citizen477

[citizen477]

South Florida afternoon glow.

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A South Florida, Thursday sun rise from my bedroom window. 😍

[citizen477]

[citizen477]

Check it out

[citizen477]

And old Spanish moss covered tree in my hood. ☺️

[citizen477]

Ten City is so underrated. As a young boy growing up loving House Music, they showed me that an all-male, all-Black group could do House Music. They should do an "Unsung" episode about them.

[citizen477]

[citizen477]

Whew! My darn allergies.

This is beautiful! A father comforts his daughter, affirming her beauty after she said she wanted straight hair like her friends.

(🎥: @thejacksonfamilyvalues) #BlackDads #BlackDadsMatter

[citizen477]

This brotha right here! Gorgeous!

[citizen477]

Though the United States was founded as a slave nation, with the subjugation of African Americans written into our constitution, and though our history brims with centuries of repulsive acts of viciousness perpetrated by whites against millions of African Americans, no white-as-criminal trope ever took hold.  This can only be attributed to the triumph of propaganda  over reality.

What about more recently? Most of us see our history of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynchings as shameful and repellent, yet still believe the black-as-criminal attitude is justified based on current crime fears. Is it?

It depends on what we choose to fear. How about serial killers? What criminal is more terrifying than a madman killing again and again, escaping the law?  America’s most notorious serial killers, striking fear as their body counts mount, have almost always turned out to be white, and gruesome beyond imagining. Albert DeSalvo, the Boston Strangler, terrorized his city in the 1960s, sexually assaulting and murdering thirteen women. David Berkowitz, New York City’s “son of Sam,” killed six and wounded seven in the late 1970s, terrifying the city until his apprehension.Ted Bundy, who called himself “the most coldhearted son of a bitch you’ll ever meet,” confessed to thirty murders in the 1970s. He was on the loose, killing women in Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Colorado for years before he was apprehended. Chicago serial killer John Wayne Gacy, who dressed as a clown and performed at children’s hospitals, murdered thirty-three teenaged boys and young men in the 1970s, burying twenty-seven in the crawl space under his house.  He described his sexual release in committing murder as “the ultimate thrill.” Gary Ridgeway, Washington State’s Green River Killer, was convicted of killing forty-eight girls and young women but admitted to ninety murders during the 1980s and 1990s. He returned to the corpses he left along the river to have sexual intercourse with them. Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, killed three and terrorized many others, sending mail bombs with his anti-technology screeds to universities and airports for seventeen years, until 1995. Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal, raped, murdered, and dismembered seventeen men and boys over thirteen years, until 1991. Dennis Rader, known as BTK for his signature “bind, torture, and kill” modus operandi, killed ten in Wichita, Kansas and was on the loose for decades until his 2005 apprehension.

Though each of these men was white, striking again and again in towns and cities across the United States, garnering intense media coverage of their crimes and captures, no fear of white men emerged. Their murders were considered individual acts for which they alone were responsible.

Prominent American organized crime families have long been run by white men like John Gotti, widely reputed to be responsible for at least thirty murders, including executions he ordered of members of his own crime family who he suspected of being informants. James “Whitey” Bulger killed at least eleven of his organized crime associates and did not face justice until he was 84 years old. He was sentenced to life in prison in late 2013. The judge sentencing him pronounced “the scope, callousness, and depravity of [his] crimes are almost unfathomable.” Yet none of us looks at white men with concern that they are mob bosses.

Rampage killers are often in the news.  Nearly every one who has murdered a large number of people in one horrific event has been white.  American bomber Timothy McVeigh took 168 lives at the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995, many of them preschoolers at day care, in the worst incident of domestic terrorism until 9/11. Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris, the Columbine high school killers, shot thirteen of their fellow high school students, then took their own lives in 1999. Adam Lanza killed his mother, then a classroom full of six- and seven-year-olds and six school personnel before killing himself at Newtown Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012.  Earlier that year James Holmes shot 12 moviegoers in Aurora, Colorado.  All these men are white, as is the case for virtually all shooters on the long and growing list of mass killings in America. (The major exception is not an African-American but Korean student Seung-Hui Cho, who committed the worst mass shooting in our history, killing thirty-three people at Virginia Tech University before turning his gun on himself in 2007.)  Yet even though these shocking events generate round-the-clock media attention for days or weeks afterwards, that level of attention does not scare anyone away from white men.

Shocking cases of white women killing their own children occur regularly. In 1995, Susan Smith murdered her two sons, then told police an African American man did it. (So prevalent is the black-as-criminal stereotype that racial hoaxes are common and often effective in distracting attention.) Andrea Yates drowned all five of her young children in 2001. In one of the highest profile cases of the last few years, Casey Anthony was tried (and acquitted) for the murder of her daughter Caylee. No one concludes white women are baby killers.    

Every American presidential assassin – the killers of presidents Abraham Lincoln, James Garfield, William McKinley, and John F. Kennedy – has been white, as was the killer of JFK’s assassin, and the murderers of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy.  Ronald Reagan’s attempted assassin was white, and so were all those who made attempts on the lives of presidents Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Gerald Ford (Ford’s two attempted killers diverged not on racial but on gender lines, as both were white women).

In our nation’s history, so many of the sickest, most appalling crimes have been committed by whites. Yet no matter how sadistic the crime, no matter how young the victims, no matter how much fear is engendered in a community, no matter how much media attention and public discussion the crimes of whites engender, the race itself is never sullied. One does not look at a white man or woman and feel concern that pale skin enhances the likelihood that he or she is an assassin, a bomber, a murderer.

Let’s look at run-of-the-mill crimes today. Who’s committing them?  Who should be feared?  Again, it depends on what categories of offenses we choose to fear. Whites are disproportionately arrested for some crimes, such as arson, driving under the influence, and vandalism. That is, even with the focus of police resources on black communities, whites are convicted of these offenses at numbers greater than their percentage of the population. Drunk driving is a real menace, killing over 10,000 Americans per year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration data. Yet no one eyes a white driver next to him on the road and says, “A-ha, light-skinned guy, he’s probably drunk, I’m calling the police.” 

The statistics don’t matter.  Our perceptions do.

[citizen477]

As usual, AAPACT came through with an awesome performance. Enjoyed the "Mighty Gents" tonight. Awesome job. Great acting. #communitytheatre #aapact (at Vista Palms)

[citizen477]

I rebuke the spirits of abominable odors and strange smells coming from my refrigerator in the name of Clorox Bleach and dish detergent. Gloraaayyy! #LOL #hurricaneirma #hurricaneaftermath (at Snake Creek, Miami, Florida)

[citizen477]

This jam right here is a perfect example of good, modern House music.

[citizen477]

We speak their names...

[citizen477]

"...Who is you, Chiron?... " #moonlight #moviecrush #ThatSmile

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[citizen477]

We're going to be okay, Black people. Let's unite!