The article begins by addressing riots raged in Ferguson,MO after the shooting death by police of an unarmed African-American. The article sarcastically gives tips on being an unarmed African-American in America that provide insight to the real problems America is facing with racism.
"Be sure not to pick up any object that could be perceived by a police officer as a firearm, such as a cell phone, food item, or nothing." This point in the article had me evaluate every Afrian-American shooting situation I could think of and reflect. Treyvon Martin had Skittles and was shot to death. Micheal Brown was unarmed when he was shot to death. The Onion's sarcastic argument "or nothing" should be taken literal today.
As the recent shootings in America have proved, there continues to be injustice done involving Americans of color. How can America be "the land of the free" when unarmed black boys are continuing to lose their lives?
I agree completely. This is my favorite anecdote, from Leonard Pitts Jr.:
ReplyDelete"Imagine for a moment that you broke your left wrist. In excruciating pain, you rush to the emergency room for treatment only to run into a doctor who insists on examining not just your mangled left wrist, but your uninjured right wrist, rib cage, femur, fibula, sacrum, humerus, phalanges, the whole bag of bones that is you. You say, “Doc, it’s just my left wrist that hurts.” And she says, “Hey, all bones matter.”
I think that a lot of Americans have a hard time understanding that life can't be about them all the time. Maybe it's a cultural thing.
Source: http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/op-ed/article31827543.html
This is a good and serious analysis of something that was originally meant to be satirical, giving light to a subject that The Onion can elaborate better than Fox News can. It's a serious issue, and I'm glad that you decided to touch on it.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this movement, and I find it really interesting how there seems to be both this one argument of "black lives matter" and then, within that argument, another sort of sub-argument against the idea of "all lives matter". Ted, I really like your anecdote, my favorite is one where a family sits down for dinner and everyone has food on their plates except for the black child. When the black kid says "hey, I should have dinner!", his dad responds by saying "everyone should have dinner." I think both this and your anecdote pretty clearly illustrate the ridiculousness of the backlash against the "black lives matter" movement.
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