In search of equal justice
2nd August 2021 · 0 Comments
Black people in America have endured four centuries of hatred, exclusion and the denial of equality and justice at the hands of white people. Our kidnappers and enslavers set the tone for this treatment in 1619. We were tortured, raped, beaten, sold off, made to work for free under the penalty of death, and counted as three-fifths human, without any rights that a white man was bound to respect.
Flying down the centuries, we endured slave patrols, domestic terrorism, lynching, murder by the Ku Klux Klan and elected officials refusing to respect our constitutional rights. We saw our towns burned to the ground, our economic legacies ruined, and the continuation of systemic and institutionalized racism that took a significant toll on our ability to prosper and succeed in obtaining the American dream.
The common thread that runs through this continuing practice and pattern of degradation, murder, and disregard for Black lives is that many whites in authority don’t hold whites accountable. Political pressure, public exposure, and protests sometimes work, but getting justice from tribal whites, white supremacists that believe in white privilege and wielding power and authority is like getting blood out of a stone.
The murders of Emmett Till and Medgar Evers in Mississippi are two 20th century cases that exemplify white supremacists’ tribal and klanish nature. All-white juries acquitted Till’s and Evers’ murderers. The racists who killed Till admitted they murdered the 14-year-old during an interview with Look Magazine. Thirty years passed before Evers’ murderer was convicted of killing the civil rights leader.
In the 21st Century, we see a continuation of the same pattern and practice. Badge-wearing, gun-toting, trigger-happy cops and white citizens killing unarmed Black people. The list is too long to recite here, but a wanna-be cop, a neighborhood watch racist, murdered Trayvon Martin. Ahmad Arby was killed by white domestic terrorists while jogging. Michael Brown, Philando Castile, Terry Crutcher, Breonna Taylor, Rashard Brooks, Elijah McClain and Tamir Rice – all were murdered by killer cops who weren’t charged or held accountable. Sandra Bland died in police custody under suspicious circumstances. Jacob Blake was shot in the back seven times by a cop. Blake is paralyzed from the waist down. But the cop wasn’t charged with reckless endangerment or for purposefully shooting this young man in the back at point-blank range. Everyone knows that a shot to the spinal cord causes paralysis.
Why is there no justice in these cases? The answer is simple. White people don’t hold white people accountable for the crimes they commit. We’re talking about white judges, district attorneys, coroners, police leaders, prosecutors, and others with authority to exact punishment for crimes against humanity.
When compelled either by public opinion, protests, or political pressure, they offer slaps on the wrist to their white tribal mates for the most heinous crimes imaginable.
Ex-cop Amber Guyger, who killed Botham Jean, an accountant sitting in his apartment eating ice cream, recently asked the court to throw out her 10-year sentence. She’s eligible for parole in 2024.
Former cop Derek Chauvin almost got away with George Floyd’s murder. Chauvin got punished for Floyd’s murder because 10 Minnesota state legislators wrote a letter to Gov. Tim Walz asking that Attorney General Keith Ellison, a Black man, prosecute the case.
The lawmakers wrote that their constituents lost faith in Hennepin Country Attorney Mike Freeman to fairly and impartially investigate and prosecute the cases. The officials noted that a press conference, in which Freeman suggested that exculpatory evidence might exonerate the officers, caused mistrust in Freeman among their constituents of color. Chauvin drew a 22.5-year sentence.
On the other hand, the prosecution of former Minneapolis police officer Mohamed Noor, a Somali-American, was swift. He was convicted of third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter and sentenced to 12.5 years for the death of Justine Ruszczyk, an unarmed woman he killed while on patrol in 2017. When Noor saw Ruszczyk in the alley behind her house, the officer fired a single, fatal shot out his cruiser’s window. She had called 911 to report a sexual assault in the alley behind her home.
Yet, in cases where cops kill unarmed Black people, the sentences don’t fit the crime. Jason Van Dyke, a white former Chicago officer convicted of second-degree murder in the death of Laquan McDonald, a Black teenager shot 16 times, was sentenced to just under seven years; prosecutors had called for at least 18 years. In Balch Springs, Texas, Roy D. Oliver II, a white officer convicted of murder in the death of Jordan Edwards, who was black and 15 years old, was sentenced to 15 years; the prosecution was seeking at least 60 years, The New York Times reported.
But the most egregious example of white tribalism is the case of Kyle Rittenhouse. On August 25, 2020, Rittenhouse killed two protesters and injured a third two days after the cop shot Jacob Blake. His victims were white men who attended the Black Lives Matter protest for Blake in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The crimes are on cell phone video.
This 17-year-old murderer’s mother drove him to Wisconsin from Illinois.
After killing the men, Rittenhouse walked calmly in the middle of the street, hands up, assault rifle around his neck. Responding to gunshots, cops in armored trucks passed right by Rittenhouse.
Rittenhouse’s extradition hearing was delayed twice by a white judge in Illinois and uncontested by Illinois’s white female state’s assistant attorney. One of Rittenhouse’s attorneys is Lin Wood, who is also Sean Hannity’s lawyer. Rittenhouse was released on bail in November after his $2 million bond was paid.
Wisconsin Judge Bruce Schroeder, who will hear the case, delayed Rittenhouse’s trial until November 2021 and refused to increase Rittenhouse’s bail or issue an arrest warrant requested by prosecutors after Rittenhouse failed to report an address change. Protesters are calling for Schroeder, who is white, to step down.
First of all, whoever heard of a murder suspect who killed two people and injured a third with an assault rifle getting bail and not even wearing an ankle monitor? This murderer is free and allegedly living in a “safe house.”
NPR reported in March that months after his release, Rittenhouse was spotted in a Wisconsin bar with possible members of the Proud Boys, an extremist group that federal prosecutors say played a critical role in storming the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
And let’s not get started on the January 6 insurrectionists who are home waiting to go to trial. One woman was allowed out of jail so she could attend a business conference in Mexico.
It should come as no surprise that white judges have given white seditious criminals get-out-of-jail cards. Meanwhile, white supremacists on Capitol Hill are downplaying the insurrection, with one saying the insurrection was like a regular tourist event.
White Tribalism fueled by white privilege and white supremacy is alive and well.
This article originally published in the August 2, 2021 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
