Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Why the surprise folks?

As the events of Ferguson, Missouri (and the rest of the state) continue to unfold, there's comments in a lot of social media demonstrating surprise about what has happened in the Show Me state.

Surprise?

"Yes, surprise.  This kind of thing doesn't happen in America."

What doesn't happen in America ... exactly?

"These people rioting and causing chaos."

Have you ever watched water boil?  How the water seems so perfectly calm ... how small bubble may form before the water becomes turbulent and violent.

"Yeah, so?"

*sighs*

And so it goes....

It's not rocket science.  Shooting an unarmed black male and then ramping up the reaction with a militarized presence is throwing gasoline to already hot fire.  Now it's even more out of control and thankfully the press is actually doing their job to report what's happening.  Not through a skewed lens of the police spokesperson, but risking their lives to report on the conflict.

In the heartland of the country - a race war is underway.

So when folks communicate surprise to the situation, I shake my head.  There has been an ongoing amount of injustice suffered by African Americans and even though things like this is reminiscent of a dark period in our history, the underlying problems still exist.

The only surprise here is that folks still don't understand how we got here in the first place.

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