Now What?

There have been marches and protests and public outrage for the crimes committed against several African Americans by the police.  I have also heard people ask where is the outrage, anger and marches for the murders that have occurred day to day in our neighborhoods. I have 3 things to say about these thoughts.

1.  Murders by those who are supposed to serve and protect.  The police to my understanding are taught to "shoot to kill".  I understand that when you work a job where the people that you're trying to protect are also depicted (by our wonderful media) as they same people who are committing the most crimes.  Yes, you are a little nervous going into certain neighborhoods.  The training program for the police must be revamped.  Their weapons and how they are used must be revamped.  In a time where we have all kinds of weapons available, why is there not a quick acting tranquilizer they can shoot unarmed individuals (they use this in mental health hospitals all the time when people are unruly), or why are they not shooting in the leg or in the thigh to stop someone.  The death shot should be a last resort.

2.  The crimes that occur in our neighborhoods, happens because of broken families.  Parents are not instilling values, love and breathing success into our children.  If you have people around you who don't' value education and you are trying to become educated, at some point you stop caring and fall in with your surroundings.  Broken homes, not just single parent homes.  But homes where the parents are not being PARENTS (providers of adequate food, shelter, clothing, nurturing and disciplining their child).  Parents are younger and younger. Some are not mentally ready to be parents and lack a positive support system. We have to fix our homes and our families.  We have to have neighborhoods, not temporary living situations (most people don't know their neighbors because they changes yearly).  Families are so far away from each other that children will never know about growing up with their cousins or the family members have fallen out, are not speaking to each other or fight like they don't know each other. This behavior is mimicked by the children who witness it.  They DON'T learn how to problem solve, fall out and make up, don't talk it because all they know is how to fight it out. Really?

3.  Fix our image.  Do an Olivia Pope on our image. 

Our males are NOT ALL:  thugs, sagging clothes, weed heads, drug dealers, robbers, killers, bad fathers, rappers, athletes, gangbangers, rapist or animals.

All our females ARE NOT: loud, ghetto, have multiple baby's by multiple daddy's, on welfare, materialistic, promiscuous, out for child support, aggressive or have bad attitudes.

However, when you look everywhere what do you see: 1. Women fighting on t.v. cursing each other out, rappers glamorizing drugs, wealth and sleeping around and people constantly posting videos of a few African Americans doing dumb stuff for what the sake of being on you tube, world star hip hop?  Where is our pride? People are constantly posting this buffoonery and then wonder why people see us a certain way.