Tonight I was talking to a young man who’s about to be a father and wonders if his life is over. May I encourage all of you single dads that actually, your life has just begun. If you think you’ve never accomplished anything in school, at work, or wherever…now you can. If you didn’t have a father in your life, now you can show your child what it’s really like to have one. What can seem like something that has destroyed your life, can be what saves your life. If you’ve been living that “do-nothin” life in this country, they have a cell and/or grave waiting for you. But your child can give you something to set that alarm clock for in the morning. Someone to make you say, “Nah, I’m not going there or doing that…”. Someone that you can put your legacy and values on FOREVER. You will never do that at a job, never do that at a school, but you have an opportunity to do that in your child’s life…and that’s why God allowed YOU to be a father. Everybody else in your life may have said, and may still say, “That ___ isn’t ever going to do anything with their life.” But one day you’ll realize that other people’s opinions don’t pay your child support, hold your kid’s hand, teach them how to catch, or touch you in ways that will have you in tears like you’re the baby. You fellas get up in the morning knowing that you got something to live for, and die for, and be thankful not sorry, that your life will never be the same.
How many more stories do we need to SEE? A generation ago, video footage (Selma) or even a photo (Emmett Till) sparked change and outrage in all people groups. Today, many won’t blink, will turn on and listen to Fox News, and continue to defend the actions of police who are lying and shooting down African-Americans with impunity. If this were any other people group, there is no doubt that the nation’s reaction would be completely different.
I bet the Church’s reaction would be different as well. I’d walk into service and people would be talking about how we need to pray for what is happening in our country and how they are scared. Folks would be holding prayer services for the persecution of ___ group in the nation. There would probably be academic debates about whether we are in The Tribulation period, if Obama’s the Antichrist, and when will the Abomination of desolation go down in the temple.
Instead, that statement is currently mostly reserved for President Obama and so-called “gay marriage”. Because you know, “we” (a group in which I’m not a part despite being a Believer) need to “take our country back”.
I wouldn’t be able to turn on my selected Christian podcast or talk show without hearing, “God will judge those who practice such terroristic acts and this is a supernatural attack against those created in the image of God, and we as Christians need to stand against such acts…”.
Instead, they’ll discuss how rap music (you know, that “jungle music”) creates thugs and the police are just enforcing the power of the sword given to them by God. After all, the KKK didn’t start executing and calling people niggers until rap came along using the word in the late ’80s. By that logic, I guess the Klan was actually a peace loving Christian organization during the civil rights 60’s as African-American singers were talking about being young, gifted and black.
Better yet, what would the nation’s reaction be if this video would have shown him shooting a dog running away?
I can tell you the reaction we are seeing now though. And that’s a fund that’s been created defending the officer and raising money for him. Something we’ve seen for many of the officers and citizens who have shot African-American’s since George Zimmerman.
But the most important point of all, had there been no video (thank God for the brave person who recorded and turned it in), there would have been few questions and the cop’s LIE and planting of evidence would have been known only by God and officer.
My family’s prayers go out Walter Scott’s family. They should not have to bury their son.
This tragic incident opens up a whole other can of issues that I will discuss later. For example, the number of contacts that innocent African-American’s have with the police. Take a look at New York’s Stop-and-Frisk data here. A busted tail light and child support warrant was enough to get Scott killed. I know many will say, “Look, he was running so he must have done something!” While I ask the question, “What would make a 50 year old man, who had a busted light as was late on his child-support (joining an enormous number of men including your’s truly at one time), run from the police?”
Was he fearing for this life?
Judging by the video, his fear was justified.
Sadly, he was unable to run fast enough.
Please pray for our nation, because for many of us, we’re beginning to wonder if Jim Crow 2.0 is the beginning of a new Tribulation period.
Over the last couple of days, more stories have been generated from the Equal Justice Initiative research that I referenced HERE in part one. So I wanted to write a second post.
1.) Check out this 5 min. audio of the NPR interview with Bryan Stevenson, executive director of Equal Justice Initiative – HERE.
2.) The Atlanta Blackstar, in THIS article, points out,
“These conclusions are explored in the report, “Age of the Wolf: A Study of the Rise of Lone Wolf and Leaderless Resistance Terrorism.” The report covers 2009 to 2015, the period Obama has been in office, and finds that a terrorist incident took place or was disrupted every 34 days. The SPLC’s and other studies have indicated that since the 9/11 mass murder, more people have been killed in America by non-Islamic domestic terrorists than jihadists.
This fact should be of concern to African-Americans and other non-whites who will likely be the first targets of these racist, self-activated white extremists.”
You likely will not see this research on Fox News or your other mainstream source of news that reports only what gets ratings, strikes fear and what the government wants over the truth.
Shout out to Brian Williams.
3.) The NY Times generated a graphic showing 73 years of lynching based on the EJI’s data. You can find that HERE.
As noted in the NPR story, Montgomery, Alabama, certainly a ground-zero for civil rights issues, does not have any markers showing where various lynchings took place.
America’s history hasn’t “forgotten”, it is ignored its own history. Personally, I think this is one of the major reasons why again, African-American’s should be the biggest proponents for homeschooling their children.
Lastly, I have to say, in our internet age we can learn what we want to learn. But what’s really sad is that it was just all too easy to find photos for these two blog posts, I’m talking different photos for different incidents. Perhaps that says more than any of the other words that I’ve typed.
CSD
“To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time.”
“The paradox of education is precisely this – that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which he is being educated.”
Photo taken at the The Orange County Regional History Center – CSD Museum Trip
Our family makes numerous trips to various museums as part of our homeschool teaching. The lessons we learn, often about history, truly teach as that as Soloman wisely said,
New Living Translation
Ecc. 1:9 – History merely repeats itself. It has all been done before. Nothing under the sun is truly new.
From “A Southern Sheriff’s Law and Disorder”, author John Hill writes:
“His big break came in 1949. In July, a white farm bride claimed she was abducted and raped by four black men in the backwoods town of Groveland. McCall quickly arrested Sam Shepherd and Walter Irvin, who had been pals in the Army. The two had refused to work in the groves. Shepherd’s family also had angered many whites for making a success of a small family farm, thus improving their standing within the black community. McCall saw the chance to take this “uppity” black man down a peg. By charging Shepherd with rape, the sheriff would solve two problems at once.
Photo said to have been taken minutes after McCall claimed to have been attacked by Shepherd and Irvin.
McCall’s deputies beat the men and did little to stop the rioting that continued for days after the arrests. Shepherd and Irvin were convicted and sentenced to death. (A third defendant received life in prison; a fourth was pursued, shot and killed by a posse.) In April 1951, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the death sentences, blaming McCall for ruining the prospects of a fair trial. In November, as he was transporting the prisoners for retrial, McCall shot Shepherd and Irvin on a dark and deserted country road, claiming the manacled prisoners tried to jump him and escape. Irvin survived and told a different story — that McCall shot in cold blood.
McCall’s act drew sharp condemnation around the world. Hundreds of telegrams poured into the White House each day, urging his arrest and pleading for intervention by the federal courts. Soviet diplomat Andrei Vishinsky cited McCall as proof of America’s hypocrisy in calling for human rights abroad. “Willis,” the local prosecutor reportedly told him, “you have (peed) in my whiskey.”
Furious Fathering 