By William J. Jackson
When these news stories and topics come up with un-armed folks of color getting gunned down and the prison industrial complex, I don’t sit quietly and let them be called isolated incidents.
When we do, we make room for the apathetic people that don’t want certain conversations to happen. They will always toss out the generic excuse to avoid the topic.
What is that excuse???
“””We don’t have all the facts yet.”””
I say yes the hell we do.
Just go back over the past five centuries. We have plenty of facts that carry us to such brutality being the default setting for how specific groups of people are treated. As long as we let those apathetic people shut the conversation down, we won’t move forward.
That said…. We are moving forward. Relatively slow, but pace changes when you finish climbing the East end of a mountain and simply have to go down the West End.
So I think it’s good that for many folks the story of Columbus is not the story of a brilliant hero. It doesn’t make him or his actions irrelevant. It adds to the facts that we have accumulated to better understand why all of these… “isolated incidents” keep happening.
It’s not the strongest start, but it’s a good start.
We also have Thomas Jefferson, Bacon’s rebellion, the 13th amendment and much more to get folks informed. And…oh jeez. Just the casual goings on of plantation life that created stereotypes that are still believed today and add to these “isolated incidents”.
To the homies in Washington State.
Happy Indigenous People’s Day.
Peace.
William J. Jackson is a writer based in Florida. He is the creator of the podcast Father Teresa’s Wine Cellar.