I skimmed over the case of Rayshard Brooks in my last blog as his name had not yet been released. The reason why the police were called on him was because he dozed off behind the wheel at a drive-thru. From what he had explained to the police, he was coming from celebrating his daughter’s birthday and had had a drink? He said he had had one and half measures of drink. I could see he was trembling as he said it because he knew his life was hanging in the balance. One cannot drive when they have had one too many, everyone understands that, but what I found odd was in the way the police officer was interrogating him. I could tell the police officer was making a big deal of something that could easily be sorted out. I am a human being, you are a human being, we are all human beings and we do make mistakes, sometimes, especially when excited. Obviously he was excited with his daughter’s birthday.
There is a word called mercy. That word has not gone out of fashion and could still be applied to our everyday dealings with people or even animals!
Everyone who watched the interrogation on camera could not fail to see that Rayshard was cooperating with the police. He did his numbers correctly, he stood on one leg perfectly. What more did the police officer want! My heart went to Rayshard but not to the police officer. The police officer was heartless and was acting so detached from Rayshard and was rather too official. He reminded me of a racist! A racist does not have a heart. I lived in Johannesburg South Africa during Apartheid, where racism was mwah! Where the creme de la creme of racism was! Excuse the sarcasm.
I went to a college in Rosebank and would commute to get there. Here I am, going back home after my college. The bus came and I went into the bus as usual and only to be told I should get off. The bus driver said his bus did not carry black people under any circumstances and that I happened to be one. He switched off the engine of his bus to make his point loud and clear. At first I was shocked because of the way he looked at me. As if I was inferior. Then I was embarrassed because of all the other college students who were there. I didn’t know what to say. I had to say something. Then I asked a stupid question for lack of words, “are you not going to Braamfontein?” He said, “yes, I am.”
Because it was not a college bus, there is nothing that the college could do but to apologise for the bus driver’s ignorance.
Anyway, I remember getting off the bus and walking a long way to get the “black bus” which unfortunately because of routing would still not take me to my destination but would only leave me in the city centre to catch another bus home. I can not forget the pain I felt as I got off the “white bus”. It was a different pain. I never knew that such a pain existed until that day. That day, I understood racism. I understood it for what it is. It is EVIL. I looked at my skin and I felt helpless. My eyes welled up and then I said in my heart as I was walking, “O God, why is the colour of my skin trouble for me? I cannot come out of this skin. I didn’t choose this skin and yet I stand accused of being black. How can this be? I don’t understand it Lord” I continued sobbing.
When I think of Rayshard, my heart hurts so much. Why the hatred of a black person? Why the belief that black people have low IQ and therefore are as good as monkeys and chimpanzees? Why do they feel black people are wasting space and so should be squashed? Sometimes I think blacks are hated so much that racists desire to see all black people wiped off the face of the earth. As if there is an unfinished story. A vendetta! What is it?
I am sure if it was a white person in the car dozing off, he would have been cautioned and then escorted home for fear that something might happen to him. After all that is the whole point of patrol officers. That’s what they are there for. But alas! The rule doesn’t apply for a black person! The police are terror in all its fury, for a black person.
I used to admire the United States of America and its people; very much, until lately. My brothers lived in USA, in Burbank LA years back but they returned to Africa. They had good things to say about USA. Very good things.
My heart goes to my fellow black people in the US. The burden they carry day in and day out. It feels like they are far from home and are going round and round in circles going nowhere. How can you be free in a place where if you dozed off at a drive-thru whilst you are behind the wheel, and stationary, will end up dead with bullets on your back? How can you feel free where you knew police officers are after your blood, your black blood?
Through all this, I have been trying to understand the real issue behind this hatred of a black person by the US police and I think I have unearthed it. Let’s go back to the 13th Amendment to the US Constitution. “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Right there! That’s where it is. In black and white! Pun not intended. The Constitution should read, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.” Whoever drafted that Constitution did not wish for slavery to end! I have said it before in my previous blog – https://corneroftheroof.com/2020/06/08/did-you-hear-me-crying-in-the-field/ – that it is by committing a crime that a black person is enslaved again. CRIME is the engine used to enslave a black person in the US.
The killing of Rayshard Brooks tells me if you resist an arrest and if you’re a black person in the US, you are saying NO to slavery and they will gun you down. I will leave you to watch this interview below. Please watch because it will confirm what I have been saying all along.
Corner of the Roof 