I’ve been silent as long as I can stand it. Mary, I also watched how upset and hurt Dante’s family was living without him. He was killed so unnecessarily and at the end of the day, officers shooting and killing black males is indicative of the racism felt in the white community.
You see, to many white people don’t walk around using the ”N” word but they use it amongst themselves, I know they do because I’ve heard them doing it. So, we have people who have grown up in racist families like the one Barb described and they harbor those feelings all their lives. They learn to mask it, when necessary, remember the representative we all have, but the true nature and feelings one has about something eventually spill out.
Any officer shooting at a African American male as flagrantly as many of the officers in these cases where, a African American person has lost their life, harbors racist views toward African Americans. This is so evident in the recent case in New Jersey where the two officers came into a situation and immediately assumed the African American kid was the one in the wrong. They are racist and should not be in the positions they are in. No amount of training will dispel engrained or intense dislike of something or someone.
As we listen to what is going on in the Ahmaud Avery murder, those men were so full of hate it was only a matter of time before they did exactly what they ended up doing. There needs to be a more in-depth psychological evaluation of anyone who seeks to join a law enforcement agency of any kind. We simply can’t continue to higher people with these kinds of attitudes, beliefs, and hostilities as people in positions of authority and security. They are not qualified to be stewards of the law as they themselves are not law abiding.
Far too often we have heard tapes, seen social media post or witnessed some of these officers using racial slurs and speaking with contempt and complete disdain for and toward African-Americans. This is what is at the root of this not being a very democratic country. Until we weed out bad people in any position of authority, we will never be able to call ourselves a democratic society.
