This man really hit the nail on the head when it comes to the situation in Baltimore

This is such bullshit. I don't post on Reddit often. The FIRST time I ever did was to speak on the Ferguson riots. I've jumped in here and there when I see really upsetting ignorance but I'm just so fucking tired. All I want is for it to be my online home and, kind of a lot like this country does at large, when the "black people are animals" cycle comes back around and people show their true colors, Reddit never fails to remind me I don't really belong here.

The question everyone loves screaming every time these violent revolts happen, since LITERAL SLAVERY TIMES, is "Don't they know this is anti-productive?"

WHY? That's honestly my question. And just try to hear me out. I'm sure it's more fun to jump in and talk down to people you've been conditioned to know in your hearts are poorer, less educated, and more savage than you. But just try to follow my line of reasoning. Is it really SO insane...that large portions of the black community have NO reason to think this is anti-productive? That many people are utterly convinced right now that short of losing their shit, nobody gives a fuck about how the government and its police force treat us? When we are unarmed, we're still marked for death. When we are peaceful, we are at best ignored, usually manipulated into quiet acquiescence, and, at worst, assassinated. When we are organized and unified, we're STILL targeted and destroyed. (special note* I LOVE how this dude cut to pictures of the Black Panther movement for his example of what the black response SHOULD look like...does he not know what they stood for? Or how the FBI handled THAT approach to black empowerment???).

It must be so much fun to get to turn on the TV and pat yourself on the back for not feel so scared, angry, and victimized that you want to run outside and destroy stuff. This guy admits the media paints one specific picture of the protests...so why doesn't he have the mental capacity to challenge its veracity? Is it a blast, to live in a world where the blacks on TV are just poor, thug opportunists taking advantage of a chance to steal (which is the real narrative mainstream America has always just loved to embrace btw, that we're nothing but thieves - watch the coverage closely, you'll see the media never really deviates from that one commonly held assumption...it's just that nobody says it outright anymore). Is it so hard to image that maybe, just maybe, we really are a desperate community of your fellow Americans who have been denied the rights you and your family have happily taken for granted for generations?

Why would I make that up? Do you really walk around assuming niggers are just SO lazy, it's more likely we enjoy playing the victim than it is we're telling the truth when we beg you to understand things like systemic racism?

Is it so hard to wrap your heads around the fact that your schoolbooks and parents misinformed you because an uninformed/indifferent majority is more easily managed (and more lucrative) for a lot of people than one which knows the truth, which is that nowhere near as much has changed in this country as we like to pretend. That slavery just gave way to segregation, which was pretty easily repurposed into a school-to-prison pipeline, unequal sentencing practices, and systemic over-incarceration of the black community to create even more wealth for the already-rich via a for-profit prison system AND guaranteed that a de facto segregation could quietly persist unchallenged into the 21st century. That whether it fits in with the "American Dream" fantasy or not, the poverty cycle is very real and it is overwhelmingly drawn along racial lines.

I REALLY hate bringing the conversation here, but it's the only moral hypothetical in which I have ever seen white people fully engage - maybe because the USA was the indisputable good guy, maybe because all of the COD, idk...but buckle the fuck up for a Holocaust analogy. Now you can pick apart all sorts of smaller details with this comparison, but if all you want to do is nitpick and not listen, why the hell are you still reading this? I'm asking you to look at it in broad, meaningful strokes.

Black people don't go to death camps...we're just funneled into the largest prison population in the ENTIRE world. And our ghettos don't have literal, armed guards at the entrances - the barriers to escaping are much more complex and deeply rooted than JUST dudes with guns (think drugs and failing public services...although the dudes with guns ARE still running around killing people with impunity, hence the current situations). Would you have asked those Jews to...peacefully protest? They would have been heroes for taking to the streets en masse to "riot" as their people were being killed by their "authorities?" The vast majority of Black people are convinced we have about the same agency as citizens as they did (and for good reason). We might not have stars sewn on our clothes, but our skin is a dead giveaway that we won't be treated the way others are.

This is MY country too. I was born here. I have a right to live here, safely, happily, and equal. And like literally every person born on this soil from colonial times until now, if the powers that be won't give me my rights, then I guess some tea will go in the harbor and some shit will probably catch fire. Not because it's the BEST course of action, but because the fact is that it's clear that in this moment, it is the ONLY one that spurs ANY response and Americans NEED to do SOMETHING.

"It is true that two wrongs don't make a right, as we love to point out to the people we have wronged. But one wrong doesn't make a right, either. People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression." -James Baldwin, 1967

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