It seems that as the weather warmed up, so did white people's urge to call the police on black folks for merely living their lives. We've met BBQ Becky, Pool Patrol Paula, Permit Patty to name a few. While we have all given our two cents on the Caucasian ridiculousness of it all, one woman's recent trip to the Memorial for Peace and Justice shines a light on how this entitlement is eerily similar to the lynching of black people.
When Naima Cochrane took a long way home, making a pit stop in Montgomery, Alabama, to view the National Lynching Museum, she felt compelled to share a few self-evident truths with us.
We’re taking the “long way” back home so we could stop in Montgomery to visit the lynching memorial. Found the counties we knew. Found the name of a victim my grandfather used to tell stories about. pic.twitter.com/ziqnoeBGXP
— Boogie (@naima) July 9, 2018
Police brutality is as American as baseball and deeply engraved into the country’s DNA. Anytime someone calls the police on a black person there's the underlying knowledge that things can go extremely left. How any person would be OK with wearing the blood of the slaughtered is beyond me, but according to Cochrane's observations, the notion runs deep.
The latest dates I saw were in the 1940’s. As late as 47. Some lynched for something as simple as standing around a white space, “frightening” a white woman. Sh*t is sounding way too familiar right now. pic.twitter.com/tCabOZluiw
— Boogie (@naima) July 9, 2018
Familiar indeed.
An Ohio couple living in a predominantly black neighborhood is so comfortable calling the police on black people who make them feel threatened that they've called the police nearly 60 times in 18 years. Their reasons include a 12-year-old black boy mowing their lawn and black children enjoying the summer. It's a scary life to live when your very existence is deemed threatening.
There are so many stories involving police brutality that we'll likely never hear about all of them:
There are multiple places in the memorial that remind us there are *thousands* of stories we’ll never know the details of. Names that will never be called. These stories rise up in our spirit every time a black person is killed extrajudicially at the hands of police officers… pic.twitter.com/mM7O5fAkYQ
— Boogie (@naima) July 10, 2018
… every time someone decides our blackness in and of itself is suspicious and calls said police. They are ingrained into our American DNA: our freedom to think, speak, move, BE… challenged at every turn, because white people need to feel superior. pic.twitter.com/bXngAfI4Sa
— Boogie (@naima) July 10, 2018
"Every time someone decides our blackness in and of itself is suspicious and calls said police. They are ingrained into our American DNA: our freedom to think, speak, move, BE… challenged at every turn, because white people need to feel superior,” the #MusicSermon creator concluded.
And so, history continues to repeat itself in the worst way.
