"Rant Time"

Disclaimer: this document was written in the Summer of 2020 in less than a day by a younger me. This is copy-pasted from the original Amino post for archival purposes, but serves as a pretty good resource for what it is.

I will have small corrections that are signified by a "[ ]" All citations in [] are new.

Oh dear gooooddddd I need to get this off of my chest because I keep on seeing it and it is affecting my mental health at this point

I would also just like to preface this by saying that if a BIPOC tells you that something that you are doing is racist please don’t get angry and argue, listen. Especially if you’re not BIPOC. Our lived experiences are not a debate. [To clarify, this does not mean that every BIPOC person is absolutely correct in everything they say about race.]

For those who aren’t aware!! BIPOC stands for Black, Indigenous, People of Color. Sorry for not clarifying, I know there are a lot of allies that don’t know the meaning ^^”

[Content] warning for mentions of slavery, the holocaust, police brutality, violence, body horror, r@pe

In this current political climate, I am asking that you behave like a decent human being and not devalue the voice of the oppressed. If you are an all lives matter advocate, a not all cops are bad advocate, or are do not believe in systemic racism and how it permeates in society, I am asking that you take a second and see this from the perspective of a black person; one who has has to constantly defend [their] right to be valid and explain over and over again how certain things people say hurt our community.

First and foremost I would like to clarify the state of the black community and peel back the layers of what’s going on: WE NEED HELP. Despite there being representation and rich blacks and all of that there is still active discrimination against us in this country. We are under-represented, misrepresented, and constantly are undermined by systems in place.

Let’s start off with the 13th amendment. So basic history will tell you that slavery was abolished by this amendment. I would like for you to take a second and read the text of that amendment, courtesy of Cornell Law School.[1]

“Except as a punishment whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.”

Now let’s relate that to the issue of black incarceration and the police. Pre-civil war local law enforcement in the south was the Slave Patrol. Their job was to actively terrorize, beat, and capture any slaves that attempted to escape. In an article on the slave patrol by the law enforcement museum, an organization made to accurately portray information about law enforcement, modern law enforcement practices descended from practiced back then.[2]

What makes that absolutely terrifying is when you analyze what this information means. According to the Bureaux of Justice, the prison population of Black Males was 38%, compared to 29% of white males. While those percentages may look close, do keep in mind that the white population in the United States is 60% and the black population is 13.4%. What is even more terrifying is not only that we are 5 times more likely to be incarcerated.[I am still looking to find the exact report I pulled these numbers from.]

We are also more likely to be WRONGFULLY CONVICTED.

Please, black people don’t have a violence gene or are inherently more hostile than white people. Some people even try to spread that sort of narrative by sharing statistics like this

This video explains why that graph is incredibly misleading by itself because they explain it way better than I ever could

Also please note that black neighborhoods are over-policed. Other than the tons and tons of National examples, within my own neighborhood there are two officers patrolling, and down the street about 5 more constantly.

So I am saying all of that to say: SLAVERY NEVER ENDED FOR GOOD!!! ALSO, as a matter of fact, the prison industry is privatized for free or cheap labor. They are SELLING PEOPLE. LEGALLY. Don’t believe me? This explains the process. I’m not exaggerating or spreading theories, this is an actual thing going on.

The prison industry picks up the slack of where slavery left off. When the south couldn’t make money on slave labor, they exploited blacks in another way. And I can tell you right now that’s not the only way they get money, families have to pay to get incarcerated family members decent food.

I am going to talk about personal experience with the prison system because I have had a family member incarcerated. The conditions in correctional institutions are terrible. Morale is low. The prisoners have to make their own “edible” versions of food with the money they have on their meal cards, which are paid from by the outside. They brutalize people at random. The family member I am talking about was singled out and thrown into solitary because the officers within the prison like to flex their power over the inmates. Before throwing them into a cell, they punched and kicked them until they couldn’t stand.

Hello hi yes let’s differentiate rioters and looters from protesters. The protesters are all peaceful. Police officers, in multiple instances, have been instigating violence against the people. Keep in mind the right to peacefully protest is protected in the constitution.Here is a witness account from a protester in two cities. The looting is not from protesters, it’s from opportunists. Also, police officers are looting as well. Don’t act like it’s a moral failure on just one end.

Also, rioting is the language of revolution. Remember the Boston Tea Party? And the Boston Massacre? Or the StoneWall Riots? And remember the riots following Martin Luther King Jr’s death which was what ACTUALLY led to laws being passed to haunt discriminatory practices?

On the topic of riots I also want to address statues. Statues are coming down because the people portrayed are racist. Confederate generals were racist. Columbus was racist. Fun fact, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson were racist.

Trigger warning because what I’m about to tell you is hella disturbing :smile:

George Washington’s dentures were made from his slave’s teeth.>a Thomas Jefferson raped his 14 year old slave Sally Hemings and never freed her while she was alive.b

While the argument can be made that these statues are a part of history, what is to stop you from reading about these people? I had to read about them to find out the awful things that they did, and if I can and history is so important then teach the history. Public representation of these problematic figures is not necessary, especially if they were former slave owners or known racists.I want to clarify here what I meant is publicly representing reprehensible people as flawless heroes, not banning problematic figures from being discussed or portrayed anywhere. History and context is incredibly important, and I think that critically looking at these people and their legacies is important rather than uncritical acclaim for the things they did.

What is ACAB and Why NACAB is Problematic

ACAB, or All Cops are Bastards, refers to cops as a system. It doesn’t mean that all police officers and law enforcement aren’t capable of being good in any capacity. ACAB means to encapsulate that the system of the police is at the point of corruption that reform is nearly impossible or needs to be heavily addressed. As mentioned earlier, the modern policing practices are extrapolated from the slave patrol. The policing system fundamentally was built on the foundation of protecting white citizens from BIPOC, particularly blacks.

Let me get this out of the way. A police officer can be a good individual person. I am not denying that. What I am denying is that a person can be a good cop. The organization that they present is fundamentally racist.

Also please keep in mind that just because something is against the law doesn’t mean that it isn’t morally right. Remember that back in Nazi Germany, it was illegal to hide Jewish people from the regime. It is absolutely undeniable that breaking the law in certain situations does not mean compromising morality.

Please also keep in mind that certain laws are made to be anti-Black. Consider the war on drugs for example. John Ehrlichman himself, of the Nixon administration, stated that their intention was to target BIPOC. And I quote, “We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalize both heavily... We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night in the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.” In taking part in a system that targets and vilifies minorities, police officers brand themselves as bastards of a corrupt system. Again, bastard means “no longer in its pure or original form.” It implies that they descend from a corrupted system.

Now onto the issue of All Lives Matter. While the person saying this term may have good intentions, it does a lot more harm than good.

The inception of all lives matter was anti-black in intention. The reason the movement was made was to combat and undermine Black Lives Matter. The term attempts to frame Black Lives Matter as meaning “only black lives matter.” That is not what it means.

All lives matter is a given. Of course all lives are supposed to matter. That is not the point, though.

Picture this: someone’s home is on fire and they call the fire department. If someone else in their neighborhood came over and started shouting at the firefighter that all houses matter and they should douse their home in water as well that would sound ludicrous. Yes all houses matter, but one in particular is on fire. That one has the priority at the moment for help and assistance. The same goes for Black Lives Matter. We need help. We need resources. We need voices. We need reform and reinvestment in our communities.

Also let me just address Blue Lives Matter right now: it doesn’t exist. Blue Lives isn’t a thing. A job is not a skin color or a race, it’s a job. Police officers choose to be in that line of work. A black persons cannot take off the color of their skin like a police officer can take off their badge. And don’t make Micheal Jackson jokes because I will get very mad. He had a skin disease. Not only that, but to my knowledge he also had insecurities about his appearance that led him to entirely bleach his skin and augment other parts of his body. Like, chill guys.

The fact that people retaliate people saying Black Lives Matter with All Lives Matter is very showing of how the movement is harmful. Rather than trying to smother black voices calling out for help, help out. We need it and we appreciate it.

Antifa is not an organized group of people, it’s an ideology. It is against the idea of fascism, which is basically an autocracy.

In SIMPLER terms, think Nazi Germany. The Holocaust happens because the people were led under a fascist regime that demonized Jewish people by decree of a single, unchallenged monster. Anti-fascist want to prevent that from ever happening again. Everyone should be Antifa. You should be against the notion that a dictatorship could rise again and commit mass genocide of a group of people. If not that’s really disgusting.

Stop devaluing black people in these situations. Also stop turning this into a “political debate” because it’s not political, it’s humanitarian. The uncomfortable reality of America is that constantly the nation turns a blind eye to the suffering of BIPOC. Please choose to be educated on these issues rather than being complicit to a narrative of hate. Thank you and have a nice day.