By Lucius Gantt
Almost every day you turn on your radio or television set, local broadcast stations and national news will gather their hand-picked colored commentators to explain to angry protestors why a few bad apple officers are making other law enforcers look really bad.
To me, a few is at least 30 per cent.
If there are one million police officers in the United States, there are at least 300,000 racists, white nationalists and white supremacists wearing badges that are deployed into your communities nationwide to do what they want to do to you, handle you how they want to handle you, speak to you how they want to speak to you and kill you if they want to kill you!
Every governmental department is a “police department”. Every governmental department, every government agency and every governmental commission, every governmental task force and every governmental study group looks at and treats Black citizens and Black taxpayers differently!
Your city councils and county commissions deal with Black citizens the same way as law enforcers.
Government employees come from the same labor pools that policemen come from. If ku klux klansmen, skin heads, neo-nazis, boogaloo brothers and other racists are desired on police forces, what makes you think that kind of person never works in public housing, public health, recreation, public utilities and other government departments?
Do you want to be a “parking lot protestor” that goes to marches to take selfies to post on social media? Do you go to protests to fight the power or to chase the protest cats?
Regardless of your intent, corporate America will look at you as a trouble maker or a rabble-rouser who gains popularity in a democracy by exploiting emotions, prejudice, and ignorance to arouse the common people against elites, whipping up the passions of the crowd and shutting down reasoned deliberation.
Nowadays, the first place businesses go to see who potential employees really are is to look at job applicants’ social media pages. What’s on your profiles?
If you’re serious about equal rights and justice, you’re not just serious about a protest, you’re serious for life!
Mr. Floyd, Mr. Garner and others of all races that were murdered by law breaking police officers have said “I can’t breathe!”
Well, the Black people that live near environmental hazards can’t breathe, the Black people that live near waste treatment facilities can’t breathe and the Black people that live near leaking nuclear power facilities can’t breathe either!
Black people should be tired as hell of catching hell!
We should listen to, believe in and follow Black men and women that have a plan for Black American and worldwide Black progress.
Blacks are protesting worldwide because Blacks are being discriminated, denied, deprived, disgusted, disparaged and disrespected worldwide.
In my mind, if we want to go forward, we have to go back. I’ll explain that in future columns.
Young people are repeating quotes they heard when they watched a Malcolm X movie. But they don’t want to repeat Malcolm’s views about Black nationalism and self-determination, they don’t want to reveal and expose modern day house negroes and, in this time of a very important election, young protestors are told not to even dream about repeating the words of Malcolm’s “Ballot or the Bullet” speech.
If our youth have no desire to seek advice from their American elders that have been freedom fighters all their lives they will continue to be misled, led astray, tricked, trapped, bamboozled and jacked by 2020 cracker jacks who want to give you as little equal rights and justice as they can. So called laws that youth are seeking will be watered down like unsweetened Kool-Aide.
I’m no prophet. Many of the things I write have been said and written before.
Read Frantz Fanon’s “Black Skin White Masks, Marcus Garvey’s “The Tragedy of White Injustice” or “Emancipated From Mental Slavery” and other books by Black and African revolutionaries.
I have a plan for Black progress. Other Blacks have plans. I encourage Black colleges and universities to put together forums or debates that will give our people the opportunity to decide which Black voices are best and what Blacks voices are dull knives, talking loud and saying nothing!
An army of Black sheep led by a Black panther, can easily defeat an army of white wolves led by a sheepish clown!
Every department is a “police department” designed to hold you back. Believe that.
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.