Illegitimate Defenders, Over-represented Victims

In a couple sidebar rants, I’m still pretty frustrated with racial inequality. By now, if you have any interest in the vicissitudes of America’s social status, you’ve seen the tape of a New Orleans man being “restrained” by several police officers and FBI agents about two weeks ago. In a tale as old as this nation, again we have one black man having to be “restrained” by several white law enforcement figures.

The great thing about video cameras is that they don’t lie.

Apparently the police officers' form of restraining is topped off with a few tactics employed by boxers and kick-boxers alike.

And so I listened to the White officers’ Attorney on the news the other day (of course another white man), and I was astounded to hear how he defended the actions of the police. Just to play devil’s advocate, let’s say that the Attorney’s clients are telling the truth: the man was in a drunken stupor, a threat to others in the area, and was resisting arrest.

Now even if all of that is true, does it really take 4 or 5 men to restrain 1 man? And if he is truly that drunken, how much of a fight can he really put up that it requires so many people to arrest him? I mean, the last time I checked, superhuman strength, crisp agility, and amazing dexterity aren’t exactly the hallmarks of drunken individuals. And where in the law enforcement training manual does punching several times to the head (as well as kicking for those that have seen the extended version of the tape) constitute arresting or restraining? Aren’t law enforcement agents trained on the swiftest, most effective ways to subdue someone, apart from bar-room brawling methods?

What I truly find funny is that every time an incident like this occurs, it’s always several white men beating the crap out of one “severe threat" black man (gosh...are black men really that scary). And then the people that defend them (both legally and in the news) are more white men who can clearly decipher between racial injustice and reality.

Doesn’t there seem to be something at least slightly wrong with that picture?

In my other rant, I am so frickin’ tired of missing persons’ stories on the news. Not that my heart doesn’t go out to the victims and their families, but because the stories are lopsided and incongruent racially and gender wise. If you just watch the news, you’d think that no racial minorities are ever missing anywhere in the United States. And you’d certainly never imagine that a man could possibly be missing. And no minority children are ever the victims of kidnappings, molestation and murder either.

If I see another missing white woman story, I think my head is going to explode.

Ok, so after making a statement like that, I know I’ve got to qualify it. Here’s the problem, in the year 2003, there were two thousand more missing men reported in the USA than women. In that same year less than 30% of all missing people reported in the USA were white women. Yet, on the news, white women are far and away all we hear about. EVERY ONCE IN A WHILE there’s a story involving a man or non-white female, but that is very rare.

So my issue is that most missing people stories should be carried by local or state news, not national news. And if we are going to report missing people on the national news, then we should report all kinds of missing people (black, yellow, white, purple, green, polka dot, male, female and other), not just white women.

And I know this may strike a sour chord with people to name names, but seriously, I don’t see how in October, in the midst/aftermath of a Pakistani Earthquake, Hurricanes Stan, Rita, and Katrina (with Wilma pending), the Iraqi elections (and about a dozen other serious major stories) Natallee Holloway still makes major news. She went missing in May.

I specifically remember watching one 24-hour cable news station during the 4 days after Hurricane Katrina (September mind you), and the only other story they deemed worthy of coverage was this missing blonde-haired white lady in Aruba. Of all the other stories to report on outside of the Hurricane (not to mention the sad Hurricane response), they took opportunity to report that one.

Again, my heart goes out to the victims.

But what about the missing Black lady down the street? What about the Asian man that went missing yesterday in Los Angeles? What about the Latino children that were kidnapped last week by a suspected registered sex offender? Aren’t their lives valuable too? Aren’t they victims as well? Shouldn’t we also start a nationwide search for them if we truly care about their safety?

Decades after Billie Jean King (a lady) beat a man in a tennis match, 50 years after Brown vs. the Board of Education, over 35 years after the death of Martin Luther King Jr., millennia after travel by ships allowed men of different shades and languages to see each other…and we still have all this overt, explicit and implicit gender and racial inequality.

What sad beings we truly are!

-Maelstrom