MANSFIELD: A Fool’s Errand

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If the allegations in the killing of Harris County, TX Deputy Darren Goforth prove to be true, Shannon Jaruay Miles, the 30-year-old black man who stands accused of shooting a white law enforcement officer in the back as he refueled his police cruiser at a gas station, is one cold-blooded son-of-a-bitch. Indeed, if the charges that he unloaded a .40 caliber handgun in to body of the deputy with 15 shots are true, he’s just as cold-blooded as Michael Slager, the white North Charleston, S.C., cop who fatally shot Walter Scott, a black man, in the back eight times as he fled a traffic stop earlier this year.

These deadly encounters between white cops and black males simply must come to an end (or at least greatly de-escalate). But every incident, every killing — no matter if the victim is black or white, a cop or civilian — only serves to moves us further away from a pacific society, and indeed, towards insanity.

More than once I’ve written that I’m in constant amazement that some black male somewhere in the United States doesn’t go postal everyday and kill up a bunch of white folks, since facing untrammeled and unrelenting racism on a day-in-and-day-out basis can drive a person stark raving mad. And, on the other hand, I’ve never been surprised at the number of white cops that shoot unarmed black men — claiming they felt their lives were in danger — given the history of policing in this country and the myth that’s been created of the “dangerous black buck.”

But both the angry black males and the overzealous, trigger-happy cops are in the wrong, and all too often they’re dead wrong. And every action causes a sometimes violent reaction.

Goforth’s cowardly killing will certainly cause a further crackdown on black males by conservative elements of law enforcement in some parts of the country, and more than likely will alienate some of the white progressives that formerly supported the Black Lives Matter movement. The former will use the killing as justification to engage in even more onerous forms of police brutality, and the latter will use it as a means of escape from supporting black demands for justice with their consciences clear.

Conversely, angry, hate-filled young blacks will use the killing of an unsuspecting cop — and the ensuing turmoil it might cause — as a rallying point and issue calls for additional killings of any white cops, no matter if they ever brutalized or killed a black man or not. They are taking the biblical “eye for an eye” quite literally, paying no attention to the fact that the changing of laws and the newly focused media attention on the killing of black males is what will cause a cessation of such brutality, not their cowardly acts.

The women behind the Black Lives Matter movement will be hailed as the true heroines when the number of black males dying at the hands of cops begins to decrease. They are the ones that are acting out in public, not sneaking up on perceived enemies under cover of night. They’re the ones who are driving real change in America by holding politicians accountable for the racist application of our nation’s laws and demanding real change — which, by the way, is the only long-term solution to the national calamity of police brutality. And those same activists should also be speaking out loudly against crazed black males seeking retribution via the barrel of a gun.

If we allow this cycle of cop violence and black revenge to continue, no one wins. But even the angriest black male should realize this is not a winning strategy to bring about change. Even in their derangement they have to know that in the end they will be outnumbered, and, more importantly, outgunned.

When outraged blacks resort to violence to put an end to the violence and killings we have been suffering at the hands of white cops for hundreds of years, they are embarking on a fool’s errand. Our race hasn’t come this far through random violence, and history wisely informs us of this fact. And “an eye for an eye” will eventually leave us all blind.

[Photo by Tony Webster]

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From Cool Cleveland correspondent Mansfield B. Frazier mansfieldfATgmail.com. Frazier’s From Behind The Wall: Commentary on Crime, Punishment, Race and the Underclass by a Prison Inmate is available again in hardback. Snag your copy and have it signed by the author by visiting http://NeighborhoodSolutionsInc.com.

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