They say you can't choose your family. Nor, apparently, can we choose our rallying points. Otherwise who'd really give a damn about Rodney King...or this kid? Read here. First he shoplifts, then he tries to shoot himself? Ah well, not everyone can be Schwerner, Cheney & Goodman, or Rosa Parks...
11 comments:
This kid's just a failure in life. After all that's happened in the past he shoplifts? And he doesn't do it right so he gets busted. Then he tries to off himself and can't even do that right. What a loser!
What happens to a dream deferred?
Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?
Or fester like a sore--
And then run?
Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over--
like a syrupy sweet?
Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.
Or does it explode?
-The Great Langston Hughes
If we stopped just giving a damn and gave real hope and opportunities, we would not be seeing so many of our children taken by hopelessness, poverty, ignorance, and violence.
I thought - or I heard - or I wanted to believe that "someone" was helping Bell go back to school for his HS diploma and get a college degree with a football scholarship.
Bell never asked to be Rosa Parks, yet this young man was uppity enough to demand equality on his school campus. Being an uppity negro is still as risky as ever -particularly if you are a poor, uneducated, uppity negro living in a poor uneducated racist township.
If any Nassau Hall protests had been handled in this same manner, would the kid thrown in the penitentiary for over a year be able to pickup his life as if all was well once Baisden and the other Rainbow Coalitions left town with the TV cameras?
Bell is still a Hero in my view. I pray he will become a Hero in his own.
History is made by losers, either stepping up and throwing off the loser shackles, or remaining a loser but being put in the position of being a rallying point. Rodney King is a great example, true. I'm watching him on VH1 Celebrity Rehab right now! He was and is a loser, but he didn't need to be beaten and those cops were perpetuating a culture not unlike an army of occupation or the Gestapo. Not everyone killed in the Holocaust was a saint, you know.
Prof Nat--
I'm still trying to wrap myself around Hamas, and the Burris appointment, and you hit me with this? Lord let me get a cocktail!
Damn y'all.
He's a kid. Not a grown ass man with a lifetime of fuck ups behind him, but a teenager who is making mistakes as he grows as a person.
I doubt seriously if any of you are truly in a position to judge. Everyone screws up. Most of us are fortunate enough not to have our breakdowns publicized.
And then there's the latest here in Utah, in which a 54-year-old "woman of color" and two of her grandson's friends were pulled over by the Highway Patrol for speeding and ended up standing there for over two hours while the cops tore the car apart looking for meth (They found nothing.). Story here.
Just a stupid kid, nothing more nothing less.
I blame parents.
To me parents/tutors should "go to prison" for failing their responsibilities.
@Knute Rife
That is NO excuse, because bad parenting seems to be a plague.
the significance of history is written over decades and not in days or weeks; things that happen today will not be historically relavent until most of us are long gone. we tend to think that because we have a 24 hour news cycle that the mainstream media will provide all of the necessary footnotes and background material on every story they sensationalize for each crackpot's 15 minutes of fame (or infamy)!
history will reflect that jena, louisiana was a sad footnote on a sad chapter in poor master bell's life story. we only know his name because he beat up an unfortunate white boy who crossed his path at the most inopertune time...
a race's burden was placed on the shoulders of this young man... a young man who was equipped to handle it... just pray that his misery does not become yours!
I know it's mean, but he couldn't even get that right. How sad this that?
SoCal 82Tiger Says:
Professor - Monica may be on the right track as a response to your lament that WE “are not able to choose our rallying points.” I think that in today’s world of the instant media hero (see: Joe The Plumber) WE are too quick towards letting people in media define and choose our rallying points and heroes!
Think about it... Because OUR Media neglects the tedious & boring task of investigating and reporting real news and instead chooses the more rating friendly model of creating news, they are forever looking for the next cause celeb from the multitude of socio-economic or political missteps that occur with certainty in America every day. If not for clinging to this most profitable media business model – The Nutters on the right would NEVER have gave us Terri Schiavo, the Nutters on the left Cindy Sheehan, and this P-A of kid-man would not have turned out to be an insult to the good name of civil rights workers throughout U.S. history.
Epic actions might always be worthy of immediate recognition & praise, but such events become truly worthy of being labeled historically great or significant only after years (or lifetimes) being lived. The test of time dispassionately allows us to reconfirm or disavow the greatness of people and events. Worthy rallying points and heroes are made by the character of the person and the righteousness of their actions – NOT by the proclamation of a headline, banner line, or media agent.
Anonymour: Rodney King did not remain a loser, this kid did.
Monica: I AM in a position to judge. You know why? Because I have a brain....it's really that simple. I didn't fuck up as a kid because I knew right from wrong. If you don't know shoplifting is wrong, you're a loser and you will get your stupid ass judged by me and everyone else who has a respectable IQ.
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