Ahjamu Umi's: "The Truth Challenge"
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Please Stop Conflating Police Murder with Inner City Violence

6/9/2020

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In my usual weekly dose of white supremacist hatred directed at me for the analysis I offer, no less than three European (white) men used the same talking points against me last night.  And, as always, not to be outdone, many African and other colonized people are parroting the same rhetoric.

It’s the same tired talking points promoted non-stop by FOX television news.  The propaganda arm of the right white ruling class members, FOX has spent the last several years reiterating the same talking points over and over again.  This network has taken on a special relationship with the inner-city areas of Chicago, Illinois, U.S.  They can’t get enough of Chicago.  That city, like many like it, suffers from inner city tensions and violence between African street organizations.  The FOX strategy has been to take that inner-city violence in Chicago and sloppily compare it to police and white vigilante killings of people like George Floyd, Brionna Taylor, and Armaud Arbery.  Their main thesis is why so many protests against the police killings, but a much more muted response to the inner-city violence among African people?

To the untrained eye, this may sound like a logical question, but to those of us steeled in this work, we can detect white supremacy in its most finite level.  Plus, on these questions, the clear answers have been presented many times.  Like most things in this backward society, the problem is a lack of accountability.  As a result, people can easily get away with studying nothing, doing little to no work, talking and fetishizing our suffering, and they can exist on such a low level of production with no one ever telling them to shut up and sit down. 

The answer (articulated widely, but apparently to no avail) is that prisons are filled with Africans who commit all types of minor infractions.  Here in California, Africans live only in the larger metro areas like Los Angeles County, the Inland Empire, the Bay Area, and Sacramento.  The entire rest of this state has few Africans.  As a result, Africans only represent about 8% of the total state population, yet we are 39% of this state’s prison population.  And, the same level of disproportionate numbers exist everywhere.  So, if an African kills another African, they are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated.  On the other hand, the reason why the police and vigilante killings generate much more interest and protests is because most of those cases happen with no justice towards the victims.  No one is arrested.  No one is punished.  In fact, many of the police and vigilantes who carry out these heinous crimes like George Zimmerman (Trayvon Martin) or Darren Wilson (Mike Brown) carry on, financially benefit, and exhibit openly hostile attitudes towards the terror they have inflicted on those unarmed people.  These are clear and distinct differences.  Its difficult to understand how so many people are so easily confused by this.  

Another tired and basic trick FOX has used is to point out the fact that Africans are killing Africans in Chicago.  They use this tactic in an attempt to defuse the white cops killing Africans as a tool of white supremacy narrative.  This “analysis” ignores the clear reality that all ethnic groupings typically exist in social proximity to the people in their own ethnic grouping.  As a result, people by and large marry and/or partner with those of their own ethnic grouping.  They live around their own ethnic grouping.  They socialize around their own ethnic groupings.  And, they kill mostly among their own ethnic grouping.  So, contrary to FOX’s propaganda efforts, the truth is 91% of Africans kill Africans.  Eighty-seven percent of Europeans (whites) kills other whites.  Eighty-five percent of Asians kill Asians and 89% of Indigenous people kill Indigenous people.  So, contrary to the propaganda of white supremacy that so many people have been convinced to accept, there is no great self-hatred regarding inner community killing that impacts African people more than anyone else.  The percentage ratio difference between inner community ethnic groupings is so small (about seven percent) that using social science evaluation techniques, its considered negligible, meaning the difference is so small its not even relevant.

Its difficult for us to believe people don’t understand these explanations, but even if that’s still not clear to people, we can take all of those factors and lump them together as resulting from white supremacy.  Violence exists in inner-cities because of the systemic oppression that places people there, keeps them there, and engages in consistent terror and repression against them while they are there.  Any people placed in those inhumane, stressful, and unhealthy conditions would react in ways that are not always admirable.  And besides that, it already been reported that police play such a vital role in perpetuating inner-city violence, but that’s an entirely different article.  If you are not qualified to see the obvious parts of this issue, we will need to wait to talk about police corruption and the major role it plays in sabotaging our people in the communities we live in.
 
The point is all of these variables are the direct result of white supremacy.  So, when people protest against police terror, they are not just protesting against the individual act of police terror.  We understand that those who are short sighted may see it that way, but George Floyd was just the one case that caused the cup to overflow.  It could have been George Smith, or George Johnson, or Sam Floyd, etc.  It was time and the people moved.  And when people protest, they are protesting the entire system of white supremacy from the systemic oppression that creates and sustains inner-city ghettos to the police violence against us.  Even if they don’t have signs expressing concern about Chicago or wherever, that is as much a reason they are out there as anything else. 

The binding factor, whether talking about Chicago violence, or police terrorism against Africans, is that all of this reflects the disrespect and oppression against African people.  A systemic “throwing away” of the African masses that results from the fact our existence stands in the way of the capitalist system’s clear path towards continuing to profit from exploiting Africa’s rare earth mineral wealth. 
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That last piece is an advanced one like the question of police corruption.  Still, we wish to encourage anyone who is genuinely confused and not working to protect white supremacy and capitalism to study this deeper.  We can assure you that all African revolutionaries involved in organizational work with our people struggle to address all elements of our oppression at all times.  We certainly don’t need some European from Montana attempting to argue with us on social media about “why we don’t protest what’s happening in Chicago?”  These types of worthless people have made it quite clear that they are against any form of protest against the capitalist system (because they have been unwittingly convinced that its their job to protect capitalism, despite the fact it never protects them).  Their dishonesty and their inability to address the obvious flaws in their lack of integrity would be funny if we didn’t have more important work to do.  As for the colonized people who parrot the same talking points, that’s just an issue of our low level of political education.  Like the capitalist system intends, we analyze everything happening with our people not from a historical class, gender, and race analysis, but through the same flawed anecdotal one up example approach that the white right relies on so consistently.  The answer here is organized political education for everyone.  The people challenging the reasons people are protesting are protecting forces who they don’t need to protect.  People are protesting injustice.  We should support that on all levels while at the same time figuring out ways to challenge, encourage, and inspire people to step up our game to a higher level of organization in our fight.  As always, political education is going to play a central role in that evolutionary process.

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    I don't see disagreement as a negative because I understand that Frederick Douglass was correct when he said "there is no progress without struggle."  Our brains are muscles.  Just like any other muscle in our body if we don't stress it and push it, the brain will not improve.  Or, as a bumper sticker I saw once put it, "If you can't change your mind, how do you know it's there?"

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