Our Country

This past month has exposed the myth of law, order and justice in our country. From George Floyd, to handcuffing a teenager for jaywalking in Tulsa, Oklahoma; to an investigation for 2 young men found hanging by a rope from a tree in California  and with a drive-by shooting in Georgia. With so much sadistic murder and hate, in all parts of our country, it’s difficult to keep track with all occurrences. This essay addresses racism, capitalism and the excessive use of police force in our country.

Man has been dominated by man, because he can, since the beginning of recorded time. According to Carl Jung, we are born with a collective unconscious which stores latent memory traces inherited from man’s ancestral or real past. In other words, man is born with a predisposition or memory trace to be dominated or by submission to another as well as a predisposition or archetype for freedom, aggression, or with a sadistic-masochistic character style. In our collective unconscious- our archetypes, are the Hebrew slaves that built the great Pyramids in Egypt. Eventually with the help of Moses and God our people gained freedom. In America’s troubled past, slavery occurred between the Native Americans Indians, the early European explorers and the colonists. The location of this exploitation occurred in Spanish Florida sometime during the 1500s. According to historical records, the first African slaves arrived to either the Georgia or Carolina coast in 1526.

 401 years ago, in 1619, 20 to 30 African slaves set foot at Point Comfort, Virginia. These people were on a Portuguese slave ship that was captured by English WASP privateers.  In essence, capitalism prospered. Now, the WASPs had free labor to produce, grow, harvest and market their worldwide cotton commodities trade. These private owners privatized their cotton production for economic profit. Don’t get about sugar from the Caribbean, tobacco  and the textile mills located in industrial centers like Lancashire, England and  the trade hubs  in London and New York that accelerated worldwide markets; created a demand for innovative contracts; increased novel financial products in modern forms; and created insurance and credit. This paved the way for the invention of futures contracts which are still in use today.

Further, profits from productivity were harnessed through the punishments of the enslaved. In other words punishment rose and fell with global market fluctuation. When prices increased in the English market, the poor slaves immediately felt the effects.  They were harder driven and the sound of the whip left its mark. Unrestrained capitalism held no monopoly on violence. Personal fortunes of the WASPS came at the expense of the black workers. Cash and greed were supreme and ruled moralistic ideals.

In order to protect and control their “subhuman “property and wealth, the WASP’s established an early form of American racist policing. They created slave patrols. The first slave patrol was formed in South Carolina in 1704. Their job description was to capture runaways, defiant slaves, and slaves attempting to escape by boat by whatever means. These WASP vigilantes were cruel, sadistic and enjoyed hunting their prey. Of course, there were no consequences for rumbustious behavior because none of their behavior was considered inappropriate. They were the law, judge, and jury and had the blessing of their closed system employers. Thus, the basis for today’s sadistic racist police force was established.

Pres. Andrew Jackson, a wealthy enslaver from Tennessee, championed the Indian Removal Act of 1830. That act removed numerous Indian tribes from their land and facilitated the opening of open lands in the Southwest. The new land areas were the capitalistic enterprise for agriculture and slave trade by the white wealthy. In essence, there were experienced WASPs that bought, sold, owned, rented and mortgaged approximately 1,000,000 humans with black skin. Texas became the West cotton slavery stronghold. The black people made up about 30% of that state’s population in 1860. Lesser numbers of black people located in California, New Mexico, Montana, Colorado and Oregon in the 1860s and thus assisted in the settling of the West.

The emancipation in 1865 severely diminished, but did not eliminate, the power of exploitation by the Confederacy.  They created state and national laws to further the practice of slavery.  These states enacted laws to criminalize “so-called inappropriate” behavior by people with black skin. This practice allowed the ruling party to call a black an outlaw under the law. The free blacks were no longer free. They were slaves again. The wealthy capitalists controlled the slave population and had free labor once again. Additional sadistic exploitation occurred with the forming of vigilante groups like the KKK. These groups were given the power to assault and lynch the so-called subhuman race without due process. These practices had nothing to do with law and order. It was about greed, exploitation and sadism.

 In the1880s and going into the 1900s, we had an influx of European immigrants. The Northern or Nordic immigrants were WASPs and desirable while those from Italy, Spain and Jews from Poland, Germany and Russia were less desirable as they were not WASP’s. Capitalism flourished with its cruel use of the labor force. Low wages, horrible working conditions and child labor were the norm. Subsequently, the abused workers fought for their freedom and power by forming labor unions.  The capitalist propaganda machine countered and claimed that unions were un- American, dominated by dangerous people who were socialists, communists and who would disrupt and strike at any time. In order to control unions and the “undesirables,” the WASP power structure established so-called police enforcers in the major cities by the 1880s.  In fact their job description was to break the labor strikes. They fought the strikers and protected the scabs that allowed them to cross the picket lines. Law, order and justice was for the wealthy capitalists .This force had nothing to do with serving or protecting the public.

Political machines came into being and hired the police to protect their interests.  The wealthy and local party ward leaders hired police captains, and sergeants to harass opponents of different political parties. These police characters received payoffs to ignore illegal drinking, gambling and prostitution. Now the police had additional opportunities to increase their pay. Let’s add bribery to their job description.

In 1929, Republican President Hoover created the Wickersham commission to investigate the ineffectiveness of law enforcement nationwide.  It wasn’t about ineffectiveness it was an attempt to control the political party ward leaders by prohibiting police involvement.

 The police are still ineffective and aligned with the Republican Party. Let’s move to 1989 with the Republican Rehnquist Court. With the Graham versus Connor decision, it stated that if so-called objective reasonableness was used, by the police, then law enforcement characters could use excessive force. It should be clear, by now, that the laws protect despicable, sadistic and murder behavior by the police. The police are simply accomplices, collude and protect the Republican political party and their neo liberal capitalism.

There are numerous examples of discrimination in sports racism. For instance, Tom Darden excelled in all high school sports in Sandusky, Ohio in the 60s. According to Darden, he believed that football was his second or third best sport. However, his high school basketball and baseball coaches did not facilitate, encourage or market him beyond high school. However, his high school football coach did. Darden was recruited by Bump Elliott the University of Michigan head football coach. Elliott also recruited a number of other black athletes the most ever by the University of Michigan in 1968.

While at Michigan, it took at least four games during the 1969 football season for their new head coach Bo Schembechler’s racially integrated team to become a team. During that 1969 season, the Wolverines upset the number one ranked Buckeyes and their 22 straight victories.

With the loss to the Wolverines, the two top college teams were now the all-white Texas Longhorns and the integrated Penn State Nittany Lions. Republican President Richard Nixon arbitrarily selected the all-white Texas football team to play the all-white Arkansas football team for the college football championship. Incidentally, that was the last year that all-white college teams played for a national championship.

Darden excelled at Michigan, was an All-American and a first round pro-draft selection by the Cleveland Browns. He was their single-season and career interception leader and was considered one of the top 50 Cleveland Browns players.

Roger Goodell the NFL Commissioner just admitted the league made a mistake when they didn’t allow San Francisco quarterback Collin Kaepernick to knell to protest police brutality during the playing of the national anthem. Trump, was a major influence when he erroneously made patriotism and the flag as the issue instead of admitting police brutality. The NFL buckled until recently when Goodell apologized for his mistake and said that Kaepernick should play again.

 The following statements have been addressed in previous essays to highlight injustice, discrimination and blatant racism. We know why that in the LA budget, the police force receives 54%. We know why the police unions have so much power. We know why we have a law, order and justice slogan and illusion. We know why Richard Nixon created a war on drugs. We know why we have a privatization of prisons. We know why blacks are arrested and incarcerated at least three times more than all others.  We know that Trump is incompetent and has a malignant narcissist mental disorder. We know why Trump and his father discriminated against blacks in 1973 with housing applications. We know why individuals with black sounding names are discriminated against in hiring practices. We know why at least a third of Covid 19 deaths, in our country, are people with black skin. We know why that a person’s ZIP Code correlates with limited and poor educational opportunities, high unemployment, poor health, high drug use, lack of mobility, and shortened life span. We know why Cory Booker’s family had difficulty buying their first home. We know why Kamala Harris was bussed to school during integration. We know why there is systemic racism in our country. We know why the police departments require reorganization, diminished role descriptions, along with internal rules and regulations with consequences. We know why that in 2017, a citizen had a 40 % chance of getting away murder. We know why that a citizen had over 50% chance of getting away with severe assault. We know why that a cop can get away with a hate crime. We know why our US police have far more suicides than any other police force. We know why our US police force kills far more than any other police force. We know why we experience hate before love.

PS

Tom Darden and I are working with our screenwriter to tell a story about racism, perseverance, and excellence.

Reference

The New York Times Magazine, The 1619 Project. August 18, 2019