Editor,
Malcom X, the Black Nationalist, said, “If you stick a knife in my back nine inches and pull it out six inches, there’s no progress. If you pull it all the way out that’s not progress. Progress is healing the wound that the blow made. And they haven’t even pulled the knife out, much less healed the wound. They won’t even admit the knife is there.”
Joe Walsh, Tea Party former Republican Congressman from Illinois, reacts to the Dallas killing of police officers: “This is now war. Watch out Obama. Watch out Black Lives Matter punks. Real America is coming after you.”
By “Real America” Walsh means the white establishment, organized and unorganized racists, right-wing bigots and the NRA. He, as too many other comfortable white people, does not even admit the knife is violently stuck in the back of black people.
Many Eureka people thank me for writing thoughtful letters to the Independent. However, I am not into personal praise or attention. I just feel that someone has to speak out against police violence and the conditions that black people have to endure for 240 years and today.
I saw two white policemen who had subdued a black suspect on the ground and one of the officers shot the black man four or five times. We all have seen TV coverage of the insane violence of cops against black men and women. The President and the Governor of Minnesota identify the reality of the presence of racism. And yet violence continues.
In my experience of dealing with my own racist conditioning and trying to talk with other white people about white supremacy, I discovered a deep cesspool of defensiveness. Instead of looking at the white supremacy of our entire system (schools, textbooks, housing, policing, employment, Hollywood entertainment, et.al), we good white folks immediately declare, “I am not a racist.”
A Christian minister participating in the Dallas demonstration was interviewed after the shooting of the policemen. He said that violence does not stop violence. Without condoning murder or violence, I suggest good people look at the history of oppression of all black people. Gradual change has not significantly affected most black folks’ lives. Malcolm X, after JFK’s assassination, said, “The chickens have come home to roost.” Fifty-three years later, we see the results of continuing unpunished violence against the black community.
T.A. Laughlin