Tag: black men

A WORLD WITH NO SUPER HEROES

by Lord Serious

As election season approaches, this society takes its cue from the pages of its favorite comic books. Superheroes suddenly appear on the scene in crime infested neighborhoods to begin their campaigns to be elected as the next savior of the world. While all of this is happening, a Boogyman is being manufactured to sway public opinion. Mainstream media, the trusted sidekick of the hero, uses explosive headlines and catchy catch phrases to highlight the obvious need for new legislation to save the world. With every pow, boom, and blam, the audience is drawn in more.

The super power of these heroes is neither super human strength, hyper speed, or even enhanced mental abilities. The American politician and his mass media sidekick have only one super power. They control the narrative on crime here in America through the manipulation of graphs and statistics from crime reports.

Many gun control proponents blame the increase in violent crime on the criminal reform policies enacted by many Democrats following the George Floyd protests. However, the facts do not support the narrative that an uptick in violent crime is the result of the knee jerk reactions from Democratic lawmakers, or the de-fund the police movement organized by grassroots leadership.

The troubling thing about the super villains in most comic books is that in their origin story you learn that they used to be a good guy in their past. But when they take a political position in opposition to the zero tolerance policy of the hero. Their uncompromising will places a target on their back and they get labeled the bad guy. But if it were not for the hero and certain choices the hero made, the conditions would not have existed to allow the emergence of the super villain. But this fact gets ignored.

Likewise, our political leaders would rather ignore how their decisions to militarize the police force in impoverish communities, privatize prisons, and the economic shutdown the endorsed during the pandemic influenced the spike in crime and public distrust for police.

The data shows that violent crime such as murder was increasing all throughout the country not just in Democratic localities.The number of homicides spiked almost 30% during the first year of the pandemic in both cities and rural areas, and in both red and blue states. Also, of significance is the fact that, with this increase of violent crime during the pandemic its effects were not evenly spread across all socioeconomic demographics. There weren’t any increase in affluent elderly people being attacked. The risk of being a victim of violent crime still disproportionately affected Black men and those living in impoverished communities.

Pew Research Center found that FBI data on the cause of the increase in violent crime during the pandemic was still unclear. Some of the variety of potential causes included the economic and social changes brought on by the pandemic, as well as policing policy changes in the wake of George Floyd’s death. Significantly, while murder rose 30% and Aggravated Assault rose 12%, rape and robbery declined. And despite this spike in murders, the murder rate during the pandemic was still lower than the levels seen during the early 90’s during the Crack era and Cocaine Wars. Lastly, Americans are more likely to die from suicide or drug overdose than they are to die by murder. The 2020 homicide rate was 7.8 per 100,000 people. That same year Suicide rate was 13.5 deaths per 100,000 people; overdose deaths accounted for 27.1 deaths per 100,000 people.

The heroes sidekick pointed out crime sprees and mob retail theft and blamed it on police reform and policy changes regarding bail and granting parole to violent offenders. But there was no hard proof to support this theory. Yet, Glenn Youngkin successfully won his campaign for the Governor’s house using this narrative.

You see when you are reading comic books or watching movies about comic book heroes. You tend to become so invested into the epic struggle between the forces of good and evil that you fail to think about the perspective of the average citizens living in Metropolis or Gotham City. Not everyone likes Batman, and, not everyone hates the Joker.

Many of them understand that the Bat signal is just a dog whistle informing the world that it has now become politically fashionable to fight crime. The Batman only fights low level and organized crime as a vigilante, because he is a criminal himself involved in all sorts of corporate crime. The same way America’s politicians offer pay to play and federal appointments to their corporate donors. Bruce Wayne uses the image of the Batman to protect the corporate interests of all the Wayne Enterprises of the world.

There are no super heroes or super villains in this world, there are only people. But the people we elect can make good or bad policy decisions that can influence everyday law abiding citizens into making a split second decision to violate the law. Should the crime be a violent offense, the current policies in Virginia do not grant that average citizen a second chance to gain early release through good behavior, whereby they can earn additional good time or even get paroled.

This November, I think it’s time that we elect people who will make good policies that will serve the public interest more than the corporate interests of their donors.

Lord Serious is the author of four published books. He is a hip hop artist who recently dropped a political protest mix tape against the prison industrial complex called Work Release, Vol. 2 (The Mixtape) which is now available on Apple Music, iTunes, Spotify, Pandora, YouTube, and other streaming platforms.

A Trick

“…it’s a trick… thinking its a right of passage for a black male, ain’t real n!##@ til you enter that jail…”

-Royce Da 5’9″, “Tricked”- The Allegory

That line hits home hard. As a black man who, as a child, knew nothing of racial conflict and black stereotypes, as I look back, I see my preteen childhood as a testament to that truth–we’ve seen prison as a right of passage for us.

It’s an unspoken tradition– a vile trick that has effected, to this day, the lives of many young black men and boys. When confronted with great adversity, children normally look to their heroes for guidance on how to handle life’s issues. But many black boys suffer from America’s increasing culture of fatherlessness. What is a little black boy to do then?

Due to the struggles of black men to provide for their families in the overtly racist America of the very recent past, they found themselves faced with a life threatening dilemma– make their own way with any means available to them, or suffer the sight of a family deprived. In a country that blatantly disapproved of them solely because of their appearance, black men expressed their anger with American society by disregarding the laws – the same laws, that legally ostracized them. Therefore, the black rebel became a symbol of heroism for black Americans across the country– strong black men who stared into the face of overwhelming odds and chose survival. This became the definition of a black man. But this is also where the trick began…

It’s not a secret – for a time, America was all but inhospitable to black people. Sadly but understandably, what it has meant to be black has become an embrace of anti-establishment ideology. Why? Well, we have to understand that every prominent black American hero, at the hands of white people, have been harassed, beaten, imprisoned, and/or killed! We think if we are bold like our heroes, who had to brave the violence and strife brought on by racism and the government leaders who either participated or enabled it, only then are we strong enough to be black men in this country.

If the world of American racism is symbolized as a battleground, then the prison system would be behind enemy lines. The jails became a place where survivors of the struggle were held. The same way we honor prisoners of war, we honor the ex-convict black man who survived the extent of white oppression.

As the world evolves, so too should the mindset and model of the black American male. But I fear that if there is always a going to be a battlefield (societal racism), there are always going to be fighters, and prisoners of war (black men behind bars).

This Black History Month, let’s take some time to reflect on how we can change this for future generations.

-Q. Patterson