BlackMan Time

Archive for June, 2006

Yesterday in London (and the rest of Europe I understand) it was the hottest day I can recall in many years. It actually felt like Jamaica and although I didn’t see asphalt lifting off the ground, the heat I felt on my back from the sun was a serious contender for natural fire!

Of course it brought out the beauty in people and everyone, some more than others, took advantage of the opportunity to go as naked as possible to expose their skin to the sun. If nothing else it cut down on the fake or natural tan solutions they would otherwise pay for at the solarium.

Good weather, especially when the sun is shining, always brings out the butterflies! And by butterflies I mean all the beautiful people or those who you wouldn’t otherwise look at twice for romantic encounters, suddenly become attractive in your eyes!

This also meant, of course, that people’s spirits were higher, more pleasant and buoyant. But, the heat also got some people, literally hot and bothered and tempers flared too. Some people wilt in the heat instead of being pleasant.

The downside to all of this was the secret thought that maybe all of this brilliant sunshine and heat was happening because the earth is dying because there is a hole in the Ozone Layer which is causing world temperatures to rise, mountain peaks to shrink, glaciers and ice caps in polar regions to melt and the general decay and destruction of the world to accelerate.

I don’t think anyone was too bothered about that yesterday. It just wasn’t the day for it! It was more a case of making hey! while the sun shines because hot sunny days in England are as rare as a politician telling the truth and taking responsibility for his/her own actions!

But that’s another story!

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair currently has many daggers jabbed into all sections of his body and, surprisingly, many of the stabbers are men who should be loyal to him. Apparently these enemies are doing everything to undermine him to orchestrate his removal from office, because they hate him for one reason or another.

For Sir Ian to go I think would be a very sad day for British policing and a tragedy of Shakespearean proportion for democracy. Sir Ian is the only policeman, top level or otherwise, policeman whom I have ever seen or heard highlight the inequality, injustice and bias that forms a huge part of the inquisitional aspects of racism in the UK.

One such celebrated case was the time when he highlight media bias against Black people. He was correct, of course, but the fact that he said so was not liked by those who would prefer that he did not comment on or highlight such things. Regardless, the fact is when the British media, especially the right wing ones, report on stories which involve Black and so-called minority groups people, they usually slant their stories in an emotive manner to demonise the minority groups.

Because of this (and other things) Sir Ian’s enemies both within and without have been out to get him. It is becoming clear that some of his own officers may have misled him or simply not briefed him at all over certain high profile incidents, one such case being the shooting to death of an innocent Brazilian man whom police mistook for a terrorist. This was despite the fact that senior officers within the police knew that the man was innocent but chosen not to tell Sir Ian or his department.

In the end the whole affair is indicative of the kind of organisation the police is: it is institutional, white and afraid to tolerate change or to uphold justice, apparently. Of course it is farcical that a police force should be afraid of practising justice but maybe justice is an alien concept for those who systematically terrorise people of other races and religion, just because they can or because it is so ingrained in their own culture.

We hope Sir Ian can survive this witch-hunt: one good top man among a den of police (and thieves!) is a much better prospect than having a police force led by a man who himself may pander to the racist wishes of the mob majority.

In over 20 years I can remember only one case where the British police has ever accidentally shot someone. Yet, in the space of less than one year they have allegedly and mistakenly shot two, one fatally!

In both cases the victims were distinguished by the fact that they were young, dark-skinned men and in one case Muslim.

As you would expect, given that we’re told these are terrorist times, the police quickly claimed anti-terrorism as the reason behind launching such raids in the first place. Everyone understand and accept that desperate times require desperate measures, but what no one is able to tolerate and stomach is the apparent blazé, cavaliering approach being taken by the British police under the guise of counter terrorism!

It is obvious that not enough real facts or evidence-based information are being passed onto police officers, highly armed as if they are in a war zone with high powered sub-machine guns and military regalia.

250 In Dawn Raid!

In the latest such real life case on June 2, 2006, 23-year-old Mohammed Abdul Kaha was woken up by 250 police officers in a dawn raid on his east London home which police said they suspected was being used for making chemical bombs. But, without the usual “freeze” or “this is the police, etc.” warning the police shot him in the chest as he awoke to investigate what the commotion was.

Initially the police, in surprising synchronisation with the media, lied and said it was Mohammed’s 20-year-old brother, Abdul Koyair, who shot him while making a grab for a police firearm, which allegedly had its safety catch off. But when they realised the truth, although bad, was going to prove less damaging than the lie, they apologised and blamed it on the fact that the police marksman who shot Mohammed was wearing heavy gloves which made it difficult to handle his weapon at the time!

From this it is clear that statements coming from the police in such circumstances and reported by the media, cannot be trusted. Respectively, they have shown they will lie in order to justify their actions or reasons for publishing a story.

How can police information gathering or intelligence (sic), acted on in such a fashion be acceptable in a so-called democratic society? The answer is it cannot be. The police alone cannot and must not be the sole deciding factor as to who they should shoot, based on flimsy (or no) reliable information to go on. They can’t pick their targets based on a whim or their own publicly admitted prejudice against people of colour, etc. will be their guide.

The only criteria good enough is facts and until they get that right they make a mockery of the term ‘intelligence’ because so far they have displayed none in cases like these. Even the Keystone Cops would be far more credible handling anti-terrorism measures in Britain right now!

The other night I was speaking with a Black female friend, mother of several mixed raced children. She told me that she brought her children up as children and not as Black children. In her experience, she said, it was better for them that she did not emphasize colour because they would only internalise all the struggles of being black and that could hinder their progress.

She said there are far too many Black people who go on about colour this and colour that and still lag behind other races including Chinese, Indians, Somalians and others, who have all flown past blacks progress wise in the UK, despite being relative newcomers. She continued to say how she was really proud of her “pickanannies” them and the way they turned out.

At this point I interjected and said culture was also a very important of being a human being as was history and if you were born with parents from African descent, then you ignore these parts of your life at our own peril.

Then I said by the way did you know that the word pickaninny was offensive to Black people and had its origins in slavery and is a remnant of that era that some people of African descent still use? Her reply was that she got it from her mother and has been using it ever since she was a child and saw no reason to stop now.

When she told me that she had no problems with words (“what’s in a word?” she asked” then declared she had no problem with the word nigger or nigga.

Just at that point my mobile phone rang and I had to take it and she said she was tired anyway and had to go to sleep. So that’s what we did. It seemed like a perfect mirror our lives: we were world’s apart! The only thing was I had no idea we were that far apart until we talked about how colour was so unimportant!