The Education of a Nation

Far be it for me to try and tell people how they should live and what decisions they should make but there comes a time in every life when those who know better should do better.  During these times, one may need to remind and review in order not to repeat history but learn from it.  It is becoming quite apparent that this is the time.  I direct this first to the African-American Community, then to this nation as a whole.  My purpose for first the African-American Community is because it is a community of which I am a part of and have a clearer understanding of what might have caused us to slip into this false sense of security and entitlement.  Addressing this with the nation that both my community and my nation cease the hoping that things will change, discard the avoidable desire to just stick their heads in the sand and realize that only through a continual working at it and learning from make many of us began to see that just wishing things for change or waiting for it to be delivered on some phantom silver platter without willing to continually working for it, is not, never did or ever will happen.  Herein begin the lesson.

In a stunning article titled “Police Arrest Young Black Politician For Distributing Voting Rights Leaflets” by Alice Ollstein for Thinkprogress.com, she reports that “The stars of North Carolina’s Moral Mondays movement took the stage Monday at Charlotte’s Marshall Park to condemn the state’s record on voter suppression and racial profiling, and urge the community to organize and turn out at the polls this November. Just a few hundred feet away, police cuffed and arrested local LGBT activist and former State Senate candidate Ty Turner as he was putting voting rights information on parked cars. “They said they would charge me for distributing literature,” Turner told ThinkProgress when he was released a few hours later. “I asked [the policeman] for the ordinance number [being violated], because they can’t put handcuffs on you if they cannot tell you why they’re detaining you. I said, ‘Show me where it’s illegal to do this.’ But he would not do it. The officer got mad and grabbed me. Then he told me that I was resisting arrest!”  There is a local ordinance prohibiting leafleting on cars. But according to local activist Casey Throneburg, who filmed the above video, it is almost never enforced, and “certainly not with handcuffs.” So was the police right in arresting Mr. Turner.  Yes, according to the city ordinance that does exist.  The issue now becomes why then and why him?  Was there not others who were caught doing this before, I mean it had to be or there would have never been a need for that ordinance.  If so, what happened to them?

Were they arrested and handcuffed and what’s more disturbing was they driven around to isolated places “instead of transporting Turner directly to the Mecklenburg County jail, which sits just a few blocks from Marshall Park, he said they took him first to an empty parking lot behind the highway. “They took me to three different spots other than the jail,” he said. “They knew they were in the wrong.”  They may not have been wrong to detain him but you must question if the crime really did fit the punishment.

To my African-American Community, instead of pretending to care so much that it makes you angry, care enough to follow the suggestion as printed in this article saying “As the crowd waited, Reverend Dr. William Barber—the founder of Moral Mondays and President of the North Carolina NAACP—said the incident illustrated the urgent need to get out the vote in the African American community.”  “Police are hired by police chiefs, who are hired by people that are elected,” he said. He then turned to Turner’s friends, who were crying. “I want you to be angry. Rosa Parks got angry and she changed the world. Take this incident and turn it into power. Anyone who says they’re upset about this profiling of black men, ask them if they’re registered to vote. That’s how we change this system.”

This is how you fix the problem.  No longer must we sit on our brains and wait for that never-coming silver platter.  No longer must we use this kind of treatment as an excuse for committing crimes.  No longer must we stand by and think that this could never happen to us because it does all the time, only many of us fail or refuse to recognize it for fear that if we acknowledge it, we then have to fix it.  It’s time; black men stepped up and taught young black males how knowing the rules are their best weapon against injustice.  It’s time for black women to stop assuming that strength can only be found in your refusal to lay down, it can also be found in a partner who shares your beliefs.  It’s time to put that selfish nature on the shelf and put on that compassionate garment that’s been hanging in your closet so long, it looks ragged.  It’s time to come together and honor those who died for your right to vote by voting and show that proper respect to those who continue to fight so that you can exercise that right.

As a nation full of humanity, it is time for us to stop saying that it is someone else’s problem because no matter how far removed you think you are from anything happening in this world, there is truly only six degrees of separation which means if we all sit on our hands and let this happen to another human being, we are essentially giving them the okay to do it to us.  Funny how when something happens to another person, it seems not so much of a big deal but when it happens to us or to someone we know and love, it feels like the end of the world.  Frankly people, we bring this upon ourselves every single time we refuse to shine the light on any injustice.

Enough is enough but nothing will change if we continue to do nothing.  If it is some changes we desire then we are left with only one alternative, we must do something to make something.  Many of us see violence as the only way to get our point across and that blinds us to actually solving the problem.  Violence never solves anything but it does add another layer of fuel to the ever burning and growing fire.  To actually solve any issue, violence should never be a part of the solution.  The real solution comes when mature people step up and stand up to what they see as wrong and those on both sides of the issue are willing to listen and yes compromise.  Having the biggest army only means you have secured peace until someone else gets a larger one.  History was not design to repeat, it was designed to educate.