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Django: Black Jesus Unchained
There has been much critique and controversy surrounding the new Quentin Tarantino movie “Django Unchained”. In particular I keep coming across a consistent critique on the depictions of violence throughout the movie. While cinematic violence is a topic worthy of debate within American cinema I find a certain sense of irony that this critique is being … Continue reading
- Do Stop and Frisks Make Cities Safer? (click link to view) In this clip Martin Bashir, Toure' and Dr. James Peterson discuss the "stop and frisk" policy of the NYPD as well as other major cities in the U.S. The numbers are shocking and yet not surprising. Last year the NYPD stopped and frisked 168,000 young African American males in New York City. A number that is actually higher than the number of black men that live in New York City. For 2011 the NYPD stop and frisked over 685,000 African American males and are on pace to shatter that number for 2012 with 800,000 stop and frisks. These numbers are certainly alarming and have urgent need to be addressed, however I don't wish to discuss them here. To wit, what I find interesting is the seemingly identical "policing" policies domestically and internationally of the U.S. government on the state and federal level. Although seemingly disparate, the stop and frisk policy of the "U.S. police states" is also the geopolitical warfare policy of the United States on an international level. Both methods, "the war on terror" and the "stop and frisk" policies being enacted in the major cities of the United States boast of making "America" safer from enemies foreign (peoples of the Arab world) and domestic (minorities) and both apply these policies in the same manner: the murder, incarceration, marginalization, and disenfranchisement of black and brown bodies. This is evidenced by the government's drone assassination program, secret prison networks, Guantanamo, legalised torture, the prison industrial complex, the "war on drugs", and prejudicially legislated laws -military (Military Commissions Act) and civilian (Rockefeller drug laws) but to name a few of their numerous methods of application. This erroneous and most egregious of policies effectively do not make America more safe as they so purport, they do not make the cities safer or the nation as a whole. They instead endanger the nation by making the recipients of these policies voiceless participants who stripped of citizenry and sovereignty are left with no voice or recourse becoming violent, angry, alienated, frustrated and potentially willing targets of leftist, fascist, or Islamic extremist movements. This is evidenced by the UK riots of 2011 and verified reports of growing extremist movements within the U.S. and anti-American sentiment in the Middle East. The United States policing policies are in fact making the world and America a more dangerous place, not a safer one. If the U.S. continues these policies of discriminatory persecution it runs the risk of endangering the fabric of its "democracy" from threats not just external but within.
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