---

( 4UMF NEWS ) Blame The Victim: Conservatives and conservative western thought has a tendency to blame the victim or victims no matter what the situation. I call it the blame game as someone always has to be blamed for something. Most whites and blacks who think like whites generally don’t take any responsibility whatsoever for historical injustices that have not been fixed up. They often dismiss any complaints by the oppressed with the baseless assumptions of an even playing field. I know that this even playing field is imaginary at best. Would any sensible decent human being blame a rape victim for being raped? Historically speaking what have black people not been raped of? Dr. Khalid Muhammad once state that “when we were brought here we were robbed of our names our freedom our religion our culture our god and some of us by the way we acted even lost our minds”. Those are the harsh and yet very real facts of the conditions that slavery produced. When you bring this to the attention of O’Reilly and Hannity types they say “how long are you people going to talk about slavery”? My answer is simple: as long as the condition that slavery produced still exist. We simply cannot intelligently discount in any way shape form or fashion that damage and toll this took on us as a people. Say you have a young woman leaving a club at 3am and urgently needs to relieve herself. Not having time to go to any public bathroom she decides to squat in the nearest alley way and urinate. Accosted by two men she ends up in an apt kidnapped, drugged, raped, beaten and left for dead. If and when you found her would you strike a discussion on what role she played in her own downfall? Would you question her as to why she chose to relieve herself in an alley way while drunk and leaving a club at 3am? Don’t you think she already knows that her decision making process or lack of sound judgment on that night could have cost her the most precious thing she has, her life? So why beat a dead horse? You often hear ignorant blacks attempting to use similar arguments in a futile attempt to justify slavery by saying “didn’t blacks enslave other blacks”? Even if this historical inaccuracy were true how would that justify over 400 years of oppression, slavery and discrimination? My only point is this; even if this young lady made an error in judgment she still has a right now to be raped. Whatever black people did or didn’t do when encountered by Europeans over four hundred years ago couldn’t possibly in any way begin to justify our suffering. Fast forward to the most recent of racial injustice and give close examination the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown cases. Notice how the media focused as they always do on the character and past of the victims. They posted pictures of Trayvon smoking marijuana and having gold teeth and though having gold teeth was a major crime. They deliberately casted him in the light of a thug and failed to mention him being an honor roll student or any good he had ever done. They wanted world to believe that the taking of his life wasn’t really anything to mourn over as George Zimmerman was just ridding society of one less young criminal to have to deal with. They wanted us all to believe that his life had no value and that the fate he met he had coming because productive law abiding citizens don’t wear hooded sweaters and walk the streets with skittles and ice tea. The media intentionally paints this picture and conservative blacks go along with it because it conveniently suits their distorted belief system of the world and race relations. It’s almost like they want you to believe this could not have happened to a black Harvard graduate coming home from his job on Wall Street. The insensitive suggestion is that it was blatantly the victims fault and Zimmerman was some innocent law abiding citizen just standing his ground. Well if this were true why did George Zimmerman follow Trayvon Martin after the police dispatcher told him not to? The merciless killing of unarmed blacks appears to be the norm and we as African Americans have grown to accept this blame the victim point of view as being valid. We ask questions like what was he doing in that neighborhood dressed in that attire? Why did he fight Zimmerman as opposed to asking the real question of why Zimmerman felt the need to play police officer, judge, jury and ultimate executioner? The Michael Brown incident wasn’t much different in that the claim of a thug attacking an authority figure was also the excuse given. Michael Brown as I understand it was about attend college the next day when a white police officer told him to get the expletive out of the street. Why speak to him like that? Justifications of shooting unarmed black teens came from everywhere. Conservative blacks and whites said he was a thug who had just robbed a store when video footage shows him paying for his goods. Thug or no thug, white teenagers commit crimes too and their fate is rarely if ever being shot multiple times. Black life has no value in the sight of white police officers. At the end of the day you simply can’t justify the unarmed killing of any juvenile. That is some ones child and now he is gone forever. He had a future and it was snuffed out for what? Again I could be wrong but this is just my take on it. Keep Up With That's My Take On It

• Share: