The Baltimore Beast is Justified

It’s time for a public service announcement for white people once AGAIN.  I get it.  You think we are animals.  You think we’re savages.  You think we’re beneath you and inherently inferior.  You despise us because you think that whites are superior in every way and that we are a different species, that we are naturally criminal, ignorant, and violent.  To you, ALL Black people are niggers, a sub-human species that has no value.

You and your fallacious system of white supremacy have created this monster of criminality and ignorance you call niggers.  You and your public policies, your racism, your bigotry and lynching, your refusal to see us as equals, your hatred of us, your intention to keep us undereducated, unemployed, and disenfranchised is what’s created this nigger beast you loathe so much.   It’s your sick and diseased rampant ego that has allowed you to believe that you could OWN a race of people, buy and sell us like cattle, profit from our blood, sweat, and our complete cultural annihilation for your profit and continually keep us down, ignoring the fact that only the most heinous and evil race of people could be unapologetic in their enslavement of millions for no reason other than the color of our skin. 

But we aren’t inherently inferior.  We aren’t inherently lazy or criminal, you aren’t superior in any way.  We are victims of oppression, racism, bigotry, we are the victims of your deep-seated hatred of us.  WE ARE HUMAN BEINGS.  We have the same feelings and emotions as you do; we have the same exact potential as you if you give us the same chances.  If someone killed your brother, your sister, you would be outraged, you would hurt.  If someone repeatedly killed your family, if they did so with arrogance, if they didn’t get punished but got paid vacations, you’d be ready to start a war. 

Well, you’ve slaughtered us.  We have suffered, we have suppressed our pain, we have sucked it up and we can’t take it anymore.  You’ve murdered us and acted as if we don’t have a right to hurt, to cry, to feel anger.  You have killed our children, shot us in the back, tased us, choked us, you’ve murdered our mentally ill like you are on safari and you’ve yet to say that you’re sorry, that you regret your actions.  You continually tell us to stop our whining; you’ve arrogantly and repeatedly told us to get over it, to suck it up because our lives don’t mean shit to you.  Those of us who are uneducated and poor are nothing to you, you don’t see us as human beings despite the fact that we are.  You care more about police cars and trash cans, you care more about keeping us oppressed than you do our lives, our humanity. 

So, what’s happening in Baltimore is your fault.  You didn’t hear our cries.  When we said, “Black Lives Matter” you said, “No they don’t, all lives matter, yours are insignificant.”  Our rage is your fault.  We have a right to fight back, to revolt, to stand up and say that we are not going to be your target practice any more.  As long as you think you are better than us, as long as you work to keep us poor and oppressed and you continue to take our lives, to murder us and act like it’s a sport to you, like it’s entertainment, you can know that every time we reach a breaking point, you are to blame.  We are going to fight back.  We have every right to loot, shoot, riot, and burn.  You’ll win of course.  You have stockpiles of weapons and you have prepared for our uprising.  You want to wipe us off the face of the planet.  This is what you’ve wanted for a long time.  All of this could have been avoided.  All you had to do was see us as human beings that have the same feelings, emotions, and that our lives matter as much as yours.  You can’t wait to see our blood run in the streets like a river.  But know that you are the source of all this strife because you refuse to treat us like human beings. 

Signed,

Black and fed up. 

Copyright 2015 Scottie Lowe

A Dead End

The system of white supremacy has crippled and crushed the Black community.  We are living in the end times.  Not in terms of some mythological savior coming back and sweeping up all the good Christians to go to heaven but we have now reached the end of hope, the end of advancement, the end of the struggle towards freedom, education, and enlightenment as a people. 

White people, with their racist agendas and their control of the legislative and educational systems have created a nation of Black people who are tragically educationally handicapped.   It’s been a multi-pronged, very intentional process that has been in place for four decades or more.  Kudos to them, their foresight, their dedication to keeping Black people stupid.  I give “them,” those with true power, those pulling the strings behind the scenes have restructured the educational system to the point of annihilation, all the credit in the world.  Along with the music industry, the illuminati or whomever pulls the read strings in this country have handicapped Black people to the point we wallow in stupidity and celebrate it. 

Black students no longer learn.  They don’t develop academically.   They regurgitate meaningless information and fill in circles with #2 pencils on tests but they don’t learn to reason, use logic, they don’t hone their discernment skills.  They repeat what they hear in soundbites.  They don’t read, explore, or research, they tweet.  They don’t watch the news, they don’t expand their consciousness beyond their dismal ghetto mentality reality.  And ghetto mentality has now metastasized into every socio-economic strata; it’s no longer a designation of income but of a mentality of stagnation, stupidity, and conformity.  If someone says it, “it’s the gospel truth” as long as the majority agree with it. 

The media has shaped our consciousness.  We don’t know Black history.  We don’t have a historical context to understand nor do we have the skills to understand how things connect to one another and create outcomes and consequences.  The educational system has done a great job in making sure the Black people only think linearly and don’t have the ability to question what they are told, read (if they read at all), complex concepts are foreign to Black people now.   The educational standards are dramatically and drastically lower.  What is an A in today’s public school system wouldn’t even be a C in the educational system of my day.  What passed for an A in my day wouldn’t have been a C a half a century earlier.  Students don’t do homework, don’t do projects, they don’t read books.  They don’t play musical instruments, they don’t create art, they don’t do anything but play video games and watch TV.  We rely on technology to the point of stupidity.  We wouldn’t know how to survive without wifi and we are quite proud of that.  Our educations are one dimensional.

Kudos to the elite whites who saw the potential dangers of integrating the educational system.  Sure, some white students have slipped through the cracks, a decent percentage of white students have been educationally handicapped by the lowered standards of the public school system but they have whiteness on their side.  When they graduate from college, they are more likely to get a job.  Hell, they don’t even have to graduate from college.  White men with a criminal record are more likely to get a job than a Black man with a degree.  You can rest assured that the rich white students, the ones in private schools and in public schools where there is hardly a black face in the student body are getting the best education possible.  You can bet your bottom dollar that what white students in affluent neighborhoods are learning in the fourth and fifth grades Black students aren’t “learning” at all.  They might not be taking advantage of that education.  They might be letting their privilege and the fallacy of white supremacy convince them that they don’t have to learn but KNOW that they are being taught things that Black students who graduate have never been expose to. 

“But they are learning European education.  They are learning the white man’s history,” you say.  Well, at least they are learning that.  Black students aren’t learning anything.  They aren’t learning European history or Black history.  It’s your job as a parent to teach them their history but you aren’t teaching your children anything.  Largely because you weren’t taught anything.  And here’s the rub.  Tell a Black student that they are the best of the best, tell them that they are on the honor roll and that they smart when they have been under and mis-educated and you will have an adult who believes that they know everything, that they don’t have to read or learn or research or study in life.  Combine that with the cheating, “get over” mentality that consumes Black people and you have a league of idiots who are going to wallow in mediocrity and dysfunction. 

“I’m not a victim!”

You hear it all the time.  It’s supposed to be a rallying cry, an anthem of empowerment.  It boldly declares, “I am not weak, I’m not subject to anyone else’s behavior that makes me feel bad about myself, I’m going to rise up like a phoenix from the ashes to survive!”  Yeah! 

But let’s think about that for a minute.  Who really benefits from this, “I’m not a victim,” narrative?  Being a victim means someone has committed a crime against you.  Someone has stolen something from you, someone has hurt you, someone has behaved in a way that hurtful, criminal, evil, and reprehensible and you were the object of their deleterious and nefarious behavior.  Wait . . . what?  I’m confused.  How on earth did the definition of someone who is a victim become that of someone who is weak, who invites mistreatment, someone who is responsible for their abuse inflicted upon them?  A victim is innocent.  Those perpetrators are the evils ones, they are the ones that should have the onus of becoming a better person on their shoulders. 

So, who benefits from this “I’m not a victim,” narrative?  I’ll tell you who!   Slave traders, slave masters, slave profiteers benefit greatly because the focus is not on them and their heinous crimes, it’s on the victims of their crimes.  The INNOCENT victims of their crimes now have the responsibility for pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, it’s now their job to overcome, to rebound, to heal and make something of themselves.  The evil criminals get off scot-free.  They don’t have to pay reparations, they don’t have to address the legacy of their collective criminal behaviors.  There is no focus on them to . . . NOT COMMIT CRIMES, it’s now the victim’s responsibility to somehow be stronger so that no one else evil can come along and commit another crime against them?  Uhmmm, how does that make sense? 

You want to know who else benefits from this “I’m not a victim,” narrative?  Domestic abusers, rapists, pedophiles, and Wall Street criminals.  No one accuses someone who has had their car stolen of being weak, no one asserts that a victim of a home invasion is responsible for someone targeting them and stealing from them.  But if a person is violated, if they are molested, raped, kidnapped, tortured, drugged, deceived, or repeatedly emotionally, mentally, and physically beaten all of a sudden, it’s the victim’s fault, there is supposedly something inherent in them, in their identity that invites people to take advantage of them.  Fuck that bullshit. 

There is nothing wrong with being a victim.  There is nothing wrong with being in a relationship where you are trying your best to make it work and your partner is beating you and trying to make you dependent upon them.  There is nothing wrong with you being deceived by someone who sets out to steal your life savings.  Slaves were innocent.  It’s their evil captors who were the criminals.  Victims of domestic abuse are not responsible for their abuse, it’s it the insecure, immature partners who make the conscious decision to beat, to ridicule another human being, they are the mother fuckers who need to be hanging their heads in shame, they are the ones that need to make their anthem, “I violated an innocent person.” 

I am a victim!  I’m a victim of oppression.  I’m a daily victim of racism.  I was a victim of childhood mental, emotional, psychological, and physical abuse from my mother.   I’m a victim of manipulative, lying, cheating ex’s who took advantage of me.  I’m not ashamed of saying I’m a victim because I didn’t do a damn thing wrong.  They were the ones with malicious motives.  There is nothing inherently wrong with me.  There is nothing in me that invites others to take advantage of me.  I will not give my abusers, both personally and systemically, the benefit of taking the responsibility from them.  They are the ones who are flawed, they are the ones who are sick. 

I’m the descendent of slaves who did absolutely nothing wrong.  The descendants of slave owners are the ones who should feel pangs of guilty, humility, and remorse for benefitting from a system where their forefathers OWNED, tortured, bought, sold, traded, and profited from the lives of other human beings.  I was born with a vagina.  That doesn’t mean I invited men to violate me.   The men who raped me are the bastards who should feel ashamed for taking what was not theirs, I sure as hell didn’t do anything wrong.  My mother should be haunted by her actions, abusing a small, helpless, defenseless, innocent child repeatedly.  I’m a victim of their evil heinous behaviors but I’ll be damned if I’m going to take responsibility for their actions, I’ll be Black and damned if I’m going to be shamed into denying their crimes by claiming some weak, inferior status to soothe their egos.  If criminals, molesters, rapists, embezzlers, genociders (I know that’s not a word but it should be.  There needs to be a word that shames and places responsibility on the backs of people responsible for murdering millions of people.  Think about why there isn’t.  Who benefits from that?)  hadn’t decided to act to further their own twisted, selfish agendas, there would be no victims.   

I’m not ashamed of being a victim.  In fact, I’ll wear the t-shirt proudly.  “I AM a victim!” 

Copyright 2015 Scottie Lowe