Charles Barkley is Right

Well, you know, in the way that cutting someone off on the road is right and letting your dog jump on little kids while taking a walk is right. He’s right in the way that he actually isn’t, he’s incredibly wrong and ignorant and I’m about tired of people like him, Ben Carson, and Don Lemon existing and using their power (or access to public microphones) to make comments on the Black community as if they were appointed by us and for us. Stop it.

I’ve been kind of numbed out since last weeks announcement that Darren Wilson wouldn’t be tried for the murder of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. I’m still numb and newly hit in the stomach with the news that the cop who choked Eric Garner to death in New York won’t have charges pressed against him. Despite the fact that Garner’s death was ruled as a homicide. You know, that MAJOR crime that usually means you’d be seeing a court, some jail time, and an eternity in a very dark place? So upon this new information, just imagine how awesome I feel being sent the link to this interview Charles Barkley did with CNN saying some incendiary things. Things that only come from a place of ignorance and the comfortable veil that money and power casts over you where you think you’re untouchable. Sorry to pop your bubble sir, but you too are black, and if this epidemic of people of color being offed by cops making situations too extreme continues, you wouldn’t be safe. Gated community and all.

By saying that we never talk about race until something bad happens is just ludicrous. You mean to tell me all of those people who marched with MLK Jr. and sided with the Panthers and agreed with Malcolm X just stopped talking about race the second MLK was shot in the face, the Panthers were arrested, and Malcolm died? Um, no. If anything, these things drove them to march harder in different ways. People like CB may have thought they became placated after a while and stopped talking about race, but they never did. They never stopped warning their children how to act around cops, how their lives were substantially different from their White peers and how their dreams would be deferred by people crying abuse of the system and Affirmative Action as the reasons Blacks were on the come up. It never stopped. Maybe he stopped hearing it because he was making millions of dollars from basketball teams owned by White men, so he assumed they accepted him? You were their new slave in a different kind of way because you fought for it, achieved it, and was living the life. The life they were providing for you. So say thank you to Massah. I’ll wait.

The biggest thing that blew me from his interview was his saying “We as Black people, we have a lot of crooks. We can’t just wait until something like (the Brown shooting) happens. We have to look at ourselves in the mirror” and continues on to say “There is a reason that they racially profile us in the way they do. Sometimes it is wrong, and sometimes it is right.” No Sir Charles, there is never a reason to racially profile ANYBODY, let’s get that clear. I got to read tons of stories of how horrible Arabs and Muslims and anybody who was colored similarly were treated after 9/11, after all of the UNITED WE STAND bullshit the media was spewing to promote patriotism in the good ol’ U.S. of A that were upsetting to people. Some of these people being profiled and attacked were more American than I was, and I was born here! And they felt pain and fear and hurt the same way as all of us after NY and DC were attacked, and yet because they looked like our attackers they weren’t allowed to continue living their lives peacefully. There is never a reason to racially profile anybody, you’re only perpetuating the inflicting of these wounds you insist we need to heal by ignoring the glaring problem of police officers of the Caucasian nature killing people of color.

And to say we have a lot of crooks is laughable. Every race produces their own share of crooks, let’s get it straight. I’m not going to post statistics because you can clearly do that research on your own if you’re inclined, but to make generalizations like that is just damaging your own people. But that’s easy to do because you’re safe and protected behind your money and your TV job and blah blah blah. He essentially says we’re rightfully racially profiled because we have a lot of crooks, and it got me to thinking. If racially profiling is acceptable as long as a group exhibits signs of criminality, then there’s an entire group of people who the police are missing out on. They’ve forgotten all of those crooks on Wall Street in suits and ties with the slicked back hair and melanin-free skin. Was it not crooks who sent our economy into a tailspin in 2008 and then begged the government to be bailed out? Like, it was literally called a bail out, and isn’t bailing out what you do for people who’ve committed crimes? You know, CROOKS?!