Our Kids Are Not Thugs: The System Is Broke

 by David Ikard

We should keep in mind that the overwhelming majority of these old white heads who keep quoting MLK and calling for nonviolence are the same folks that were calling MLK a terrorist and racial agitator during the Civil Rights Movement. We should keep in mind that the majority of black folks were not behind MLK when he was marching and raising political consciousness during the CR Movement. Mass black support didn't come until many years after his assassination.

You see the black respectability folks are scared--they think that compliance equals improvement. But compliance AS MLK said never changed anything: "Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable... Every step toward the goal of justice requires sacrifice, suffering, and struggle; the tireless exertions and passionate concern of dedicated individuals." and then there's this: "Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Yo, and when a white interviewer tried to get him to denounce blk rioters as lawbreakers and thugs he dropped this little gem: "A riot is the language of the unheard."

Our youth are not pathological or prone to violence; they are RESPONDING to a unapologetically violent and pathologically white supremacist capitalist society. The fact that the mainstream media is locked in on the spectacle that is the RESPONSE to violence and structural inequalities (for these problems didn't just arrived out of blue; Freddie Gray's death was simply the straw that broke the camel's back) INSTEAD of the TERRORIST POLICE STATE bespeaks how deep the investment in Wh Sup Capitalism remains.

Anybody that knows anything about, say, child abuse will tell you that the child that is trying to cope with said abuse by pretending that everything is ok is typically in the most emotionally dangerous state. However, the child that is acting out and raising hell is comparatively MORE healthy. Why? Because the latter understands on some visceral level that something is NOT right and is reacting in accordance. Our children are hurting because they are being targeted, vilified, harassed, terrorized, tagged as scapegoats, erstwhile their victimizers from politicians, corporate heads, and thugged out police, are not only being acquitted of wrongdoing in the court of public opinion and beyond but praised and revered.

Our children are trying to let us know that enough is enough and we should hear them; answer their call; protect them; educate them and stand up for them. And if for whatever reason you can't do any of the above, then do them a solid and move the hell out of the way. "Freedom," to quote MLK again, "is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed." Those are words to die for. So save the sermonizing on respectability and get to work or at least stop hindering those folks who are. A change is gonna come people. That much is for damn sure.