By Julietta Bisharyan
LONG BEACH – Members of a private Facebook group for California Law Enforcement Officers is openly plotting to assassinate civil rights activist and writer Shaun King.
King shared multiple screenshots of malicious comments posted, which he discovered from a friend on Tuesday morning.
“Who do you call to report the misconduct of current or retired law enforcement officers?” King wrote in an online post, in response to the Facebook group.
The discussion began with a suggestion from retired Long Beach Police officer Laura Tartaglione, saying, “I think California needs to start putting a team together of retired military, police, and NRA Members. These criminals that the Democrats created need to be stopped.”
Roy Brokaw responded with, “I’m with you brothers and sisters for justice. And I’ll be there. Tell me when and where. Does anyone know where this Shaun King can be found?”
The thread continues with one commenter, Chris Sanford, suggesting they throw King out from a helicopter while retired LAPD officer Jerry De Rosa says they “need a sniper.”
More blatantly, John Houchens posted, “Shaun King needs to be put down.”
Mark McAdams then wrote, “Need to start cutting the head off the snake so to speak,” followed by multiple angry emoji faces.
“I am ready to rock and roll — let’s get it going boys and girls. Time for a #6,” commented Jeffrey Garcia, also of the Long Beach Police Department. According to California Law Enforcement, “#6” is usually code for a long distance operation or when officers are out for an investigation.
Tartaglione then responded to Garcia’s comment, saying, “organize it Jeff.”
“So, he’s a Marxist and what’s the rule for a communist? Kill a commie for mommy…better dead than red…And so it begins,” posts Kevin Fitzgerald.
Gary Young unabashedly comments, “Remember at my age life in prison is not a deterrent.”
In response, Henry Martinez posted a meme of a soldier aiming a gun with the caption, “Beware of an old man in a profession where men usually die young.”
He also adds, “Yes, some of us may be old, but we still have a sharp eye and a steady hand… and some of these Anti Americans need to be set straight!”
Jim Bohannaon Lugenbeel then posted, “I recommend retroactive birth control, or post birth abortion, whatever you wanna call it.”
These are only a couple of the comments from the ever growing thread. King says this wasn’t an isolated incident either – he said he has since discovered deaths threats against him in other private groups, public pages, conservative blogs, and more.
“Sadly, I receive death threats daily. It’s been that way for years, but they are mainly from anonymous strangers and seem more designed to intimidate me and my family than they appear to be imminent threats of physical harm,” writes King. “We take them all seriously, but what we found in this private Facebook group is altogether different.”
King has been a very prominent face of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement since the police shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. With the recent death of George Floyd, among other Black individuals, BLM has found itself in the headlines once again, organizing nationwide protests against police brutality and racism.
As a biracial man growing up in Kentucky, King says he was a frequent victim of racially motivated hate crimes. In high school, a group of students physically assaulted him on his way to band class. The injuries sustained from the incident caused him to miss a portion of high school because of multiple spinal surgeries.
In recent years, King has written extensively on his experiences as a biracial person and about the incidents in the Black Lives Matter movement.
A company that former officer Tartaglione co-founded called King’s allegations false. The organization, “Honor Bands,” provides the black bands that officers place over their badges when a fellow member of law enforcement dies.
“She has not called for or participated in the activities that are being claimed against her by an activist,” a post on the Honor Bands Facebook read. “She needs our support right now as the mob is attacking her and this page.”
The Long Beach Police Department is currently investigating the incident, along with help from the FBI.
“The Long Beach Police Department is appalled and deeply disturbed by the tone and content of the posts which in no way reflect the core values and professional standards held by the men and women in our organization,” said the Long Beach Police Department in a statement. “We are 100% committed to working in partnership with our community to ensure that all people are treated with respect and professionalism and will not tolerate any bias, racism, or threats to individuals.”
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Odd that the author here didn’t mention why Shaun King’s name is in the news the last few days.
Shaun King wrote:
That said, no one should ever face death threats for any reason. The people throwing out these threats should be dealt with according to the law.
Victim blaming. Good job.
Right… and his words were not hurtful to others… right… a ‘victim’…
Right on!
Easy for someone to want to remove certain images, when likely, they care not about what the images are about. Taliban knew that when they removed (destroyed) images… it’s just “social justice”… right…
One is protected speech however disdainful. The other is likely not protected except by Facebook and Zuckerberg.
Words lead to actions… words protected… actions, not so much… yet, there is a profound linkage… know not how to separate the two…
Ex. what would have been the difference between the anti-Gandhi statue march, and the vandalism of the statue? One was was words, the others, actions…
Instead of paint, what is the difference between paint, and using sledgehammers to destroy/obliterate it?
Guess Mr Shaun King would be fine with folk using sledgehammers to destroy any image of “white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends “…
Jesus was Semitic… as was his mother and friends… racism?
We are told by scripture, God made us all in his own “image and likeness”… never had a problem with portrayals of Christ as Black… fits… no problem with portrayals of Christ as Semitic (which he was) fits… yet, someone abhors the portrayal of Christ as White, and/or European. So, one can assume one does not believe in Christ, or God… that is their God-given right… but I’ll act to stop anyone who tries to destroy statues/images that represent much to others…
Based on the quote alone… Shaun King is a …. (victim?)
Not at all, that’s your assumption. I guess you missed where I wrote:
I felt the article left out key recent news that’s pertinent to the entire story.
The article is about the threats. While your addition adds background to the story it is not material to the story itself.
Being the background to the story just occurred a couple of days ago I feel that it’s very pertinent. Why does it bother you?
KO… rare, but please note I affirmed, and still do,
Like a stopped clock, you are right twice a day… you were spot on on the observation quoted…
And ‘death’ threats could be ascribed to actions against objects/images… not same, but similar…
Srsly? Hey, I’m no fan of organized Christianity, and I agree about the oppression part, but rather than call out the religious hypocrisy, you go calling out a threat for mobs to destroy the core religious symbols and stained glass [I like stained glass] of hundreds of millions of people, in times when symbols nationwide are dropping like flies – you might say ‘those is fighin’ words’. Can you imagine if the mobs start burning down churches and it catches on? Those are the kind of words that can start a civil war.
Yes.
I’m not saying he can’t say those words. I am 100% first amendment. I am questioning this as ‘victim blaming’. Death threats are not OK, ever, anyone. I am saying, if you say inflammatory words, you are protected by the first amendment, but not necessarily from those you pˆss off if they get to you first. Some words are very inflammatory.
Let me use an extreme example. A white guy gets overdosed on conservative talk radio and loses his shˆt, drives to Compton, and starts pointing at people yelling “N——!” over and over again. He gets the shˆt beaten out of him.
Someone says he had the right to say it, and that the word he used wasn’t relevant to the fact that he shouldn’t have been beaten to a pulp, and those criticizing him are ‘victim blaming’.
Does that work for you?
I know when I am planning to kill someone, I always do the planning and plotting on Facebook. It’s safe, secure, confidential. Like Ashley Madison.
Is it possible the Facebook page was created by Russian government interference? The point of my previous thread — what law enforcement officer is stupid enough to plot an assassination on social media web page (private ain’t that private). I’m not saying such stupidity isn’t possible, but it would be an incredible level of stupidity worthy of a stupidity award.
What is very sad is the low quality of leadership at just about all levels of politics and activism today. Shaun King is frankly a joke… yet the media and campus-inflamed twitter mob turns him into a cartoon cult icon and follows him like triggered lemmings to burn and destroy actual icons of American history and identity.
And the media storm “incidents of racism” that we get shoveled are also a joke. A garage pull described as a noose in Bubba Wallace’s NASCAR garage, and now this. Major scraping of the bottom of a barrel in an otherwise empty rick-house of evidence of systemic racism.
The left and the mainstream media need the myth of system racism to be stay alive so they can keep their media click and copy money train rolling. Meanwhile the silent majority again starts their engines to send the message that we have had it and it needs to stop.
JB, It’s not going to ‘stop’. Yes, politicians are taking advantage of the sentiment on the streets, as they always do in their sickening way. But structural racism is not a ‘myth’. I think you and I would agree that the more progressive ‘answers’ could in many ways perpetuate some of the problems, and that is of concern for me. But trying to downplay forms of racism as a ‘myth’ isn’t helping. I despise hypocrisy from both sides, but I also despise extreme examples being used to blanket whole groups of people who are much more reasonable. It pushes us to extreme camps that can never come to terms. Your ‘side’ is just as guilty as ‘their’ ‘side’. The national ‘conversation’ is ever closer to toxicity and away from agreement. I honestly wish Obama really had got that third term that extremist righties were so sure (and so wrong) that he was going to take by force (and I didn’t even vote for him the 2nd time around). He would be a much better leader for these times than the Divider King we have in there today.
If you think “structural” or “systemic” racism is not a myth, then please provide evidence of its existence other than pointing to the protests. I am ready to be convinced. But I don’t see it in a world were people of all races are integrated in professions and society and they are protected by laws from discrimination. This isn’t 1950. We elected a black president that served two terms (I thought he was a lousy president but not because of his race). We have blacks in all levels of politics and government. We have many multi-millionaire blacks that are respected media and entertainment leaders, CEOs. The GOP has had several blacks running for President. Black immigrants have economic and social outcomes that exceed whites when controlled for education attainment. I have black board members, black employees, black peers in my industry. We don’t see each other as different other than the content of our character. How can this be if there is systemic racism?
So PALEEESSE… give me the actual evidence that systemic or structural racism exists in this country in excess of the standard human psychology of human tribal bias… the same that we see between people of red and blue political orientation. You cannot fix that because it is human nature. We are talking about systemic racism…. racism that is part of the system… racism that restricts a person’s access, movement, freedom based on race. I don’t see it. What I see is a money-making and vote-making industry that relies on the myth of systemic racism.
Prove me wrong.
The death threats against Shaun King were expected by many once he started threatening churches and BLM protestors defaced churches. In fact, it is likely a planned move by he and BLM so that they could then milk the media opportunity from the response. This is the game they are playing, and it benefits the media and the politics of the blues so they lap it up.
Evidence, please. Or this is just more victim blaming.
JB, I agree with you that the laws that were still present in the times of our youth are no longer there. I also agree that people are integrating like never before, personally and professionally.
What I have come to understand is the depth that racism is rooted in institutions through the hearts of racist people. I think this needs to be recognized and dealt with. How to do it is another matter. I don’t agree with much of the BLM rhetoric as I think the direction they are going is socialism, and I don’t believe that’s a constructive answer. I don’t forgive the violence. I don’t believe that the anger justifies the violence.
But the anger is understandable, and real. I have come to understand just deeply entrenched the hurt is from past generations, and how deeply the racism is entrenched if more hidden. I don’t personally believe Trump is an outright racist, but I believe he exploits the racists who support him by stoking their flames and letting them believe they have a safe place to show their stripes, for Trump’s own political gain, because he’s a narcissist who doesn’t care what this does to society.
But I’ve not seen this surfacing of racists feeling they are safe as a bad thing. They are moles, and what do you do when you see a mole? You whack it! I’m not saying violently – I’m saying the racism has been hidden, and it isn’t now, and that’s better, as it makes the racists feel safe and expose their backsides. Exposed racism is better than hidden racism – and this is an era of rooting that out. Paddle those exposed racist rear ends!
Watching those confederate statues fall has warmed my heart. So, so much! Those idiots tearing down ever statue in sight, even Presidents and abolitionists, that’s a bit much and ultimately defeats the cause and the point.
Shaun King is a victim?
BLM is not disclosing what they are doing with all their donations.
https://medium.com/marleyisms/hijacked-who-is-the-leader-of-the-black-lives-matter-movement-1b53519c3178
A lot of people smell a bigger political rat. Especially since on of the top guiding principles of BLM is globalism and the old name of the entity used to be the Black Lives Matter Global Network. I suspect people like Shaun King is raking in the cash. And it is likely that BLM is funneling much of its cash to the DNC.
One thing for sure… BLM is going to have a big problem with their lack of tax return filing. I would not be surprised to see Shaun King and others go to prison for tax fraud in the future.
The story is about death threats against Shaun King and others. What you wrote here is irrelevant to that.
The reality and evidence of systemic racism is overwhelming and undeniable (see, e.g., https://time.com/5851855/systemic-racism-america/; The New Jim Crow, Michell Alexander, etc.) except to those who dismiss it out of hand because addressing it means upsetting the status quo that has disproportionately benefitted their social, political, and economic interests.
Eric – there is nothing in that article that proves systemic racism. It is an op-ed from an activist.
The language of the social justice activist is very well developed, but lacking evidence to back their claims. I cannot find the evidence. A “feeling” isn’t evidence. Provide facts.
The facts are there for those willing to see them. E.g.,
https://www.coming-together.org/learn-more-about-racism/brief-readings/facts-about-racism-and-how-systemic-it-is/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/opinions/systemic-racism-police-evidence-criminal-justice-system/
Jeff – By the way, what are your “facts” supporting the assertion that those who believe systemic racism is a myth constitute a majority, silent or vocal?
I wish you would do the work instead of just Google searching and posting sites that are clearly supporting the myth.
I have already posted numerous times of facts that destroy the myth of systemic black racism… and minority racism in general. Outcomes do not prove racism. The burden of proof is on those that claim it. But there is plenty of evidence to prove that the claim of systemic racism today is false.
1. The social and economic outcomes of black immigrants that comprise about 10% of the American black population are actually higher than whites when controlled by education attainment.
2. The social and economic outcomes for Asians.
3. 2008 – 2016 a black president was elected by a majority.
4. Distribution of US minority millionaires. 8% Asian. 8% black. 7% Hispanic.
5. College graduate: White=35.2% Black=25.2% Asian=56.5% Hispanic=18.3%
This is just a partial list. If the US was systemically racist against blacks or any minority then how would these statistics exist?
This is the area that I find troubling. But it is not racism, it is economics. It is because of the terrible policies that have destroyed economic access except for those with a good education. And a good education today demands help from a stable and college educated family… something most of the liberals claiming systemic racism were privileged to have. This is the area we should be focused on to improve the black community. The cops are not responsible for it. Your politics are responsible for it. This is something I have been voting and working to help improve. How about you?
https://i.ibb.co/1GyrkD5/EARNINGS.png
Seriously? You expect me to gather data on my own instead of relying on those with far more expertise? You asked for facts but dismiss them because the authors don’t share your interpretation of those facts.
Your selective “facts” are mostly irrelevant to the impact of the multi-generational experiences of the descendants of former slaves. Obama’s election was a tribute to his extraordinary abilities that overcame still prevailing obstacles. If his election is evidence that systemic racism doesn’t exist, the election of his racist, misogynistic, successor should be viewed as evidence to the contrary. More significant is the lack of Black CEOs of major corporations, including their woeful under-representation in leadership positions even in the NFL, for example, with its huge majority of Black athletes.
What an arrogant, insulting comment. You have no idea how I’ve spent my life and career. In fact, the majority of my professional life was spent advocating for the legal and civil rights of marginalized people, while working for employers that value and strive for a diversified workplace and the equitable provision of services to underrepresented groups.
I wish there were a mechanism available to indict the super-spreaders of deadly lies intended to promote their base political agenda. dismissing hate crimes against blacks, deadly misinformation about CV19 and absolute disregard for other posters’ pleas for truth and reason. This is what will cost you readership David, promoting this kind of malignant ignorance.
LOL. “Selective facts”? Is that like “alternate facts?”
Or how about selective deflection?
You must mean multi-generational experiences of being made dependent victims by the policies of those that get their identity and money being an advocate for the same victims.
Again… this reaching backwards in history as an explanation for the present is just weird. It is a sign of something broken. You just blew past all the evidence of black mainstream progress. If systemic racism is a thing still, then how did all those people become successful? If truly systemic, then the system would prevent it, no?
This is telling to me…
I can see why you defend the myth so strongly. Unfortunately all advocacy for marginalized people should be a temporary project and not a career. You might very well have a conflict of interest here and not even recognize it.
I remember working on the Y2k problem. I had to remind people that once we solved the problem they would need to find new work. However, there were a lot of people that hyped the problem so they could frighten companies into spending big bucks to hire them to solve the problems. “Racism” in this country is a multi-million dollar industry. There are a lot of people motivated to make sure it is a continuing problem even if they have to manufacture the story and ignore the “selective facts” that prove them wrong.
Other than that, I see a cult of group-think detached from current reality.
One more question for you… since you are a professional advocate… what do you think we should do to improve the situation with the black community other than defund the cops? I ask this in all seriousness.
And please don’t come back demanding more awareness.
No point in carrying on a dialogue with someone who believes this. Unfortunately, eliminating injustice from society is not a short term project—particularly when those on the far right perpetuate it and endeavor to make America great again by undoing the progress made.
I’m pretty much at the same point. I see no point in engaging with Jeff on this stuff anymore.
You mean that 250 years of slavery and then 100 years of sharecropping and Jim Crow (not to mention continued housing segregation and financial redlining til today) didn’t happen? You are truly living in a fictional world.
By the way here’s a story about how Black farmers’ land was stolen from them with the help of the USDA and local banks:
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/this-land-was-our-land/594742/
And its juxtaposed with a story about how Justice Clarence Thomas has deluded himself about how he grew up and the belief that Blacks have unfettered opportunities just if government would get out of the way. He forgot about the part of having their land stolen.
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/09/deconstructing-clarence-thomas/594775/
“Again… this reaching backwards in history as an explanation for the present is just weird. It is a sign of something broken. You just blew past all the evidence of black mainstream progress. If systemic racism is a thing still, then how did all those people become successful? If truly systemic, then the system would prevent it, no?”
Don’t confuse anecdotes with data. Data shows the general trend across the populace. You’ve presented a series of anecdotes that highlight how poorly the rest of that populace segment is doing.
That is a pretty powerful piece of evidence that systemic racism (which is about more than just the color of one’s skin) is problematic. Those immigrants have been able to avoid some of the systemic racism that cuts short the resources needed to have opportunity. Take away that institutionalized racism and that population can thrive. Note that voluntary immigrants are generally more motivated to achieve well being than the general populace–that’s why they moved. And also note that most Black Americans were forcibly moved here so they have a very different background in motivation. Unlike the characters in your favorite Ayn Rand novels (who seem to be like Superman where they’ve come from alien planets to live their lives on Earth), we are ALL creations of our parents and communities.
Breathtaking intellectual dishonesty or breathtaking lack of self awareness. Maybe both. Please explain what you mean by those on the far-right undoing the progress made. Provide proof. Explain what you mean in specific terms. Otherwise it is just ideological hogwash.
I will put up my low-income area economic development and other work to raise the economic circumstances of the back community against your constant drumbeat of perpetual victim labeling as the better solution any day. I wish you would join me in working on real solutions that help solve the problems instead of just being a angry and nasty critic of everyone that disagrees with your politics.
If I saw any path forward to real solutions with what you are proposing (and frankly, I don’t even know WHAT you are proposing) I would come onboard. But defund cops and burn the place down and vote for Biden does not cut it.
One last reply.
You have the nerve to call anyone intellectually dishonest? You accuse me of advocating defunding cops and burning the place down. Please cite any place I’ve advocated for either of those. (I’ll admit to advocating for voting for Biden, although I can’t fathom how anyone wouldn’t, given the alternative.) The list of examples of the right attempting to undo progress is endless, starting with efforts tO roll back voting and reproductive rights, to deprive the working poor of health care, and to destroy agencies that protect the environment from industry and consumers from predatory banks.
Are temples destroyed by ISIS but symbols of oppression to ISIS? What is the difference between that and:
All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down. They are a gross form [of] white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.
Is this the U.S. in the fall of 2020?:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qiZpndjg6Y
It can’t happen here? Not so sure anymore.
I thought Don and David put you on disability furlough. Perhaps in Podunk county, MS deluded Trumpkins are the majority. In the rest of the world, not so much. While I know you terrified old white guys think the police are your friends, they will abandon you in favor of protecting their power when necessary. Log off for a few months, take a sabbatical to Florida or Texas and go to the beach. Maybe you’ll get better. I’m betting the country will, in your un-lamented absence.
“I know when I am planning to kill someone, I always do the planning and plotting on Facebook. It’s safe, secure, confidential. Like Ashley Madison.”
The Boogaloo Boyz did recently resulting in the murder of a cop in Oakland by an Air Force guy from Travis AFB. Yes Alan it can happen here and its closer to home than you think.
How do you know what I think?
And yes, many people do win the online stupidity award (posting evidence of planned or past crimes).
Voter suppression under Jim Crow was systemic. Or maybe you would see it as a bunch of random acts that only coincidentally impacted and disenfranchised the black population of the South for 90 years between Reconstruction and the Great Society.
“Was” “Was” “Was”
Please wake up to this trick. Was is not “is”.
Psychologists recognize this as a malady that must be treated with therapy. Being trapped in an excuse of the past is a destructive emotional dysfunction.
Think about this please. If we allow evidence of historical oppression as a perpetual excuse for more, more, more… then there will be a never-ending demand for more, more, more.
This is one reason I am absolutely against reparations. Because we would end up spending the trillions only to have the same crap historical victim claim put in our faces to demand more, more, more.
Generally, in this country today, the impediments to human advancement are only individual, temporary and internal. Certainly you can have the misfortune of childhood trauma that must be dealt with, and you might build up some pretty big obstacles by making life mistakes, but there are no shortcuts to become a well-functioning human being that can access mainstream society and make a good life. You have to do the work. You have to make good choices in life. There are no easy buttons. There is the privilege of having strong academic gifts and resources, but unless you are willing to tear that down there is nothing that can be done but to educate, educate, educate everyone else so they can compete with those so blessed.
Just curious Jeff. Do you agree that what I described was systemic racism?
Yes. This nation had a sickness of systemic and institutional racism. Then because we are the greatest nation on God’s green earth, we defeated it with civil rights progress.
You have to understand that criticism of social justice is a progressive’s stock and trade. They can never admit to progress because they would not have anything left to satiate their need for moral identity and/or income generation.
The problem is that it perpetuates a victim mentality that is the soft bigotry of low expectations. The black child that hears it soon adopts racism as his excuse for every failure to advance. It become a self-fulfilling prophesy as the hopelessness and rage send him down a path of poor life choice that is a spiral downward. Then the cops are stuck dealing with it… and the social justice progressives step up to scapegoat the cops for causing it.
Everyone faces diversity and struggle in life. The message TODAY should be that as a black child there might be some more of that… just like there would be more for a Hispanic child or an Asian child. Or a white child from a poor area of the country. Or any child lacking strong academic gifts and/or the strong academic support of their family. Right out of the starting gate, the black child has a 70% chance of being raised without a father as his mother conceived him out of wedlock. That is not the fault of law enforcement, but it creates a much more difficult job for them as fatherless children turn to gangs and other negative role models to adopt their non-mainstream version of adulthood.
But these things are not evidence of racism. They are evidence of a broken social and economic system. Ironically BLM pushes globalism. Globalism is the root cause of the current strife in the black community.
Problem is we have seen systematic attempts to suppress minority voters since the Supreme Court opened the gate back up in 2013 with Shelby County vs Holder. So its not so simple as problem solved.
LOL. Sure Ron. That explains California being dominated by liberal Democrats. All that voter suppression. And the rest of the myth is that the black community that votes 95% for Democrats is actually doing themselves any favors. Voter suppression is just another part of the big mythology promulgated by those that gain power and money from perpetuating racial conflict.
Years ago in the Pre-Trumpian era I posted about “cop blogs” and their hate filled posts. Don’t you hate it when I’m right? It’s past time to junk the old system. If the so-called “good cops” are smart, they’ll start disavowing these murdering fascists as loudly as the “bad apples” have been threatening us for years.
On that we agree. We can only hope that the culture of internal blue protection will shatter.
You know I read what these guys said on Facebook and what they said is just BS and of course they should have never said this on Facebook that was really stupid ?. I will bet anybody a large hamburger at murder burger that there is much much worst things being talked about in private conversations all over the United States at this given moment on both sides of the fence whether it’s black lives matter or a bunch of retired individuals somewhere.
1. Redrum Burger closed a year ago.
2. Facebook ain’t private, no matter what your group settings might suggest.
WHAT murder burger is closed!! OMG now I’m going to protest.
What’s really odd is that you’ve been eating there every week for the past few years, not realizing it was closed 😉
#sniff# — R.I.P.
If thoughts were illegal 95% of the population would be in prison for life and the other 5% live in Davis
It did occur… and many Whites had the same experience…
After being in business for over 35 years I can tell you that I felt like a sharecropper after paying for state licenses City business licenses various other permits state taxes county tax federal tax and conforming the other federal and state laws and even today in my retirement I’m still a slave to The Man.
Where you also raped and beaten, tortured if you escaped?. . . and I don’t mean figuratively.
I get your point, but in these times as people are exposing the realities of slavery, not funny nor appropriate.
Alan – it is not still happening. I know for a fact that my ancestors were raped beaten and tortured. None of it is funny, but there is something seriously wrong with this constant look backwards in history to apply to current times. It isn’t rational.
Watch the Joy Luck Club tonight, JB.
I have watched it already. A long time ago. Terrible when she drowns the baby. That scene still haunts me.
The other part I remember is the woman that cannot snap out of her subservient and passive self and her husband or fiance was leaving her because of it.
What is your point related to that movie?
I answered yesterday, but the wonderful Vanguard comments interface, as it often does, gave me an error message and everything I typed disappeared, and I didn’t feel like re-composing, nor de-composing.
The movie reference is not about racism, as such. It’s about a huge group in our society that is descended from the massive transgression of slavery followed by years of horrific oppression. That leaves a scar. I am for individualism and character and achievement determining one’s advancement. And I’m not for reparations in the form of a lump of cash. I don’t think that solves it. Though many white people didn’t own slaves and may not have been descended from slave owners, there is an atonement that society as a whole owes to the descendants of slaves, because that scarring passed down through generations in so many people is very real (thus the JLC reference). The form that would take? I do not have the answer.
“The form that would take? I do not have the answer.”
Nor do I, but the descendants of the kidnapped Africans should not have to wait any longer for some perfect solution. It is also not just the monetary recompense for their servitude. We must begin to pay in some material way first in order to find a way to repay the cultural capital stolen by years of post civil war oppression and denigration, as well.
If we take the roughly 51,000 days between legalized slavery (1641, Massachusetts)(There were slaves here much earlier, of course) and Emancipation, in 1865(Mississippi did not ratify the thirteenth amendment until 1995) basing the monetary recompense for each slave at the same rate as we repay false imprisonment in California, $140/day X 79,744(days) =$11,446,400 per person. The American Abolitionist Society estimates approximate 5,000,000 slaves were held in the USA during that time, so a figure of about $57,232,000,000,000 would seem minimal compensation. That does not make any accounting for the murders, rapes mutilations or other abuses that took place during slavery or of course the mistreatment after from reconstruction through Jim Crow. Reparations might be paid through a negative income tax or basic income for African-Americans in conjunction with housing allowances and education grants. How ever we might proceed, the time is past for delay. It is in fact, the least that we can do. Now the Boone and his buddy Keith and the littlle Trumpkins hiding under their coattails will start trying to say that not all 5 million were enslaved for all 79,744 days and that their descendants are not due any part of that anyway because they were never enslaved, but one can easily imagine what they would say if the modern cultural situation was reversed.