Black Skeptics/POCBF Statement on Ferguson & Our Hate Mail

Black Skeptics Group & People of Color Beyond Faith condemn the actions of Officer Darren Wilson in the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri. We would like to extend our condolences and well wishes to the family and friends of Michael Brown, and we stand in solidarity with the protestors in Ferguson and elsewhere. Given the recent events in Ferguson it is imperative that systemic inequalities pertaining to policing and white supremacist policies are closely examined and redressed. We are very concerned about the militarized response of police to peaceful protests from those who seek justice for communities that have had a long history of police suppression, racial segregation and discrimination. We at Black Skeptics Group recognize that communities of color are over-policed and underserved.  We join the community in calling for a timely and transparent investigation into Brown’s death as well as potential criminal prosecution of Officer Wilson.

 

Carl Roberts
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Submitted on 2014/08/21 at 9:43 pm | In reply to

Keep on killing each other you Black racist.

 

The Moeller
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Submitted on 2014/08/25 at 5:31 pm

Stop making this a racial issue. You blacks riot before getting any facts. If you want to be taken seriously, start acting like a human being. No doubt we need to address these killings, but to turn this into a racial issue, which is what you always do, is absurd. I just fired a man, black man, for showing up to work drunk, stealing money from my drawers, and giving away hotel rooms. He claimed it is because he’s black. Get over yourselves.

 

Confederate Cash
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Most niggers know, as stupid as tbey are, that your long winded mouthy hitrionics are pure anal sucking antics.
Ask any useless nigger in the South, and there are millions, what they would be today, if they didnt have the White Privilege of being the descendants of hard working slaves. Niggers today dint have a clue, and neither do you siviku, of what an hobest days work is. Thats niggers cannot live with out free schools, healthcare, abortions and food stamps.
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Black Skeptics/POCBF Statement on Ferguson & Our Hate Mail
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13 thoughts on “Black Skeptics/POCBF Statement on Ferguson & Our Hate Mail

  1. 2

    It’s the best statement you could make, given that when you speak as a group, I guess you have to tone it down. This is one of the moments when I wish I could magically send some comfort to the mom of this murdered, innocent boy because as a mom, I know exactly how strong her bond with her son must have been, and just the thought that this bond could be broken is too difficult for me to even think. Words like “condolences” or “sympathies” seem too empty at a time like this. Michael and all the other murdered children should be here, living out their hopes and dreams. They shouldn’t be dead. The difference between what should be and what is… It defies any words I have.

    No comment on the hate mail because I don’t want to say anything that might violate your comment policy.

      1. I know. I wasn’t able to send a comment there, so I’ll say it here.

        I translated your article for three Romani women from the Kosovo who were with me when I read it yesterday. They all broke into tears and said, “she’s talking about us”. They thought all Americans could do was drop bombs on people and bring Kosovo Albanians to power who want to wipe us out. I explained to them that African Americans are different, and that most of them are on our side. That was totally new to them. Thanks to Obama, they thought your people were just like white Americans. Thanks to you, now they know better.

        The stuff you wrote really triggered me too. When I was younger and my family lived in a camper, everytime the cops came for one of their regular drug raids on the camp, the first person who spotted them would shout, “the locusts are coming”. That’s how we called them, and that’s how they behaved. But hey, according to Hilary were’re “integrated” in the U.S. (she means the ones who are 1/4 gypsy, 3/4 Anglo-Saxon, pass as white, buy into respectability bullshit, and know nothing about our culture beyond cliches).

        I’d like to write more, and I will in a few months when my youngest daughter is out of the worst. The bottom line is, the civil rights activism you do on behalf of your people is important for many others too. Because of people like you, I know, and now three other Romani women know, that we’re not all alone in the world. For whatever that’s worth to you, know that it goes both ways. What you do really helps. Thank you so much.

        1. Thanks M, I really appreciate your analysis and feedback. Please do write more and I hope that your daughter’s condition, whatever it may be, is not serious. Means a lot that Romani women in Kosovo find resonance in and solidarity with my work; especially given our collective state of heightened, crushing criminalization. I’d always assumed that AAs were universally reviled and viewed as “untouchables”, so the perception that we are construed as “first world” representatives like Obama comes as quite a surprise.

          1. Thank you, my daughter is fine, I meant as soon as she’s old enough to no longer need non-stop, 24h care (very assertive personality, always wants something, definitely future womanist/feminist material, haha).

            The misperceptions about African Americans come from a lack of education in general. Roma in Europe (and in the U.S.) struggle with that a lot, on the one hand because of ghettoization of our settled communities and the lack of any convinving approach to provide education to our mobile communities. But also due to the fact that marginalized cultures tend to stagnate and become very conservative because they simply don’t have the resources and leisure necessary to evolve. So even folks who do have access to education often don’t absorb much of it. I went to high school and yet, 15 years ago, I thought Paris was a country and folks there were speaking Dutch which was the same as German. Because my parents sent me there so I could marry up, not because they saw any value in it, and I never questioned that logic and had no reason to be insterested. The bottom line is, many people in our community lack awareness of how the world works because they’ve learned that all they need to know about it is in the Bible or the Qur’an.

            So to Romani refugees from the Kosovo, the Unites States is very far away. The only African Americans visible to them are basically Obama and Bey who of course are both upper-class, educated, lighter skinned, and don’t exactly represent the average population. That, together with some superficial knowledge of MLK and the civil rights movement leads them to believe that segregation is no longer an issue. In fact, many activists see your people as role models we should follow to achieve equality. For example, there are now Romani evangelical churches popping up in Europe which are being modeled after the Black Church (consequently, the African Americans they’re in contact with are the deluded, Clarence Thomas, respectability types, and their narrative is what our people hear).

            Against that background, even asylum seekers usually have access to television. What they see is a guy called Obama, from an ethnic group that’s supposedly equal now, ordering drone strikes on wedding parties just like Bush did. From the narrow slice of reality they perceive, the only sound conclusion to draw is that he’s exactly like Bush and by extension, African Americans are just Americans. Comparing myself before and after I started reading books, I see that effect pretty clearly. Early on, I always thought the slice of reality I saw was the whole truth – and then I discovered some new information that turned it upside down. Eventually, I saw a pattern and became a skeptic. That hasn’t happened to my three friends from the Kosovo yet, but a few more experiences like this one and maybe it will.

  2. 3

    The vile irony about your hate mailers is that one can be certain they’re the sort of people who espouse “white pride”, yet they are the main source of my white shame. The main thing that makes me NOT proud of being white, is people and beliefs like these…well, as double-m says, I won’t crap on your comment policy to express my opinion of their…opinions (to be charitable)…in this thread.

    Stop my fucking race, I want to get off. :/

    My own approach to them was best expressed by The Beat in Two Swords, the important line being:

    I’ve never been one for the punch-up
    But look I really hate those nazis (nazis)
    A certain something starts to wind me up
    How could I hate it all so violently

    1. 3.1

      That was just a small sample. We have a lot more chestnuts from the past four years since the blog began.

      I didn’t know EB dabbled in social critique; always associated them with that ditty “I Confess”.

  3. 5

    Nobody commenting on either side actually can be said to *know* what happened before Brown was shot, but beyond that, the issues run much, much deeper as shown in this brilliant piece of journalism:

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2014/09/03/how-st-louis-county-missouri-profits-from-poverty/

    I happened to be in Suriname a few weeks ago when the rights were still news. CNN International had non-stop stupid coverage, the sort we’ve come to expect from TV news (little actual reporting, same few vids repeated). At the Marriot, an older man, a white male seemingly used to being in charge, had been holding court in the lobby for days while negotiating for some sort of church function and I was finally able to figure out that he was the head of the local Mormon mission (the “those damn Christians” comment threw me off at first, but was actually the first clue).

    While he was conducting a meeting with his wife and a couple of 50-ish underlings, one of the riot scenes flashed on the TV screen above them. He took the time to stop and expound on “those people”, and how they’ll complain about any thing and use it as an excuse for a riot, and his minions tut-tutted their agreements. I considered walking over, sitting down and offering to discuss the history of afflicted minorites in the US (the Mormons have their own, to a degree justified, take on the subject) and segueing into their own cult’s “difficulties” with dark-skinned people and the strange doctrinal “error” held by people like himself up until fairly recently, but their are meetings to catch…

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