Black people are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
The Boston Tea Party was a protest in opposition to government practices that were perceived as a violation of rights. Demonstrators, including some who dressed up as Native Americans, destroyed an entire shipment of tea from East India. The protests spread across the thirteen colonies. The British government would not back down, thus the beginning of the American Revolution. The rest is history as they say. Today, we refer to the violent protestors as patriots.
Disenfranchised groups resist being under the thumb of tyrannists. It’s both human and American to push back when up against a wall. The settlers pushed the British out. They could rule themselves. It appears that they did not learn much from being oppressed. Institutionalized oppression and racism are interwoven in the historical fabric of American society. Slavery was the most obvious. Efforts to sustain the racial hierarchy after slavery continue and the relationship between the police and black community is evidence.
Black Lives Matter> Black people are sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Black people protest because their efforts to change the institutions that systematically relegate them to the bottom of the economic, political, and educational systems haver resulted in a cycle of abuse. The rights others enjoy are not afforded to them even if they are God-fearing educated blacks with a good job.
Police brutality towards blacks is an extension of the Jim Crow system that allows them to be treated in whatever way white people want with impunity. Only now it is done under the color of the law and other authority positions. Managers can use the “she won’t fit into our culture” to overlook the most qualified candidate. Teachers too often decide that the black student should earn a lower grade on an essay because the wording was not quite white enough even though the subject matter was mastered.
Black people take to the streets to protest police brutality because they have no other recourse. White people and too many blacks tell them “don’t protest”, vote. How can you trust your vote will count with gerrymandering, voting booths moved or removed, and questions about voting machine tampering?
During protests and marches, black people’s thoughts about the microaggressions and microinequities surface. The more they think of the unfairness, the more they get caught up in the moment. All it takes is one looter. The “tea” is destroyed shortly after that. The Tea Party created a revolution that put a country in the hands of the colonists. They won independence and self-reliance. What do black people get? More of the same.
We are sick and tired of being sick and tired.