Taxicab Depressions

I did not want to give Ferguson and Fat Albert Garner in Staten Island a single molecule of oxygen, but we had some protesters a few weekends ago in my town, obstructing traffic and marching through the streets, chanting “Black lives matter” and “I can’t breathe” and “Hands up-don’t shoot”, and it really is aggravating. I don’t know who these five or six-dozen people think they are winning over by causing massive traffic backups and disrupting peoples’ dinners at the street cafes and restaurants downtown. I am just infuriated by the lies, and so many people being hurt by them. The bile and hatred on Twitter over this shit is horrendous… I’ve never seen anything like it. Racial relations in this country are in a terrible ebb tide, much degraded from just twenty years ago.

Black Americans, you have got to snap out of this. You have to stop listening to the media and the racial grievance industry. This shit is simply not true. If you believe these memes, there are only two possibilities: you are ignorant of the facts and too lazy or too stupid to go find those facts, or you are a knowing and willing co-conspirator in perpetrating this hoax. You are a chump, or an asshole, and quite possibly both.

Here’s a hint: Anytime you hear Al Sharpton say anything, assume the opposite is true. Al Sharpton doesn’t give a fuck about you, he only cares about his own enrichment and aggrandizement, and he is all too willing to destroy any innocent person in his sick and deceitful quests for “justice”. He just makes this shit up… he flat-out lies, knowing that lots of black people won’t double check him. He has never been right about anything he has tried to sell, and since he can’t ever find a REAL case of racism, he finds stooges to make up stories for him, people like Tawanna Brawley and the Duke lacrosse whore and Trayvon’s mom. He promises them wealth and fame, if they just stick to the lies he makes up.

The fact that this man has a national television show under the NBC brand is a travesty, although not completely surprising, given that this is the august news brand that deliberately edited the recording of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to make him look like a racist. And the fact that this man sits with the President is a scandal and a national disgrace. He is a race-baiting criminal, a stuttering idiot that can’t even read and should be in prison for tax evasion, at bare minimum. How can you owe millions in back taxes for years, and not be in jail? Yet he consults with our President on matters of race.

Why? What are his qualifications? He’s just the best nigga we got, and he calls himself a Reverend?

A REVEREND? Wouldn’t you love to hear Reverend Al asked to extemporaneously quote some scripture? What passages would he recite? The verse were Moses told the Pharoah that “Resist we much”?

Just whom does this man give counsel and guidance to, in matters of their immortal soul?

If President Bush or President McCain or President Romney “consulted” with David Duke on matters of race, the outrage from Americans of all colors would be deafening. Don’t know who David Duke is? He’s a klansman and white supremacist that ran for President many years ago. The reason you have never heard of him is that he is irrelevant. He went back to private life, and all thinking people reject both him and his ideology.

But Sharpton is far more dangerous than Duke. For reasons that escape me, many people LISTEN to this vile criminal hoaxster. After decades of hate speech and frauds, he somehow has an NBC television show. He owes more than FOUR MILLION DOLLARS in unpaid taxes, and after years upon years of calling people niggers and crackers and spics and kikes and faggots and homos, after inciting riots that cost millions of dollars in damage and dozens of deaths, this man can get our President on the phone in an hour.

Think about that… how is that even possible?

There is no human being on Earth that I despise more than this walking piece of shit. I wouldn’t take the time to piss on his head if his filthy, oily hair erupted in a grease fire. If there is any justice in this universe, Al Sharpton’s last words will be, “I can’t breathe”, and he will utter those words sooner, rather than later.

The Crown Heights riots were based on his lies. The seven dead at Freddie’s Fashion Mart died on his lies. Tawanna Brawley was a lie. The Duke Lacrosse incident was a lie. Trayvon Martin was a lie. Michael Brown was a lie. Fat Albert Garner was a lie. It is all this man knows how to do! He should be in jail, and black Americans should be clamoring for his immediate arrest, not marching every time he lies again. We will have racial strife in this country until this man has shuffled off this mortal coil, or is made irrelevant like David Duke. Black Americans, you must reject this criminal charlatan and everyone like him, if you care about the condition of your people and your families.

If you are a young black man or black woman reading this right now, imagine that you have only TWO choices for a black role model for your child. Only two. Two paths in life, two examples to strive for, two sets of principles and ideals that your child will reach for… but only one choice, made by you, in this moment. Look out your window, look in your baby’s eyes, and decide, right now: Who would you want your child to emulate? Dr. Ben Carson, or Reverend Al Sharpton? Condoleezza Rice, or Foxy Brown? Allen West, or Kanye West? Herman Cain, or Little Wayne?

Michael Brown and Fat Albert Garner are not dead because they are black, they are dead because they resisted arrest. It does not matter if the officers involved were right or wrong in detaining or arresting them; that is to be determined by a judge and the legal system. We give police officers, black and white, the power to arrest people, black and white, for the good of society. If you refuse to comply with an officer’s lawful order to surrender your wrists to a pair of cuffs, you should expect to be brought to the ground and put in cuffs by force. Would you be just as outraged if Eric Garner was a white, six-foot-four, 350 pound Hell’s Angel with a lengthy criminal record that was being uncooperative?

If you don’t give a fuck about the white biker Eric Garner, you’re either a straight up racist or a hypocrite, and probably pretty damned stupid, too.

And if you are stupid enough to try to take an officer’s weapon, you should expect to be shot, and maybe even shot multiple times, simple as that. I know I do.

I don’t fear being shot by a police officer, not because I am white, but because I am a law abiding citizen, and in the unlikely event that an officer tells me I am under arrest, I am going to comply. Handcuffs aren’t even necessary. Even if I know he is dead wrong, I will comply and cooperate fully, and let my lawyer sort it out. It would never occur to me to try to run or wrestle with a cop, let alone try to take his gun.

The media is complicit in Sharpton’s charades, and more than happy to twist a story to create a racist narrative that gets viewers and website hits, and they perpetrate these lies, rather than dispelling them immediately, and they hide or ignore pertinent facts and evidence that undermine the narrative. They tell you that the security video of Mike Brown strong-arming a grocery clerk just minutes before he died is irrelevant, they didn’t tell you about his extensive criminal history, and they didn’t show you the social media photos of him shooting gang signs, just like they didn’t show you Trayvon’s cell phone fight videos or the cell phone photos of Trayvon holding his gun and the weed he was growing.

Speaking of gangs, did you see the pictures from Mike Brown’s funeral?

Who wears red to a funeral? Why, members of the Bloods gang, that’s who. Maybe Mike Brown was a Blood, maybe not, but he knew someone very well who was, and that is Louis Head, his stepfather, pictured above, a known member of the Bloods gang, who has done multiple prison sentences for guns and drug dealing. In a statement he released after Brown’s death, he (or someone marginally more literate) wrote,

“The Constitution was written by the people, for the people, animals are not people. Animals cannot read. Acting like an animal will not solve the problems of people.”

Louis Head is better known as the “BURN THIS BITCH DOWN!” guy…

Why has this man not been arrested for inciting a riot that caused millions of dollars in arson and property damage? Suddenly, hundreds of people standing around this man turned into the very animals he mentioned in his statement, and started looting and burning buildings and hurting innocent people, physically and financially.

This picture made me tear up the first time I saw it, and it is still hard to look at…

Natalie DuBose sold her cakes at flea markets to save up to own her own shop. Tonight it was attacked in #Ferguson. pic.twitter.com/WOKzgiSuKV

— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) November 25, 2014

I later learned that thousands and thousands of dollars poured in via the internet, and I am glad this woman will be whole again eventually. I would wager that a lot of WHITE people made that possible, and maybe she will rebuild in Ferguson, maybe not… but do you think Advanced Auto Parts will be back? Not fucking likely. Now you have to get a longer bus ride further down the road to fix your hoop-dee… be sure to thank those aforementioned animals Mr. Head whipped up.

What should have happened in Ferguson that night is that anyone seen looting or torching buildings should have been shot. Start with rubber bullets if you must, but I have no compunctions about a cop shooting someone who is burning or looting a business, and hurting some nice, innocent, hardworking lady like Natalie DuBose. Fuggum… I couldn’t care less. And ya know what? I would have the very same policy if it were WHITE people burning and looting. SHOOT THEM ALL. I don’t know shit about Natalie DuBose, but I would bet next week’s pay that she doesn’t buy into the notion that institutional racism is holding her back, or that black people can’t get ahead and can’t build success with their own hands and hard work, or that Mike Brown was some misunderstood teenager that tried to surrender. The police and the Guard should have taken whatever steps necessary to protect the property and businesses of innocent people like Natalie DuBose.

Failing that, the decent and law-abiding black men in this town should have tooled up and been on the rooftops and standing in the doorways of the businesses of Ferguson, well-armed and ready to defend their innocent neighbors. The Oath Keepers came in to do exactly that, and surprisingly, those businesses were not even approached. There have to be hundreds upon hundreds of law-abiding black men and women in Ferguson, clergymen and community leaders, military vets and lawful gun owners, Community Watch volunteers and basketball coaches and School Crossing guards and Cub Scout leaders that should have been there, manning the rooftops of your town, protecting not only your neighbors, but your community.

But somehow, you guys didn’t show up. This shit goes on only because YOU tolerate it.

I almost never use the phrase “African-American”… you know why? Because it sounds “conditional”, like an asterisk, like you are somehow in a category apart, and not truly an American. This phrase is one of the most damaging phrases in our verbal lexicon, and I have all but banned it from my vocabulary. You should too. If I must refer to an American’s melanin content, I just say “white” or “black”, and I admit, when referring to the criminal element in our society, I might even use the word “nigga” on occasion, if the moment seems to require it. Don’t call me racist; you don’t get your own words that white people can’t use, and I’ll stop using it when Samuel Jackson and Chris Rock and Jay-Z stop using it. But honestly, I don’t really like that word either… it’s an ugly word, with an ugly history that most young people don’t really understand, and the term I use most of the time now is “Trayvons”.

My taxi company is different than most, and we don’t have the traditional dispatchers sitting in an office answering the phones; my company utilizes GPS positioning and call routing software to direct calls to available drivers, so when you call my company, you are most likely speaking to the man that will be driving you. So imagine that you call my company and I answer my work phone, and I hear, “Yo, dawg, we be needin a cab up in dis bitch, you feel me? Me an my tree niggas, we be at da conuh of MLK and Mango Abenoo, in da alley behin da Kwickie Mart… how long it be?”

I am going to tell you to call another taxi company, or just hang up on you. First of all, you have offended my intellect by deliberately choosing to talk like a nigga. It is the 21st century and the Age of the Internet, and it is high time to leave the “Amos and Andy” bullshit behind, Kingfish. Don’t blame failing schools or broken homes, you are an adult that could teach yourself English and diction by listening to AM talk radio and watching UHF broadcasting on a 13 inch black and white TV with tin foil on the rabbit ears. Three hours of listening to Rush Limbaugh every day on a 9 volt transistor radio would do you a world of good. You intentionally and deliberately CHOOSE to speak like a semi-literate nigga… what does that say about you, as a person?

Second, what possible incentive could I have to go pick up four young black males in an alley in da heart of da hood? Black males between 16 and 34 are a miniscule percentage of the population, but commit roughly half of all rapes, robberies, assaults, and murders. That’s not racist, that’s realist… if you have a problem with that math, don’t give me any shit about it… that’s racisss FBI stats, so take it up with Eric Holder.

I drive nice black folks all the time, coming home from work or dinner out, but you little Trayvons behind the Kwickie Mart will be waiting a loooong time for me to show up, homeslice… and I know a few black taxi drivers that won’t be coming to get you, either. I think of it like going swimming in a pond where there is a sign that says, “WARNING! ALLIGATORS! NO SWIMMING!” It may be perfectly fine to take a dip, and maybe nothing bad will happen, but is it worth chancing it and possibly getting bitten on the ass by an alligator?

Black lives matter, except for the 10 or 20 or 30 nameless black people that will die next weekend on Chicago’s south side, killed not by racisss cops, but by other blacks, most of them males, 16 to 34, listenin’ to gangsta rap and livin’ the thug life. Next weekend will be the same. And the weekend after that. And the weekend after that. The same shit goes on in Miami and New York and Philly and Los Angeles and Baltimore and Oakland every damned weekend, too. Do those black lives matter?

Of course they do. Or at least, they should… but it is ONLY a big deal when a black guy dies at the hands of a white cop or a white guy or a “white Hispanic” guy… why is that?

So after the Ferguson police did what was quite probably their most exhaustive criminal investigation in the history of that police department and found no evidence or credible witnesses that did not corroborate the officer’s story, Eric Holder and the full force of the United States Justice Department swooped in to make sure that this racisss white cop was brought to justice, just like they swooped in to find ANYTHING they could scrape together to bring charges against George Zimmerman. And just like the George Zimmerman case, after yet another exhaustive investigation, they quietly determined that they could not find one scrap of evidence that the Michael Brown shooting was in any way racially motivated, or that the incident happened any other way than the officer described. Michael Brown tried to seize a gun from a cop, and he was was shot. He would not comply with the officer’s commands to get on the ground, and he charged the officer, and he was shot again, several times.

Not one single witness, upon closer questioning, said that Michael Brown tried to surrender or raise his hands. He charged the officer, and was killed.

“Hands up-Don’t shoot” never happened. IT NEVER HAPPENED. All these protests and all this damage and all this pain and all this death is based on a lie, perpetrated by the media, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama.

Black lies matter.

Black Americans, can a white guy in his fifties “get real ” with you? I hear Barack Obama and Eric Holder and Al Sharpton call for a “national discussion on race” from time to time, but a discussion really isn’t needed. Can I cut to the chase? Can I tell you what is wrong with the black community, what is at the very heart of all the so called “racial injustice” in this country, the one single thing that would fix 90 percent of all of our so-called racial problems?

If you think about it seriously, and honestly, it really is simple. Michael Brown and Eric Garner and Trayvon Martin and Tamir Rice did not die because of racism or police brutality or loose gun laws or Stand Your Ground or excessive force or profiling or discrimination or poverty or injustice… at the very root of why these boys found themselves in these circumstances is something much more basic. These boys really died because of one simple and fundamental thing: poor parenting.

I know that stings, or at least it should, but it only stings because it is the truth.

I was not some Honor-Roll white boy… my parents were divorced, my neighborhood was less than great, and I quit or got thrown out of pretty much every decent high school in my county, except the last one, which was about 80 percent black, just a few blocks off MLK. I may or may not have allegedly committed several acts of borderline illegality in my teen years, and I was actually pretty lucky to not get in any serious trouble. But even in my wild teenage years, the idea of attacking a citizen or resisting arrest or trying to wrestle a cop’s gun away or to pull a fake gun on the cops NEVER occurred to me. I was raised with a fundamental sense of RIGHT and WRONG, and if the cops are here, you have probably gone too far, and now is the time that you should cut the shit and do what you are told.

Black Americans, you have got to get your shit together. Only you can fix this. Only you can end this pain and stop this violence. Democrat politicians can’t, government programs can’t, police can’t, white people can’t, only you. You must make this nihilistic thug culture of violence and self-fulfilling prophesies of prison and death unacceptable in your house, on your block, on your street, and in your community. You must stand as a community and shun those who behave this way. You must raise your kids to know right from wrong, just like this white boy from a broken home in a less than great neighborhood was raised.

What kind of future lays ahead for this possibly bright and talented boy? Do you think he will grow up to be a scientist or engineer or a software coder that becomes the founder of the next Apple or Google? Anybody want to bet a hundred bucks on this kid NOT being in the back of a police car by his sixteenth birthday, or in prison or dead in the gutter by twenty-one?

These people behind this “hands up- don’t shoot” meme seem to think they are part of some glorious and righteous civil rights movement, somehow akin to the early 1960’s. Ferguson is no Selma or Birmingham, Al Sharpton is certainly no MLK, and Michael Brown is definitely no Emmett Till. Martin Luther King would not approve of ANY of this bullshit. Something has changed since Little Rock and Selma. When did these people…

…turn into these people? And what caused that?

The problem in the black community isn’t black Americans, it’s Trayvons. It’s niggas. It’s gangstas. It’s thugz. It’s rappers. It’s criminals. It’s twerkers. It’s a mindset that black people have no chance to better themselves unless they break the law. It’s the culture that allows these things to exist, instead of a culture of success, born of hard work and education. It’s the confluence where gangsta rap and thug culture intersect with broken homes and poor parenting, and produce young black people, a lot of them male, that decide that black lives really don’t matter, because their parents never gave them the plan or held them to any standards of acceptable behavior, and so why not be a gangsta and have a few years running wild, knowing they will be dead or incarcerated in the next decade?

This isn’t racist… I am judging you by the content of your character, not by the color of your skin, just like a REAL Reverend asked me to do some fifty years ago. I have often said that so many black Americans have lost the right to invoke Martin Luther King’s name. I stand by that. This man died, shot through the chest, just to give you simple equality, and what did you do with it?

Black Americans, only you can fix this. You must raise your children to reject this culture, and put them on a path to success. This is most likely the most important thing you will ever do with your life. Yes, it is hard, I get that… but you must do your best to raise your kids with a fundamental set of values and reject ALL of the things you know are bad for your kids, right down to the music they listen to. I know you can’t “ban” music… but most rap should be in a small “niche” category, smaller than “punk” or “bluegrass”, that very few people listen to.

Be honest… this shit is awful… black musicians DEFINED the music of the 20th century with unbelievable soul and talent, but now any criminal jackass that can spit rhymes about bitches and ho’s and fuckin’ and slingin’ and smokin’ and shootin’ and killin’ is on the radio, and more importantly, in your kid’s phone.

I have an interesting experiment I run in my car occasionally… I ask college kids or passengers under 30 to name THREE black musicians that are not rappers… and a lot of them can’t do it. I get Michael Jackson occasionally, Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston sometimes, and one guy really surprised me by saying Lenny Kravitz.

I simply can’t believe that the grandchildren of the people that gave us Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye and Jimi Hendrix and BB King and Louis Armstrong and Etta James and Aretha Franklin and Ray Charles and Duke Ellington and Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner and Billie Holiday and Curtis Mayfield and Quincy Jones and Wilson Pickett and Stanley Clarke and Thelonius Monk and Slash and Wynton Marsalis and Gladys Knight and Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and Sly Stone and Sidney Bechet and Aaron Neville are now listening to Snoop Dog and 2 Chainz and Young Jeezy.

When did “When A Man Loves A Woman ” turn into this “shake dat ass ” shit?

How far have you folks fallen? Sweet Jesus, you guys used to make the BEST music. What is this rap shit? These lightweights are the musical equivalents to professional wrestling… yes, they are “performing”, in a manner of speaking, and it “sounds” like music, but it really isn’t. And even if YOU happen to like it, it is bad for your kids. It tells them it is OK to be a whore or a gangsta. It’s the music of Trayvons, and it is polluting the minds of your children.

Maybe you will fail in instilling this sense of right and wrong in your child; the streets are hard, and the culture is overwhelming, but you have to try. Some kids can’t be saved; I know that for a fact. I know a white guy from my youth that was just destined for prison life, and nothing could have saved him. I think it bears mentioning that he came from a divorced family, both parents alcoholics, and not a lot of structure in his life or emphasis on performance in school. Last I heard, he was doing a long stretch for burglary, identity theft, and fraud.

Maybe I too will fail in raising my daughter; criminality is not exclusive to the black community, and many white girls grow up to be addicts and hookers and shoplifters and embezzlers and even killers, but I am determined to do my best, and my daughter will be well-grounded in the concept of right and wrong, and I feel pretty confident that my Punkin’ will probably never get arrested, and certainly not get shot by a cop. Do you have that same confidence?

Black lives matter. But black lies matter too. They matter to taxi drivers a thousand miles away, held up in traffic jams caused by phony protests, late getting to a passenger.

Black lies matter to nice people trying to enjoy a simple dinner out in my little Florida town.

Black lies matter to hardworking people like Natalie DuBose, just trying to provide for their families and working hard to be successful, and trying to build a better life.

Black lies matter to the families of the two officers shot in Ferguson just last week.

Black lies matter to the family of Zemir Begic, beaten to death by feral little Trayvons with hammers, to avenge Michael Brown’s death.

And black lies matter to the families of NYPD Officers Rafael Ramos and Wenjian Liu, assassinated in cold blood, because “Hands up- don’t shoot”… two innocent NYPD officers, shot dead because of a lie, a lie perpetrated by the media, Al Sharpton, Eric Holder, and Barack Obama.

And black lies should matter to you, too, black Americans. It is you paying the steepest price for them. You are paying in crime-riddled communities and incarcerated men and dead children.

It doesn’t have to be this way. But only you can fix it, and it starts with you, and what you teach your children.

Black lies matter.

Recommended reading: Stop Being Black

*Hat-tip to Bmore at The Little Place In The Forest for the art at the beginning of this post. The first time I saw that image, it hit me like a punch in the chest. Well done, Sir.