I live in the city of Philadelphia,Pa. and some of you may have heard, or seen, the viral video of the two young black men arrested for being in Starbucks with threatening melanin. I guess that meant management would not serve their coffee… black. They were not unusually dressed, making threats, and were baring nothing but a smile.
Buried beneath this incident of blatant racism, is the endemic attitude of fear of the other. In the past few days Wendy Vitter, up until now most famous for being the husband of the morally challenged former Republican Senator David Vitter of Louisiana, sat before a Senate Judiciary Confirmation Committee. She could not say, unequivocally, when asked by Connecticut Democratic Senator, Richard Blumenthal, “Do you believe that Brown v. Board of Education was correctly decided?” For the few not familiar with the Brown decision, in a nutshell, it led to the desegregation of public schools.
The fact that anyone in 2018 would even hesitate with an answer is as ignorant as it is appalling. Nominee Vitter started her answer with the words, “I don’t mean to be coy…” I am sorry, for those of you peddling the abuse of free speech or some cockeyed view of political correctness… how about some moral rectitude. I can abuse my rights to free speech and yell ‘fire’ in a crowded theater and be justly arrested for endangering the lives of the stampeding crowd, running for their lives. Limits to rights are sometimes reasonable (biting my lip, not to bring assault rifles into the conversation). Yes, we have the right to be stupid, but not a mandate to accept governing stupidly.
The correlation between the actions of a Starbucks’ employee and Wendy Vitter is a microcosm of black life in American. I was a teen in the 1970’s and a young man in my twenties in the 1980’s and could not get a cab to stop for me in the Nation’s Capital. Too often, when I was leaving work late, I would have a white friend hail a cab for me while I stood in the doorway of my building. Over and over young people of color, and old people of color are told things are better, I guess that is true depending on which end of the ‘telescope of better’ you view the world. Whenever discussions of race come up things that should have never existed are cited as a positive change. The abolishment of slavery was not a positive change it was a recognition of an abomination. The elimination of Jim Crow laws is not to be lauded they ought to be shameful reminders. No slave or freeman should ever be asked or made to say thank you for loosening the yoke of oppression.
I am fearful of getting too old to feel outraged any longer and I am panicked that I expect the worse. When I saw the video of the two gentlemen, who just took a moment from their day to literally smell the coffee, while waiting for a scheduled meeting, end up in handcuffs, I was speechless but unfortunately not surprised. They had the effrontery to ask to use the bathroom. I watched the video and shook my head, twenty years ago, I would have shaken my fist and 30 years ago I would have marched. If justice still exists in America, Wendy Vitter will immediately withdraw her name from nomination for a lifetime appointment as a judge in the Eastern District of Louisiana. Hey barista, I’ll take mine black...
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