A riot is the language of the unheard

[I may or may not add more to this later.. am unsure. As always, if people wish to comment I will answer if there is something to reply to.. if people wish to debate amongst themselves I only ask that you try to be as civil as possible without the name calling, and all of that...]

I was watching about the Baltimore riots earlier on tv, and it made me think of the quote by Martin Luther King, Jr when he said that “a riot is the language of the unheard” I was discussing it with a follower on here that asked me to do a stamp and write a few sentences [few sentences?.. eh I would say I failed at that limit] but yeah.. unsure what else to say.. here it goes.

Like MLK Jr, said here, I think that rioting is counterproductive to the aims that one wishes to pursue. But like he said in relation to the “unheard” part, he could have said this same thing a year ago and it would have been the same.

A Riot, as he said

If you wish to see the entire interview, it is here, from 1963 and is less than 5 mins

There is more to the quote,  “There's no doubt about that. I will agree that there is a group in the Negro community advocating violence now. I happen to feel that this group represents a numerical minority. Surveys have revealed this. The vast majority of Negroes still feel that the best way to deal with the dilemma that we face in this country is through non-violent resistance, and I don't think this vocal group will be able to make a real dent in the Negro community in terms of swaying 22 million Negroes to this particular point of view. And I contend that the cry of "black power" is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we've got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard. And, what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the economic plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few year”




Every time I speak of this issue, I get the BUT COPS KILL MORE WHITE PEOPLE!!!!! Yes, they do.
www.politifact.com/punditfact/…

Now, here was a study in 2002
fairandimpartialpolicing.com/d…

I said before, that I hope they do an updated version and sadly I doubt much would have changed.

In this study at which they looked at police shootings going back several years, and had police officers play a realistic shooting game and their numbers with the other available data out there found that a cop was more likely to shoot an unarmed Black person than they were to shoot a White individual who was holding a gun or knife.

Now, I am not saying OH THIS IS A BLACK VS WHITE PEOPLE THING, no, I am speaking of comparative natures of why some people may not be so trusting of law enforcement as others…


But let us look at the numbers,
According to the Census whites [non Hispanic] are over 62 percent of the country
Blacks are around 13 percent of the country

I do not wish for anyone to get killed.. but who is getting killed now? The system has not addressed the issues that were brought up during the latter parts of the civil rights movements that is racial disparities and economic inequalities.

Now, on the racial disparities part and law enforcement, when you have a people, in this case Black people, who are 1/5 the population of whites and yet are 3x more likely to be killed by cops that is something your system needs to address

When you have a system, as the 2002 study "The Police Officer’s Dilemma: Using Ethnicity to Disambiguate Potentially Threatening Individuals"

that looked at a few years of police shootings and racial discrepancies .. when you have cops who are more likely to shoot a black person who is unarmed than they are to shoot a white person holding a gun or a knife.. that is a systemic issue that once again.. has not truly been addressed

when you have police deaths going down over decades, and yet the number of people killed by cops, going up... according to the annual FBI police shootings reports [of which the FBI says is not complete because some departments do not even send their officer shootings to be calculated] then something is once again wrong with the system

as a nation we seem to be simply hopping and grieving ... something happens.. people grieve... people get angry that it keeps happening .. they believe the politicians that THINGS WILL CHANGE... it subsides.. until it happens again and the process starts over..

now that is merely speaking to the racial disparity of a system in the context of your status of Baltimore and its general relativity to cities around this nation

that is a separate though linked to the economic disparity of this country to which while there is a racial component .. over the decades the issue is more rich and poor than it is white and black which also brings about systematic abuses.. be it stop and frisk in New York.. be it a ticketing scheme in Ferguson, be it a over policed city like Baltimore... all speaks to a sound that is not being heard of the issues within a system that are not being addressed and have not been fully addressed in decades




The issue with Baltimore is sadly the issue with many inner cities around this country. A lack of care or concern on the plight of its people.. lack of investments in its educational institutions, harsh enforcements of petty crimes, harsh penalties for minor drug offenses... when you criminalize the nature of a people, rather than the individual .. you get what you have now going on in Baltimore.. which is no great different than you had decades ago when Baltimore had a riot in 1968 ... the very SAME issues in 1968 are the SAME issues in 2015... that is a lack of economic mobility of a people..and the lack of sensible laws to make such viable..

When I also speak of the economic issues and how to address this, of which the only ways at which I think to address this in a productive manner is better investment in education institutions, better reform of  the drug war, better

Now, I am in New York City, so I will speak to it some.
On the point of economic investing in schools and setting up people for defeat.

If you do not properly invest in your schools then all you are doing is babysitting them just old enough so they can get older so you can push them out of the system, having not prepared them not just for a job, but a career.

Education equitable funding is the core issue for this. In New York City, when Bloomberg was mayor a reporter once asked him why was an inner city school that was I believe in the Bronx, getting half as much than some of the schools in downtown Manhattan that only had a few hundred students.

So schools that were in the areas of the more privileged, that had 1/10 of the student population, were getting twice as much money in education funding. So with that, that means they have the money for newer text books, that means they have the money for the arts, that means they have the money for labs, that means they have the money for computers and all of that stuff. It says basically, at its base is that we feel these kids deserve more because as a city in this case that we expect more from these kids.

Conversely, what we say when we have a lack of investment in inner city schools is that we expect less from this group. That we do not think this group is as worthy to receive all of the possibilities to see if their potential can rise to the challenges.

I have said many of times, I believe in equal opportunities not equal outcomes.

Second after you have addressed, truly addressed your education system, the next must become your judicial and law enforcement systems.

This senseless war on drugs has failed, it is about time that we realized that. Now, I think marijuana should be legalized and all other drugs should be decriminalized. You should not go to prison because of a substance abuse issue. I think they should be sent to rehab which cost less than prison yet has a higher success rate than prison.

Then when it comes to prison reform, bring back trade programs and GED/Education programs to prisons.
In “The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness” Michelle Alexander also spoken some on  these programs

Prisons, many prisons have cut these saying that they cannot afford them. Which makes little  sense since the money they save actually far outweighs any of their cost,.

Someone who gets their GED/some type of degree in prison  are twice as likely not to return to prison.. if you can make it so someone is twice as likely, looking at the statistics of these programs, not to return to prison than the money you save from that revolving door more than pays for itself if you had the will to actually complete this as your aim..  the sad thing is that in many states the prisons are an industry, empty cells means less money for some states and as such it is not conducive to their economic aims to be building more schools than prison

When you have, just to use this as AN EXAMPLE, but a quick google you can find many examples of this
www.forbes.com/sites/mattstrou…

where you have states saying they cannot afford to keep schools open, closing schools yet can afford to open a new prison, something is deeply flawed with such a system.

Now, also, every time I post anything mentioning race, I always get the BLACK ON BLACK CRIME, now we can discuss Black on Black crime, and the issues over undereducated, the impoverished “majority minority” cities  and discuss the crime, but it would appear, every time we are speaking of officer shootings, we come back to black on black crime!!!!!!!  Which as stated, we can discuss but if it is being used simply to talk about something else than the issue being discussed then what are your real motives is what I would ask?

Or I get the, YOU HATE ALL COPS, no I do not. My father was a cop for many years, his side of the family have plenty of doctors, lawyers, judges, police officers, military people, FBI agents and other law enforcement people, so it is not about hating police officers, or casting a general hate of law enforcement… it speaks to a system, or rather I am trying to speak to a system at which we, as nation have many things to addressed that are seemingly systematic in their inception to delivering.

Now, it is not for me a rich vs poor thing in the generality of the scope, it is not for me a Black vs white thing in the generality of the scope but it is a thing at which all of these things should be discussed.  We should discuss all of the issues

I often get the IF YOU DO NOT WANT TO BE TARGETED BY THE COPS THEN STOP BREAKING THE LAW!!
I understand that I am a big guy, 6'6", 275-300 muscular build... yet it seems 1-3x a month when I am jogging, or just walking down the streets I am stopped by the NYPD .. most times it is.. why are you running? you mean why am I jogging on the jogging path?..  and I seem to always fit some description. I have spoken before where I was with a friend, [who is white] and we were driving up to his parent's home upstate and the cops stopped us with their guns drawn and kept pointing their gun at me like SHOW ME YOUR HANDS!!!! ..and kept asking my friend, who was driving "are you alright, sir?" .. as if I had kidnapped him or something ..after a few moments of my friend telling them that he was okay the asshole who has his gun pointed in my face like show me your hands... just said have a nice night and let us go, no ticket, no reason for stopping us at all..  situations like this have happened to me quite a few times in my life time to a point where I am pretty much used to it by now.


In closing, I shall utilize a few sparse MLK quotes, at which I think does well for an ending
“But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.”
― Rev.Dr.Martin Luther King Jr.



Now, I am sure I will keep seeing certain segments of the media say IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH RACE!!!!... now, is race "all of it" of course not, there are many things at which are greater factors in the grand socioeconomic scheme of things
www.politifact.com/truth-o-met…
It is not simply Black and white as I said as much as it is rich and poor.. 93% of the 100 poorest counties in America are in red states, or were as of one year ago when this politifact was done... most of those counties are majority white counties,  so it is not just oh Black this and White that because that would be simplifying a complex issue to an absurd extreme... the same issues that I spoke of above, should happen in these poorest counties as well.. that being greater investment in education, reforming of their judicial and enforcement systems, addressing the economic immobility within these places, regardless of race, gender, or situation..


This explains so much more of the history than my few pages of writing above
The Case for Reparations
www.theatlantic.com/features/a…
By Ta-Nehisi Coates

www.apa.org/monitor/features/k…
^Martin Luther King piece.


Other pieces to check out:
Bigger than Ferguson atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Blacks and Reparations - question asked of me  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Blacks, Conservatives, Hatred, God, Obama and more  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Quick Email Question: Detroit  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Conservatism and Black People Email question  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
The issue isn't guns - it's poverty and GA Gun law atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
The issue isn't guns - it's poverty stamp atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Michael Brown, Race Issues and More...  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Getting politically active ... and rambling  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
A leftist's views on gun and race politics  atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…
Race Relations: Judicial- Social - Law Enforcement atheosemanon.deviantart.com/ar…

As always comrades,
Let knowledge be that truth, which portrays humanity, condemns malevolence; that respects the differences in others while abandoning the hatred and misconceptions of the past.
-Emanon