SAD, TRAGIC, AND UNNECESSARY

The accidental shooting of a young man that occurred this past week in Minnesota is a tragedy. There was no need for him to die. Yet what happened also shouts volumes—if people will actually think about it and not just react— about how to avoid getting shot. The solution? Stop resisting. From George Floyd to Dante Wright (and the majority of others who have been shot and killed), there would have been no deaths if those who were being arrested would just comply. Even more sad is that the crimes that they were committing were for the most part small. Floyd was passing a counterfeit twenty-dollar bill. Dante had a warrant for his arrest for a minor issue. But by resisting– they paid the ultimate price— their lives!

And for what? I guess they didn’t want to get into trouble ... so somehow they thought that resisting arrest and running or fighting was somehow a solution! While the solution is simple and stares us in the face. But it is “hard” and “difficult” and maybe even “impossible” for someone with distorted and biased thinking.

If you believe in “systemic racism,” then you will see all police as racists (over-generalization) and trying to kill you.. Then, in that paranoid state, you will do the very things that will make things a whole lot worse for you. You will fight and resist and that’s like to get you killed.

Thinking clearly and unbiasedly is a challenge for all of us. But the media is today one of the chief proponents of distorted and biased thinking. By highlighting minor variables, they ignore the larger context and statistics about shootings and deaths. They completely ignore black on black shootings which are much, much higher than police shootings. They ignore the systemic problem of single-mother families in the black community and the absence of fathers. With the media promoting the black lives matter movement and critical race theory, they encourage biased thinking, racial thinking, and fallacious thinking.

After what I wrote on CRT (Neurons #15, April 8), a good friend of mine in the UK who nailed it with the following words.

“I don’t know any other country other than the US where there are so many successful black people from science, music, entertainment, business and politics (they voted for a black president twice, no other white majority country has achieved this as far as I’m aware). I also believe no other country has as many black millionaire and billionaires, even the countries in Africa. For some unfathomable reason the real issues of fatherlessness homes, a lack of appreciation of education, black on black killings (which has not been reduced since BLM), the idolisation of the rap culture, is very rarely if ever discussed.” He also sent this YouTube link that’s worth listening to: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=7mn6ZLzteJg .