(Michael Muhammad, a business and marketing consultant for Cooper Hurley Injury Lawyers, posted a video on the firm’s YouTube page explaining his Stop the Violence campaign)
By Michael Muhammad
Police turns dog loose on black female college student. Unarmed black male shot and killed by police officer. Black woman dies in police custody under suspicious circumstances. Black male hanged by noose reported as suicide questioned by family. Disabled black motorist shot in the head seeking assistance. These and many more headlines like them are not from the 1960s era civil rights movements but are in fact headlines from 2015. When you pair this with the tremendous disparities in criminal sentencing and the economic gaps between black and white people in America, an intelligent person could only conclude that America is worse off today that it was 50 years ago. Of the major differences of 50 years ago and today, you also see headlines addressing an ever increasing number of black on black crimes, violence, and murder, which we must conclude puts Black America in a regressive condition.
Today we have more black elected council members, mayors, sheriffs, commissioners, district, commonwealth and state attorneys, judges, and even an U.S. Attorney General and president, yet the condition of black people has worsened. What is it that is so different from 50 years ago that while having more black millionaires and even billionaires than ever before allows for Black America to appear as burden on White America? If you think from a layman perspective or with the mind of an inferior black person or racist white person, you would think that black people are predisposed to substandard behavior and actions that brings about such problems. But if you think with a critical and balanced mind given to research and study you will find that the condition of black people today stems from the worse treatment of any people recorded in the annals of history. Black people coming out of the American system of chattel slavery were robbed of their names, language, religion, culture, diet, family structure, educational structure, connection to the broader world, identity, and God, with nothing being done to give redress to these unprecedented psychological, physiological, sociological, economic, spiritual, and educational atrocities. These atrocities have and continue to have a devastating perpetual effect on the condition of black people in America. When you look at the conditions under which the populace of black people live, while there are no visible shackles, the system of white supremacy has an inordinate influence and control. This is witnessed by the fact that even though black people are being shot and killed by white police officers, disproportionately sentenced by white judges, denied loans by white bankers, and various other forms of discrimination and mistreatment by whites in positions of power and influence, there is an implosion as opposed to an explosion of rage resulting in black on black crime.
While black people are not the only people in America to have suffered, black people are the only people who yet to have as much as an apology for an unwarranted system by which whites worldwide were made wealthy and positioned for greatness. Jewish people suffered a horrible suffering at the hands of Nazi Germany but they enjoy continuous reparations from America. Japanese and Chinese were given reparations, and the Native Americans were given a miniscule level of reparations that is in no way compensatory yet reparations still. The effort to ignore or diminish black people’s suffering reveals the tremendous degree to which white supremacist will go to continue to benefit at the expense of a poor, uninformed people. These areas of benefit were exposed in Ferguson, Missouri as a result of a Justice Department investigation that determined that poor black people were being targeted like an ATM machine to pay and undergird the expense of running a city. While Ferguson was exposed, it is far from the exception, it is more like the rule. For example, here in Norfolk, Virginia on any given day the overpriced courthouse is filled with black citizens for minute and minor offenses for which they are given excessive fines and court costs. Recently, a white Norfolk police officer by the name of Michael Carlton Edington, Jr. was indicted by a special grand jury for class 5 felony charge of voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of mentally ill man whose family was seeking assistance. This officer was given a personal recognizance bond; meaning he was released on his promise to return to court and his signature, while in Virginia Beach, a black NFL football player by the name of Justin Hunter was arrested on a felony charge of malicious wounding for a bar fight and was held in jail without a bond, made to go through the expensive process of securing a bond, and then made to post a $25,000 bond. From the outside you may say that these are two different cities with two different court systems but with closer examination you will find that the rules governing a magistrate’s ability to permission bond in Virginia is governed by the Virginia General Assembly. In 2012, the Virginia General assembly voted and determined that there were a list of charges for which there is a presumption against bond, a class 5 felony voluntary manslaughter is in fact one of those charges. A presumption against bond means that at the magistrate level no bond may be given and like Justin Hunter, you will have to be jailed, hire an attorney and go through a hearing by either a General District or Circuit Court judge to be approved for a bond at which time conditions and the expense of bond are required. This type of disparity both legal and economic is the norm for black people throughout America. Another example of such disparity and white supremacy is the case of Marius Mitchell, who, while on his way to work in Norfolk, was stalked and shot multiple times by Norfolk police officer Neal Robertson. While being treated at a local hospital for his injuries, Marius Mitchell was held for 12 days under armed police guard and denied visitation by his attorney, his family, clergy, and friends even though he had not been charged with a crime. Meanwhile Officer Robertson was presented a plaque by Norfolk’s mayor on behalf of Hampton Roads-based Towne Bank for his in the line of duty shoot even though the shooting is still under investigation. (Note: a jury declared a mistrial in the case of Officer Robertson).
When faced with such overwhelming injustice, it should come as no shock when we see uprisings in cities like Baltimore, MD, Ferguson, MI, Cincinnati, OH, and Los Angeles, CA and soon other cities. But still there is no national move to give justice to America’s former slave who has given this country so much while receiving so little. Young black people today are not like the generations preceding them who suffered peacefully in hopes of a better tomorrow. As today’s black youth have watched war-mongering presidents such George W. Bush and Barack H. Obama, it is unconscionable to them how they should suffer injustice at the hands of city, state and the federal government while watching America spend trillions to “protect” the suffering people of Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Iraq from the oppression of their government. So we have seen over the last few years uprisings similar to that of the Arab Spring of 2010. A close study of history will show that when dissatisfaction amongst the people reaches the youth it brings about revolutionary change. Nearly half of America is now at the point of dissatisfaction so to see young people rising up should not come as a shock but should be expected. The best way to alleviate the burden of dissatisfaction amongst the people is to give equal justice and protection under law. For over a 150 years since the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, black people in America have continued to suffer injustice after injustice, inequality after inequality, disparity after disparity, and now the cry of the young is unequivocally and nonnegotiable, Justice or Else!
Michael Muhammad is a community activist, consultant and former candidate for mayor. He lives in Norfolk.
