Another day, another assault against blackness.
I’m pre-empting my usual coverage of “What’s Happening” news to discuss the recent idiocy that is #McKinney. If you haven’t heard about it yet, here it is in a nutshell: Some white adults felt so threatened by black teens having a summer pool party that they were invited to that they started fighting them, calling them outside their names, and calling the police on them, leading to a police officer sitting on a girl and pulling a gun on boys who were trying to help her.
I can’t really discuss this story in depth without getting angry, so here are some links you can click to read more about it:
Texas Police Officer On Administrative Leave After Pulling Weapon On Teens During Pool Party
Did the McKinney Cop Watch Video of Himself Terrorizing Teenagers?
Watch: Teen Describes What Happened at Texas Pool Party
McKinney, Texas, and the Racial History of American Swimming Pools
NAACP Statement on McKinney Police Department Incident
Texas Activist Group Plans March In Response to McKinney Officer Violence
There’s tons more links out there, but that’s the gist.
I’m very, very mad about this entire situation even happening, since the kids were invited to the party, yet GROWN ADULTS feel threatened by them. Every last one of the adult antagonists in this situation (the police officer, the neighborhood women) should be ashamed of themselves.
But even more irritating is that there are some people out there who still refuse to see the hypocrisy at work. The person who recorded the video, a white boy, was able to be excused from the melee because he’s white. The black kids, all of whom were, as I wrote before, invited, were the ones seen as a threat. These kids were not invading a space they weren’t supposed to be in. There aren’t any segregation laws anymore, but that doesn’t stop unspoken segregation from being enforced, something that McKinney seems to have a problem with.
A black girl was thrown to the ground by a white man, making me think he didn’t see that girl as a girl at all, or even as a person with human dignity and rights; what he was what he wanted to see—a threat that had to be neutralized. The boys that tried to help the girl weren’t seen as boys coming to her aid; they were seen as criminals trying to ambush the police officer. America needs to do better by its people, particularly the ones who aren’t afforded privileges based on arbitrary and nonsensical rules and subjugating tactics.
I’ll just put up what I wrote on Twitter:
You know what the #McKinney story shows: That whether we live or die, black people, even kids, are always seen as threats.
— Monique Jones (@moniqueblognet) June 7, 2015
No one was killed in #McKinney, thank God, and now there’s no excuse of “justifiable force” AT ALL. Every adult was in the wrong here.
— Monique Jones (@moniqueblognet) June 7, 2015
I’m glad the girl’s family is filing against the woman who assaulted her & her friends. I’m glad they’ve stood for what’s right. #McKinney.
— Monique Jones (@moniqueblognet) June 7, 2015
(The girl I’m writing about is Grace Stone, one of the white kids invited to the party.)
Black men, women and children are always seen as threats to life. I hate this stuff happens, but I’m glad there’s now video out. #McKinney
— Monique Jones (@moniqueblognet) June 7, 2015
Now, all the white people who refuse to believe black folks might start learning something about themselves. End of rant. #McKinney.
— Monique Jones (@moniqueblognet) June 7, 2015
There you have it.
In other news, the police officer who killed Walter Scott was charged with murder (again), so there’s a victory on that front.
EDIT: I forgot to link to this horrible tragedy: Kalief Browder committed suicide after being wrongfully imprisoned over the charge of stealing a backpack. He was imprisoned for three years in Rikers without being convicted, two of those years spent in solitary confinement. He was eventually released from Rikers, but the time spent there greatly affected his mental health, not to mention the overall quality of his life. Again, America needs to do better by its people.
EDIT #2: I just read that community leaders in Cleveland are enacting Ohio’s old and seldom-used citizens rights rule to directly appeal to the judge to bring murder charges against the police officer who killed Tamir Rice. The reason for using this rule? They don’t trust the states prosecutors.