black, this would be getting a lot more news coverage. And some people would for sure be calling it a hate crime (or at the very least, racially motivated.) Which leads to the question...

--Is it possible for a white person to aggress against a black person and it not be a hate crime? How do you know when a crime has gone from just being a crime crime to a hate crime?

--Related: How come you never hear about black people committing hate crimes against white people? Is that even possible? Why or why not? One of the most common things that I see when I encounter writings of people on the internet who would describe themselves as white supremacists are these examples of crimes where white people were kidnapped and/or tortured and/or killed by black people, and the media is not covering the story and no one is calling it a hate crime.

--Statistically speaking, is it more common for a white person to be killed by a black person, or a black person to be killed by a white person? It is important to note that the probability of being killed by another person period is extremely, extremely low--I am just curious about the numbers.

--The guy who did the shooting was a retired cop. Not doing a lot to help the reputation of cops. I also heard that when they arrested him, they handcuffed him in the front, which is against protocol. I guess to make him look less like a common criminal. Again, not the best time to have your fellow cop's back. You can read more on my measured, rational ideas about the police here.

--I don't really see the point in hate crime legislation. I get it, the government is trying to send a message that -isms and -phobias are bad. They think the way to show that is to add extra time to your sentence if you do a crime because of an -ism or phobia. But the problem is this: Prisons suck, and they do very little to rehabilitate the people who go to them. So making a racist or homophobe spend more time in jail doesn't solve any problem. If anything, it creates a distraction because then politicians can say, "Hey look we care about this, as evidenced by us creating this extra punitive measure on the back end." Then, they do nothing about the front end and want us to think that's progress. But that leads to an even bigger question...

--What can they even do on the front end? People with these biases have a problem with their thinking, and it's not the government's job to be the thought police. I feel like this is an example of When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. The government's power comes through its ability to make laws, and at times I wonder if they think they can legislate racism out of existence. Obviously there is a lot that can be done for more justice in the court system, banking, and schooling just to name a few. But I wonder how much of this change needs to come from laws, and how much just needs to come from people who realize that we don't want to continue doing things the way we're doing them currently.

--Ok, I think that's all for now. If you have some thoughts that you'd like to share, you know I'd loove to hear them. Two "o"s. If that doesn't motivate you, I don't know what will.


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Music Mondays, and why hearing Black is Beautiful shouldn't scare you...

This song is for all of my black girls (and women). If you want to read the lyrics, you can click here.



Originally, I was just going to leave it that. But then I remembered this post, where I learned that it's important to explain to avoid ambiguity. And if you don't learn from your life experiences and change your behavior accordingly, what the heck are you doing with yourself?!

First, something non race-related: It's actually not a good idea to tell your children that if someone ever hurt them, that you would kill that person. Because God forbid someone was harming your children, the fear that you would go to jail for seeking revenge could actually keep your child from telling you about it. And we don't want that.

Okay, moving on...

I really like this song. It's got a great beat, and a positive, uplifting message. I hesitated a bit to post it here, because I don't want to give the impression to my white readers that being a black woman is just a giant bag of suck. I mean, the song is called Black Girl Pain for Pete's sake. But the reality is that black and brown girl's do face unique challenges that other people don't (if you need some examples, click here or here.) I'm sure this part of why Talib Kweli and Jean Grae chose to write what someone on Rap Genius called An Ode to Black Women.

I also know that some people might be put off by me saying, "This is for all of my black girls (and women)." Saying it's for one group of people implies that it's not for others. So...if you are not a black woman, but identify with any of the themes in the song--then it is for you as well.


But...why do I have to say that? Why are some people uncomfortable with hearing pro-black messages? Why are such messages sometimes perceived as Reverse Racism?

It's true, whenever you hear someone expressing a pro-white message, they usually have shaved head and a swastika and/or confederate flag on their jacket. So if pro-white is racist, then wouldn't pro-black be racist too?

No, and here's why: Being pro-black is more like being pro-Irish than it is being pro-white. When a white identity is discussed, it is usually in reference to white people being better than other people. The only people you hear talk about being proud to be white are white supremacists. But there are lots of Irish (and Italian and Polish and other,) Americans that are proud of their heritage, difficulties that they've overcome, distinct parts of their culture, etc. The reality is that white is way too big of a category for people to have legit sources of pride or connection. And it doesn't help that the whole concept of white only came to exist to justify the subjugation of people that weren't white. So it's kind of a flawed grouping to begin with. (I'm not saying white people are flawed, I'm saying the categorization of people as white has problems.)

But when you hear that someone is a proud Irish-American, people don't immediately become fearful, or think those Irish-Americans need to get over themselves or anything like that. You just think we're talking about a group that is proud of a unique part of their identity. And if you know anything about the history of white people in this country, you know that these white ethnics were pressured to give up their identities and assimilate (i.e. become more like the white immigrants from Western and Northern Europe that had arrived before them.) Many did, which is part of why you hear so many white people referring to themselves as mutts, or thinking that they don't have a distinctive culture. But some resisted, and held on to the traditions of the countries they were emigrating from. [Granted, these white ethnics don't have centuries of being enslaved and then targeted by the U.S. government for various forms of maltreatment--but other than that, it's pretty similar. :p] They held on to things that were important to them, and made this country more interesting and dynamic as a result.

So, white people, the next time you hear a black person say something pro-black, don't be scurred. Unless they're advocating physical violence towards you, I don't think you've got anything to be worried about.

And to all my black girls out there, when the world starts to get you down, remember:

Please hold your head up high
Don't be ashamed of yourself, no I
carry you forth until the day I die

belee' 'dat. (:

What do you think? Let me know by leaving me a comment.




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Black people, camping and you.

Commercial time! I've been working on a post on ENDA, but it requires thinking and arguments and reasoning and whatnot, so it's been taking me awhile to get it up. But this post just requires me to be funny, which comes just about as easily as breathing ;) And now I'm cracking up, because I always crack up when I say something I think is funny.

OKAY...Watch the commercial below:




Black people in the wilderness! Woot woot! Big house, big cabin, no smooth jazz playing in the background*--This trend of people of color doing stuff that is not stereotypically associated with them might just be here to stay. I say might because it might not.

For example, I was watching this documentary about the 60's and the hippies. They were talking about how when an idea gets really big corporations co-opt it and then use it to sell their products. Like that, I'd like to teach the world to sing commercial that Coke put out. That was all about riding the wave of the various civil rights movements that were going on during that time and contorting it into an opportunity to sell product. Since we elected a black president, it is safe to say that we are looking for something different when it comes to race. Corporations are listening, and so now they're making commercials like the one above.

I am just wary because you know what happened after the 60's and 70's? The 80's. Politically it was a shift back in a lot of ways--the War on Drugs ramped up and really damaged the black community. I can't help but wonder if something similar is going to happen after Obama finishes up. Are we going to see some Reagan-esque guy get elected? The pundits are saying there's no way Republicans can ever win nationally again unless they change their strategy and reach out to groups of color, but is that really true? The Tea Party is mad as hell and not going to take it anymore. I could see one party getting complacent/cocky and another party getting fired up and organized and moving everything back a few decades. I'm not trying to say here that I think Democrat= good Republican= bad, even though it might seem like it. I'm just trying to point out the fact that these things seem to ebb and flow and I'm concerned that the move towards more multi-dimensional representations of black people might ebb again. I'm a fan of perma-flow.

In case you were wondering, I actually like camping. If by camping you mean sitting around a fire, drinking beer and looking at the stars. But if you mean not showering, walking far, and peeing on the ground, then no--I don't like camping. But I'm thinking this has more to do with my life experiences and personal preferences than being black.

So what do you think? Do you think the increased and varied exposure we're seeing of marginalized groups is here to stay? Why or why not? Feel free to talk about this or anything else in the comments.

*If you're a new reader, know that I like smooth jazz and many other things that are stereotypically associated with black people. I am not arguing that some presentations are better or worse, just advocating for a variety of representations like white people have the privilege of seeing. I would also strongly encourage you to like myblackfriendsays.com on Facebook and/or follow me on Twitter. Thank you kindly (:

I got assaulted by the police, and all I got was this big bag of money.

In our latest installment of Some Cops Behaving Badly we have the story of Dana Holmes, a white woman that was recently arrested for DUI just outside of Chicago. I will post the video, but it's 6 minutes long. For me, that is pushing it when it comes to attention span for videos on the internet. Here is a recap of the important parts: Three cops are there, and she is being patted down by one female officer. She lifts up her foot, the way someone might when being asked to show the bottom of their foot to someone else. All of a sudden, the cops grab her and throw her into a cell. They then proceed to strip her clothes off. She just lays there in the cell face down crying. Then a few minutes later they throw in a blanket for her to cover herself with.

Feel free to watch for yourself:



[ETA: here is a link to a shorter video that actually shows her clothes being removed.]

A couple things: In the police report, the officers claimed that she "kicked" one of them. Anyone with functioning eyes can see that is not what happened. To me, it looked like she was following instructions to show them her feet and then all of a sudden they got pissed and went cray. Also, they claimed they removed her clothes because they were performing a "strip search." I'm no cop, but I've watched plenty of cop shows. That is not how you do a strip search. For one thing, when you're searching someone with no clothes on you have them bend over so you can look up their butt to make sure they haven't hidden anything there. That didn't happen.

Why?

Because they weren't strip searching her, they were taking all her clothes off because they could, and she had clearly done something that they didn't like. They were trying to humiliate her and teach her a lesson. That lesson being: Don't F with the police.

I'm guessing she got the message.

This example shows us, that we live in a nation where regardless of race, color, creed or national origin--if you give cops attitude they all can (and some will,) make your life a living nightmare.

So let me tell you what is most likely going to happen next. First, I have to point out if this video didn't exist, absolutely nothing would happen. This would be a disturbing story that Dana Holmes told her friends and family, and that would be the end of it.

But since we have moving picture proof of the encounter, here's what's going to go down: Dana Holmes is going to sue the police department, and the officers involved are going to be put on paid administrative leave while they investigate. Ms. Holmes and the police are going to reach a settlement, where she receives a lump sum cash payment. It'll be anywhere between 50,000 and 500,000 dollars, depending on how good her lawyer is. The cops may or may not be reprimanded, but most likely all the cops involved will be allowed to keep their jobs. On the off chance they do get fired, they will go to their police union and challenge their firing(s). Then they'll get re-hired once all the media attention dies down. Ms. Holmes might spend her money to buy a house, or she might blow it all on meth to deal with the PTSD she got from being treated so callously by the police. Since it's her money now, she is free to do with it what she wishes.

Here are just some of the problems I have with the likely outcome to this situation.

1) I am a bit uneasy with the idea that people that go through traumatizing things get money for it. Obviously, no one is going to turn down money. But it seems like if you were the recipient of a bunch of cash from a lawsuit like this, the money would seem like blood money. How would you enjoy it? It seems like whatever you bought with it would just be a constant reminder of your horrible ordeal.

2) Paying money as punishment for doing something wrong makes a little more sense when you are talking about suing corporations, because corporations are motivated by money. But what about when you are talking about the government? The government doesn't have a profit motive. I'm not sure what the government is supposed to be motivated by. If I had to guess, I would say something like the common good . How is it in the interest of the common good to pay one person a large sum of taxpayers' money, and let the so-called public servants that caused the money to be paid to continue to work and receive more of the taxpayers' money? It's not.

3) I am not necessarily opposed to the idea of any victim of police brutality getting money. But the problem is that when we just pay off victims, and do nothing to change the system that caused the incidents in the first place. We are just inviting more incidents to happen. A better outcome in this situation would be for Ms. Holmes to get her check (or not,) AND have all the police involved in this incident fired and banned from working in law enforcement at any point in the future. The PD where this happened could put out a strongly worded statement saying how those officers were wrong, and they have no tolerance for such behavior. They would show this by retraining their officers and continuing to fire cops that decided to engage in such behavior in the future.

If I can turn this into a follow up friday for a moment, I want to go back to the last time I wrote about an incident of some police behaving badly. Except this was an unarmed black man who got shot 10 times by a cop. Yeah, he died.

My white friend Paula (whose late father was a cop,) said this:

I can assure you that no one dislikes bad cops more than good cops do.

Well Paula, they sure have a funny way of showing it. I have never heard a cop that is currently employed by a police department speak out publicly against another cop when they do something wrong. People who know me in real life, know that I don't use absolute language often. So when I say never, I mean never...not even one time.

It would be so great if these good cops would come together and create and organization called Police Against Police Brutality. Or maybe Police for Positive Policing. I said here that I don't like it when people always define themselves as against something.

I googled the first term I mentioned, and you know what I came up with? A group called something like Black Cops Against Police Brutality. And it looked like their website hadn't been updated since 1988.

Don't get me wrong, I am happy to see such a group exists. But it doesn't surprise me that black cops are against police brutality, since black people are disproportionately the victims of police brutality. Since cops are disproportionately white, I think it would be nice to see a group that encompassed police officers of all races that were committed to ending abuses in departments across the nation.

I'm gonna wrap it up here, because I've been writing for awhile. Once again, I have to give my disclaimer that I am in no way attempting to disparage all cops. I know from personal experience that some cops are quite cool. My general impression of the number of fleeting experiences that I've had with them is that if you're neutral or nice to them, they will be neutral or nice to you.

I am talking about the minority of cops that do damage to the reputation of cops as a whole. Some other examples of positive policing that could occur would be:

--Making videotapes like the one that recorded Ms. Holmes standard in all police departments, big and small. I also think that all cops on patrol should wear cameras on their person. There should also be serious penalties for departments that "lose" footage, because that seems to be an unusually common occurrence when said footage is subpoenaed in court cases.

--Removing the Internal Affairs department and having incidents of cop misbehavior be investigated by a panel that has nothing to do with the police. It would be awesome if the panel was just made up of randomly selected residents of the area that the department served.

--Making it easier to fire bad cops. This goes for teachers too. And anyone else that is protected by a union. If you're pro-union, you should not be pro-union so incompetent people can keep their jobs. There are many benefits that unions bring about, but keeping substandard employees employed shouldn't be one of them.

So, we'll see how the situation with Dana Holmes plays out. I am interested to hear what you think about what I've written, or about any of the topics I've discussed more generally. Click below all those colorful boxes at the end of this post where it says, " _some number_ comments" and leave me a comment.


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Baboons in a hot spring.

Now, I rarely ever blog about specific things just because people ask me to. Normally, I just like to wait until I feel like if I don't write about something, I'm gonna bust.

But when my OG weezermonkey asked me on Twitter to blog about this commercial, I just knew I had to. She's been with me since (almost) the very beginning, so who am I to say no? So without further ado, check out this commercial for the Samsung Smart TV:



Shout out to Samsung for reppin' the Asian and white interracial marriages. As the Asian half of such a couple I know says, Once you go brown, you don't turn around. According to weezermonkey, half white and half Asian kids are called hapa. I think I might have known that, but I also thought it might be kind of a derogatory term. If it is--take it up with her. I also know that it is the name of my favorite sushi spot, but that's neither here nor there.

I have a lot of the same feelings that I had about the infamous interracial family Cheerios commercial. I don't want to repeat myself, so if you'd like to read my thoughts on that one, you can click here.

After I saw the Samsung commercial, a word that came to my mind to describe this family was respectable.

Now, what does it mean to be respectable? What does it mean to show someone respect? I think to respect someone can mean to look up to them as someone to emulate. But I also think you can show respect to someone that you have no desire to be like. Because you respect all people and/or try to treat all people with respect.

So like when I talked about people looking nice, it's interesting how this family of well dressed people, in a large house, that just bought a very large (and probably very expensive,) tv immediately brings up the idea that they are people that are worthy of respect, or that they most likely behave in ways that I would like to behave.

So what do you think? What do you think it means to respect someone? Do you think that everyone deserves to be treated with respect, or that everyone automatically deserves respect? How you determine who gets respect and who doesn't? What does respectful behavior look like to you? Does someone have to show you respect to get respect back?

Just for the record, I don't like it when people say that not everyone deserves respect, and I also don't like it when people say they have to get respect before they give it. To me, that is like moving towards the lowest common denominator. But if you feel differently, that's fine. We can disagree--respectfully.

Let me know your thoughts in the comments.