Could That “Riot” Be an Uprising?

Let’s face it, the last several days have been hard on White Power. Despite a setup to essentially force a riot with the announcement in Ferguson, the city did not burn. Even clever editing on Fox News just didn’t make anything look all that riot-ish. Makes you think that maybe some of those protesters were responsible citizens . . .

Then, well, this: Overweight asthmatics (back off: I’m one too) just don’t look all that dangerous. Forget race: overweight asthmatics just don’t look dangerous. Killing one of us as he states the obvious—“I can’t breathe”—on the street isn’t pretty. Or smart. It’s just dumb.

Capital punishment for selling loose cigarettes? Even China or Texas doesn’t do that.

And then, do remember race. Feet of clay? Fuhgeddaboudit. White Power has its clay posterior fully in view. In the Civil Rights years, it took a bit of thinking to find someone as dumb as Bull Conner, “Commissioner of Public Safety” in Birmingham, Alabama—someone who might be nudged into turning firehoses and dogs onto protestors in front of cameras. Nowadays, it appears, we can find a Bull Conner in nearly every city in the US and a hoard of minions to do his bidding, or at least to pile onto an asthmatic fat guy. If he’s black.

I feel like singing (along with Texas prisoner David Crosby):

“ . . . this increases my paranoia,
yeah, like lookin’ in my mirror and seein’ a police car.”

White Power has become so overt and so complacent that police killings are pre-approved by any jury in the land. Public opinion? Oh, baby, public opinion will not convict (or even question) a poe-lease action.

America: I’m an overweight, asthmatic guy who happens to wear white privilege. But you’re chokin’ me. Not because I can’t do whatever I darn well please to whomever I darn well please (that goes without saying) . . . but because I have a conscience.

Most Americans can, on good days, brush off our endless war on terror. But this war, near and far, on everyone not white? That’s a little closer to home. Killing asthmatics on our streets . . . If you can breathe, you’re not thinking.