I have not felt such outrage since two nooses were hung from the “whites only tree” in the schoolyard in Jena, Louisiana, close to where close relatives live:
http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/national/usstatesterritoriesandpossessions/louisiana/jena/index.html

I’ve read some very interesting analyses of the rioting phenomena (my choice of word). Nonetheless, it still astounds me — harming your own as a response to being harmed, yikes!

Love,
K-B

2. Shame on the rioters (personally, I think there’s a psychological schism somewhere because I don’t understand the Laker fan mentality to destroy no matter if winning or losing for example) who exploit social injustice to create more injustice (private property, innocent bystanders etc.) I’ve witnessed a mob nearly kill one person to death 40-to-1, and it’s chilling to see the animalistic pitbull-like rage that engulfs people who let emotion take over reason. I’ve also seen footage of lootings and it’s clear it’s all rage and pillage, which I would say ok, display some of this but go to the police headquarters at least and confront those who are apparently at fault. There’s something coward-like in not dealing with the source of one’s anger.

Love,
K-B

We have raised five Black boys to manhood. Not in a ghetto, not in an inner city. Not in a city at all. Not one of them, not one of the five! escaped police harassment and brutality as young men. And so when Oscar Grant is murdered, I take it in a very serious way. And if I take it seriously, I’m figuring others out there, others who share the color of Oscar Grant, take it even more seriously. We get mad, K-B, we get mad.

A man is on the ground, face down, helpless, compliant if for no other reason in a defenseless position. He is under the control of a police officer. Offense? Jumping a turnstile in a metro station. The officer breaks the snap that holds his gun in his holster, thumbs aside the strap that secures the gun to the holster, draws the gun from the holster, aims it, pulls the trigger. All of that and twelve people decide there was not intentionality in his actions.

He says he didn’t mean to draw his pistol, only his tazor.

Awww. Hmmm. So he didn’t really mean to be at the lynching. He wasn’t really for it. Doesn’t believe in that. But couldn’t leave. What would people think? But what an ugly thing to happen. Gosh!

Assuming he never intended to murder, let’s have the officer explain to the mother and family of Oscar Grant that her son, their manchild, deserved to be spread-eagled on his belly on a concrete floor and tazored – OOOOPS, I mean shot in the back – for jumping a turnstile.

And so we have yet another chapter in the long, long and continuing book of lynchings and shootings of Black men by innocent White men. Innocent because they really, really didn’t mean to do it.

And for your readers who reply to your ode about this terrorism and violence by condemning the so-called riots that follow, they need to extend their readings to include this long, long, and continuing book.

No, wait, they don’t have to go through all that trouble. All they need to do is look across the room at the picture of that loved one on their wall and imagine how they would feel if that loved one were shot in the back while lying face down on a concrete floor.

Thanks, K-B for giving me a chance to vent a bit. It helps. A bit. I still feel like I could release even more if I threw a brick through a window.