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Sent to you by moya via Google Reader:
i guess i'm just surprised that anyone actually thought the criminal justice system would result in anything resembling justice for POCs in this instance. the very way the laws are written, the way the trial was carried out - all of it conspires to limit and constrain the possible scope of any…
YAY! now you go one better and get condescending too!
i don't think anyone "actually thought the criminal justice system would result in anything resembling justice" in this case. again, we are not stupid or naive and don't need your lecture. quite obviously, we know firsthand (and better than you) just how injust the justice system is for us. and we can all see how everything was stacked against a guilty verdict from the beginning.
that said, you make it sound like we shouldn't be angry and disappointed. like we should just suck it up and deal with reality instead of fighting for something better. your whole tone is "why are you people complaining? this is just how it is." coupled with "let me explain to you how it really is you silly naive people".
and yes, we should expect better. if we don't expect better, we might as well curl up and die. the oppression would be completely overwhelming and there would be no reason to bother trying to survive it if we don't think that things should change, should start to go in favor of real justice. but frankly, as a white woman, you can't really even begin to fathom that. so your insistance that we not expect better is your own privilege speaking and you are hurting people with it. your demands that we accept things as they are serve to prop up the oppressive system. there is a certain "oh, don't get angry about it" in your responses that is overbearing, lacking in compassion, and frankly obnoxious.
and it still doesn't explain why you felt the need to say that the cop "didn't mean to" kill Grant. how you can excuse away murder and counsel people to look at the realities of how the justice system works, but expect to be taken seriously, is beyond me.
please, sit down, shut up, and let people work thru what we have to work thru.
—yes. well, the incredible, life-affirming, miraculous capacity for folks, esp. folks of color to hope and strive for justice against all odds and history can be surprising to others. that we after hundreds of years of being told what is possible in this world, manage to defy the odds, and imagine and invest in a different outcome has perplexed white folks since slavemasters shook their heads at those foolish slaves singing while they toiled in the fields. not realizing that our capacity to believe that a different world is possible, that the present is more powerful than the past, and that the future is not determined yet, this is what has kept us alive, surviving and breathing for generations. yes, we know our own history. but we also know that miracles do happen. or we would not be alive right now.
in other words our survival is miraculous. and is based on our imagining and striving for the impossible.
for those whose survival is not miraculous, but predetermined by the system of power, it may be difficult to understand the difference in world views.
and our anger has always been more powerful than our acquiescence to genocide.
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