Why Are Black Children Forced To Be Adults, In Order To Justify Murder?
Why? Because it makes it a lot easier to guiltlessly pull the trigger. We saw it with Tamir Rice — when he was shot by a cowardly thug in uniform — who could clearly make out the fact that “the suspect” was most likely a 12-year-old boy with a toy gun — using the park as his playground — but willfully distorted that image to justify his actions.
We live in a society that caters to the youthful zeal of White men by giving them the freedom to run wild with their destructive tendencies because how else can you learn the hard lessons of life — if you’re not permitted to fall hard so that you have the righteous privilege of getting back up — unscathed.
Consider the blatant privilege of Ethan Couch — the White, wealthy 16-year-old from Texas who made the fatal decision to be irresponsible as fuck by driving in the middle of night — in a filthy drunken state — on June 5, 2013. As you can imagine — his actions led to tragic consequences as he lost control of his pickup truck and ended up killing four people.
Couch was “indicted on four counts of intoxication manslaughter” for his crime of driving recklessly under the influence — but due to his lawyer’s claims that he suffered from “affluenza” — which by the way can’t be classified as a medical condition — the murderous teen was given 10 years probation with the recommendation that he seek help for his debilitating habit at one of those fancy facilities that only rich White parents know about.
Couch was ordered to a juvenile detention center to await his fate — but two years later — in 2015 — he and his mother hightailed it Mexico — where authorities caught up with the outlaws— hiding out in a luxurious resort in Puerto Vallarta.
Even after all that shit — Couch was only sentenced to two years in prison. Two years?! This bastard committed offenses that would literally get a Black teen killed on the spot or at he very least sent to prison for life with no possibility of parole.
But this White teen who killed a bunch of innocent people — including paralyzing his friend who was a passenger in his vehicle — and also tried to outrun the law — was only mandated to spend a total of 720 days in jail.
He was released on April 2, 2018
Ethan Couch is now a free man and at the tender age of 21 — he has his whole life ahead of him and his Whiteness naturally earns him the right to be treated as a human being — by a system that has been wired to kill Black people and protect White people.
Now — take the case of Brennan Walker — the 14-year-old Black boy who is dominating the news cycle after he was almost shot to death in the suburb of Rochester Hills in Detriot— because he dared to knock on the door of a house belonging to a White couple who assumed that his presence meant their lives were in danger.
Brennan had missed his bus that morning after over-sleeping and tried to walk to school by following the route that he thought he was familiar with — but just like a human being — his best efforts got him lost.
Since he didn’t have a phone — he smartly thought it best to ask for directions and then this happened:
“I got to the house, and I knocked on the lady’s door. Then she started yelling at me and she was like, ‘Why are you trying to break into my house?’ I was trying to explain to her that I was trying to get directions to Rochester High. And she kept yelling at me. Then the guy came downstairs, and he grabbed the gun, I saw it and started to run. And that’s when I heard the gunshot.”
Ethan Couch’s White privilege saved him from life in prison and I guess you could say that pure luck saved Brennan Walker from getting killed.
The husband who ran down the stairs with a gun to defend his wife from the imminent attack of the Black person towering over them — was thankfully off his game and missed.
The Oakland County Sheriff Deputies arrived shortly after — to sort out the mess and took the murderous couple in custody.
But Brennan Walker will never be the same. The young boy who got lost walking to school is gone. He has transformed into the heart of societal mayhem and how that regulates him to the realm of “species that are on the brink of extinction.”
This Black boy was forced to run and hide from the danger of being splattered like road kill — and God only knows how hard he shook as he cried and prayed that he would live to see his loved ones again.
His mother consoled her boy after they were reunited and assured him that what happened was beyond his control.
“My mom says that, black boys get shot because sometimes they don’t look their age, and I don’t look my age. I’m 14; but I don’t look 14. I’m kind of happy that, like, I didn’t become a statistic.”
Oakland County Deputy Sheriff Michael Bouchard confirmed the boy’s mother’s summation while sharing his reaction to the damning events — which rightfully put all the blame on the White couple — but then he included this:
“I feel terrible for the young man.”
And that’s when I lost my mind.
Why the fuck are Black kids forced to be adults — in order to justify murder?
It’s not only appalling — but it’s woefully dangerous for someone in authority to describe a 14-year-old — as a “young man.”
Young men are typically between 18–26 and this logic shouldn’t just apply to White young men — it should also be assigned to young men of color.
But — of course that will never happen because that would mean ending the epidemic of gun violence that is crippling Black people of all ages with a ferocity that is systematically encouraged by law enforcement — who have basically given White citizens permission to shoot and kill innocent Black children — who are just trying to find their way back home.
Renisha McBride is the 19-year-old Black woman who was shot to death in Dearborn, Michigan back in 2013 — after knocking on the door of Ted Wafer in the middle of the night — after crashing her car. She wasn’t a child by any means — but she was young enough to make the kind of mistakes that her White counterparts live to boast about.
She seemed out of it — which is understandable after what she had been through — but Wafer wasn’t willing to give her the benefit of the doubt. There’s even evidence that she may have been drinking — which perhaps gave her killer the audacity to end her life.
He claimed self-defense — but thankfully the jury saw it differently and he was sentenced to at least 17 years in prison.
If Renisha had been an adorably fumbling young White women named Samantha — she wouldn’t have died that night. And if Brennan Walker was a cute teenage boy with freckles and a mop of red hair knocking on that door — the lady of the house would’ve let him in and offered him a cup of hot cocoa while he waits for his mother to arrive.
America wants to kill our Black children and we have to derail this mission.
Black kids deserve to be seen for what they are — not what they are supposed to be in order for their brutal deaths to be justified. We can’t allow them to be terrorized and then feed them the garbage of how they “look the part” in order to prepare them for the bleak reality they didn’t ask for.
It’s utter bullshit and it needs to end now.
