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| When a dog eats your skull cap off, but leaves your brains and beauty in tact. |
As I was on the treadmill, four of the five hanging flat screen TVs played Attorney General Lynch talking about the Dallas shootings. For the first time, I witnessed all news outlets having black main anchors. The fifth TV was playing Wimbledon, and there it was, the people who did this to our country. The women's thin blonde hair tussled, ever so slightly, cascading over their tan shoulders, next to their groomed spouses wearing suits under the blaring sun. They all wore contemporary sunglasses, partially covering their contempt and entitlement, still obvious by their tightened jaws and downward turned lips.
Nowadays kids say they want to become popstars and pro athletes because the American Dream has been sent abroad. There was a time when you could work blue collar jobs, own a house, go on annual vacations, and send your kids to college, but not at the moment, where we have not established a forced Living Wage.
Shopping at Wal-Mart is probably the worst thing you could do for this country, the couple dollars saved on your grocery bill isn't a result of none of their employees having benefits and being paid an inconceivably low wage. All the money Wal-Mart makes from treating their employees like slaves is going into their own pocket, funding the extravagance of few.
The unemployment rate in this country as of today is at 4.9%, but I don't fucking believe it for a second. What constitutes employment? Does "employment" imply earning a Living Wage with benefits? No! No! No! So what the fuck is this number good for? Nothing, it means nothing! If jobs were brought back to the US then poor communities will be able to turn around. Because of institutionalized racism, whatever working class jobs left, are given to white people, and so poor black communities have plunged deeper into poverty.
Bill Clinton, who was put in the White House by Black Americans, started this disintegration of the working class. Now race relations in our country are in a disastrous state, and this seems contradictory to our progress, after eight years of having our first Black president. Statistics support the fact that a black family is much more likely to be poor than a white family, and black poverty is much different because it exists on communal levels, creating the "double burden" of poverty, where its not just impoverished households, but impoverished schools, stores, and community centers, the entire neighborhood. I read a study about families who were displaced after Hurricaine Katrina, and the study showed that families who left New Orleans ended up having greater happiness than the families that returned because they were given opportunities that simply didn't exist in their old community.
There is a race problem, which is also a class problem. There should not be poor communities left without necessary resources to live. At this time, when people are listening, we need to prioritize marginalized groups. I'm not saying that spending excessive time passionately penning letters on why trans people should use the bathroom they identify with, I'm just saying, try to spend as much time advocating higher priority social problems. I shudder too, with how unpolitically correct it sounds, but Black Lives is more important than Trans bathroom laws. At times these lower prioritized social causes steal the spotlight, like a red herring? Maybe. This is a time where there needs to be advocacy for jobs that provide a living wage to be created or brought back.
With the deaths this week, we are faced with many truths, truths that shouldn't be ignored or overshadowed. Gun violence in our country is so fucking out-of-hand. Even card carrying NRA members who use the shooting range to practice for hunting season should acknowledge it's time to disarm the US population. Second, there is civil unrest, mirroring 1992, and riots are likely going to be the next, just as the case in Ferguson after Michael Brown was murdered and Baltimore after Freddie Gray was murdered. Communities where black people are being killed by police for freaking walking down the street have another common factor aside from being black neighborhoods, they are also impoverished neighborhoods with up to 40% unemployment, and these factors are just as important because tending to these needs will have a ppositive effect.
This is not saying that murder is the result of the circumstances, I actually have no understanding of what is going on. I think of these murdered kids and fathers, and how the officers responsible for their deaths are not being convicted of any crimes, and I have no reason. Are the officers that did these acts just bad seeds, who are being skated through criminal process because of their allegiance. I thought maybe the cops are pulling the triggers in an involuntary reaction to overpowering pressure, stress and fear, but it seems like they shouldn't be carrying guns then. When cops train, don't they practice holding their weapon and having someone yelling in their face or degrading them, and they have to remain calm. All the cops I know are good people who work to make their communities better places, but none of them have shot and killed an innocent person for no reason that makes sense. So how can I compare the cops I know to the cops who killed these people. There is so much loss due to guns in this country.
As I watched the Attorney General talk and I watched the rich watching tennis, I thought of a great ending to my post. I figured I'd wrap things up by saying something like, "I don't have to like Caitlyn Jenner just because she's trans. I don't like Caitlyn because I get the impression Caitlyn Jenner only cares about Kaitlyn Jenner." But now that doesn't seem very nice, so I guess I won't say it.
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