It is an image of Michael Brown as he lay dead in the street following being shot six times in the back. As you can see, accompanying Michael Brown is food and drink that is racially linked with people of an African-American descent, how anyone could have put this image together and thought it to be either acceptable or comical is far beyond me. This says a lot about the country it was published in which was undoubtedly the USA, and does this take the 'freedom of speech' too far? Is this the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant American Dream? Or is it simply (though sadly) that this has become the norm for America?
Michael W. Twitty does give critical analysis of aspects of these (and other) questions about America today, dealing directly with the shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. One part of Twitty's blog stood out to me most and it is this;
"The same country where some white folk are celebrating their “right,” to bear firearms in Targets and Starbucks and pointing rifles at Federal agents (a la Cliven Bundy) without reproach, dares lecture Black America about the legalized lynchings of its sons for petty theft or perceived slights against police and governmental authority. The same country where people are thrilled by movies about white collar crime on Wall Street and the theft of millions on the same, has robbed people of their savings is the same country where “stop and frisk” jukes the stats uptown while the real crooks downtown go wild and unrestrained after their rape of the American dream."Read that last part again, "Their RAPE of the American Dream" this is a powerful statement to make, and the American Dream has unfortunately become something that changes with race when it truly shouldn't. A WASP should not simply want for himself and other white folk like him, he should want the true American Dream for everyone, no matter what race, religion or ethnicity they are but sadly that just doesn't happen. The American dream now is instead something that has left people with the freedom and ability to create disturbing images like the one above. I am by no means saying that all white men are pro-white, WASP, elites, but it isn't a hard fact to prove that very often white men are hired by white men rathe than hiring black men with equal if not better qualifications for the role, simply based on the colour of their skin. This denies, disturbs and destroys the American Dream, that is not equality, in their eyes not all men are created equal so they 'rape' the black man's American Dream to better their own and to better their white counterparts.
Regrettably what we have seen in Ferguson and many other places across America, be it intentional or not on the police officers part, is undermining the American Dream. He did shoot-to-kill a young black man with no matter how you look at it, excessive force. Did the officer really need to shoot him six times in the back? If he was white I'm sure it would have been a completely different story, their probably wouldn't even have been a 'story' at all.
Earlier on in the text Twitty also refers to this as an "American Tragedy" but is this simply an American tragedy or is this more of a tragedy for the contemporary world? I believe what happens in America now isn't just American anymore, America has become so influential on geo-politics that for something like this to happen in America, 'The Land of the Free', sends the wrong message to almost every other country on this planet. In contrast to this though, I do agree with Twitty that it is still an American tragedy at heart, and something desperately needs to be done about modern racial segregation within present-day America.
sources;
Blog by Michael W. Twitty; http://afroculinaria.com/2014/08/18/ferguson-my-thoughts-on-an-american-flashpoint/
Image; https://afroculinaria.files.wordpress.com/2014/08/img_20140818_001814.jpg
EDIT: I found this video after posting my blog and would like to discuss in relevance to doubts in America.
No comments:
Post a Comment