ClydeStyle

Tag: Justice

  • Attacks on freedom for all people sour July 4th celebrations

    America has made great strides in its  history in an attempt to live up to its constitution. No one can argue that things are better than they were 100 years ago.

    But did this change come from a new revelation that the only God who created the universe made all men equal and that the past treatment of minorities was sinful and would greatly hinder eternal life in heaven? Nope. It doesn’t seem like God has ever stopped the sinful flesh at anything it decides to do.

    So then, white people were free from immediate eternal punishment and could still rob, cheat, and steal from minorities. They could still allow racist systems that would impede the process of minorities moving forward, and they could continue to allow police and other forces to discriminate and incarcerate minorities without real due process.

    And they have.

    What has been a constant with white people is that when you lay their actions before (a tactic mastered by the civil rights movement), then it would guilt enough of them to do the right thing.

    The problem with this is that they do the right thing for the wrong reason. And that leads to resentment.

    Then comes Donald Trump. In his first term in office, he attempted to resend as much civil and human rights as whites would allow. Now, of course, you’re thinking white people wouldn’t allow America to go backward, would it?

    There are too many non-racist folks in Congress to let that happen, right? Well, I looked up exactly how many things he did to destroy civil and human rights, and I wanted to list them all here. I didn’t because there were too many. On average, it looked like at least 70 things each year he was in office.

    I couldn’t believe it myself because you would think that if the democrats knew this, they would have run on a platform that shared it with the rest of us. Could it be that they were resentful, too?

    This link will take you to the list of things he tried https://civilrights.org/trump-rollbacks/

    All of them didn’t succeed, but with this gigantic list, you can really tell that the powers that be are not for minorities. He is already on pace to surpass this list in his second term.

    And now, with Independence Day fast approaching, who really wants to celebrate it?

  • History is who we are and why we are the way we are

    Martin Luther King Jr. famously said, “An injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” He said it as more of a war cry to call activists and those who care to a sense of urgency regarding injustices. The idea is that if it is allowed in one place, it can be in all places. So then, let us rise up against injustice when we see it because it’s only a matter of time before injustice affects you!

    Injustices have been fluent in America since 1865. That date should sound familiar because it was the year President Abraham Lincoln signed the emancipation proclamation, which freed the slaves in the south. Shortly after this, Lincoln tried to establish a bank for former slaves, but its white board of directors took the money and lost it on bad investments. There was no accountability.

    With the end of slavery in the south, accountability was emancipated completely. Treating a black person wrong was always acceptable as punishment for ending slavery. The time immediately after slavery was very telling because lynching immediately became popular once slavery ended.

    Bastard children, often called mulatto back then, were the result when white men raped very young black girls and impregnated them. These kids were often made orphans because the former slaves owner did not want the child and they would not allow for the victim to have the baby. This injustice became widespread.

    Everyone talks about the destruction of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK but that, of course, was not the only time that happened. Time Magazine, in 2021, published an article on the subject and listed other “Black Wall Street” scenarios that many were unaware of because there was never any accountability.

    The article states: “Now, 100 years after the 1921 Tulsa race massacre, awareness of this American tragedy has grown thanks to the work of activists and descendants of victims, local political support, and depictions in the HBO series Watchman and Lovecraft Country. But Tulsa’s was not the only Black Wall Street. The history of other such districts nationwide is still not widely known beyond their home cities, though they were many: Bronzeville in Chicago; Hayti in Durham, N.C.; Sweet Auburn in Atlanta; West Ninth Street in Little Rock, Ark.; and Farish Street in Jackson, Miss.”

    Police brutality toward minorities has been around as long as policing has existed. There are too many cases to name of unarmed Black people being murdered by police because they claimed they feared for their lives.

    The bottom line is that because we violate the famous MLK Jr. quote, we are paying for the widespread lack of accountability because if the injustice didn’t happen to me, why do I care.

    I believe that this lack of accountability negatively affects the reparations’ conversation because many black and whites are ignorant of history. People treat many of the injustices like isolated incidents. Then, the fact that it is widespread means that if we award damages form one incident, we are libel for all the others. This means that justice can never truly be served because America’s history is full of injustices, and to reward them all would be an end to America as we know it.

    Happy Black history month!

  • Politics as usual: They don’t really care about us

    Things are ramping up for the 2024 elections, and in every election year, politicians attempt to tell us what really is important. Their talking points start off with, “The American people want this…” Make no mistake, the elections are never for the American people. In a democracy, elections are used to make the people believe they have a say or control of what is happening in their country.

    Talking points work like worms against a fish. Politicians debate and talk about topics that interest the general population, but never are these things changeable. For example, President Joe Biden, who is the architect of the 94′ crimes bill responsible for putting millions of minorities in prison, went on the radio show The Breakfast Club and said if Black people did not vote for him, they weren’t Black. He talked about police shooting unarmed Black people was a problem; he talked about voting rights being a priority; he talked about the criminal justice system being a problem, but they didn’t make his radar once he was elected.

    What Biden did is what every Democrat does: Their interest is not in helping minorities but in helping the base. Republicans are the same with favoring their base. The problem is the majority of the people in both bases are white!

    So then brown people continue to struggle with immigration and black people struggle with everything else. Doing things for the masses or serving you base doesn’t scratch the surface of the people for minorities.

    When I say minorities, I am talking about people in America who make under 80k per year. The best part of America is the ability to earn money. A sample of all races is earning money in America, but the overwhelming majority of Americans are struggling. I am specifically saying that there is not much being done to help their situations. Some temporary Covid protocols made a difference for a short while, but these benefits don’t compare to the benefits given to citizens in other countries.

    So after each election, politicians prove to the masses that they don’t care about us. We should begin hearing about the “big scare” that the democrats do every election year to cause fear among the people of the dangers of not voting democrat. The Republicans do they same thing on their side, and while the fear is increased, the benefits for the poor decrease. Don’t think this is a racial divide because it isn’t. This divides us by class.

    The greatest vote you can make to a politician is to contribute money to their campaign because that’s who will be satisfied with the win. Imagine if you are a politician and one constituent gives you $50, and another gives you $1000 per month. Who would you listen to?

    Until this system changes, the common man will always get the shaft during the elections.

  • You don’t need an apology

    Forgiveness is a concept that our country isn’t too keen on as we are definitely people for revenge. Whenever someone’s crime upsets our social norm, we want blood.

    Mass shooters, pedophiles, rapists, bad police officers, repeat offenders, men who hit women, or anyone who is against the LGBTQ community are all subject to revenge following their miscues. But in actuality, forgiveness doesn’t require an apology. Of course, it would be nice to have one, but it is not required. Forgiveness has nothing to do with the infraction as much as it has to do with you making a decision.

    Forgiveness is a choice. It is frivolous to measure sins or even label them from bad to worse. Forgiveness involves an intentional decision to let go of resentment and anger. Why would you do that? Because hate in your heart consumes. It burns like fire.

    There are 3 types of forgiveness: 1) Exoneration where a person genuinely makes a mistake; 2) Forbearance where the person gives a partial apology, but the offense did not call for a more extreme level; 3) Release where there is no acknowledgement of hurt. The person never even took responsibility for the pain they caused. So which one do you think God would want you to exercise? Here is a hint: God would want you to practice the one you need.

    I don’t know about you, but I need to practice release because that is the one I need from God. The Greek word for forgiveness in scripture literally means “to let go,” and the context is the act of pardoning an offender.

    So, if I am to practice forgiveness from the Bible, it must be the one I expect from God because the scriptures tell us that God is going to forgive the same way we do. Now, who needs an apology?

  • Judges Thomas and Alito are just the tip of the iceberg

    Life constantly proves that we are flawed. As a part of our moral development, we should seek to excel in integrity, goodness, truth, and character, but we have lost our way.

    If we can no longer expect our Supreme Court justices to be honest, how can we expect it in other courts? It seems that there is always a problem when people don’t speak out against injustice. We made that a habit in our country, and it still hinders us today.

    The only thing needed to start a revolution after slavery ended would have been for whites to stand up and acknowledge wrongdoing. If some would have just called it as they saw it because never is it ok to make people property.

    During the Civil Rights movement, our legislative, judicial, and executive branches had a golden opportunity to move our country light years ahead by simply speaking up for what is right! Today, there are horrible police practices that many police, if they were not guilty themselves, could denounce as evil, but they stand silent. Some of the districts that our children are supposed to be educated in are failing. Some of that failure is “teacher failure,” but no one is saying that. Prison conditions in America are deplorable, and very little is being done to change it. Veterans still don’t have all of their promised benefits, but again, we are quiet.

    It’s hard to name an area of interest that isn’t corrupt. Pastors in churches are taking advantage, and some are even getting paid to sell a bad version of hope. And even in the presidency — from Trump to Biden — there are major struggles with integrity and truthfulness.

    Sadly, it seems that we declared independence from the wrong things. Where we should have set ourselves free from lies, laziness, selfishness, and bigotry, we embraced these and would go on to forsake fairness, honor, moral virtue, and serving others. Our freedoms are not for the better but the worse in America. We are free to dishonor our constitution and look out for number one — self!

    There are more justices guilty. We will see more police brutality, bad teachers, and corrupt politicians. And unless there is accountability being enforced, America will implode from within. We won’t have to worry about foreign enemies destroying us. We’re killing ourselves.

  • With liberty and justice for all?

    There are 2.1 million people in prison in America. We have more people incarcerated than any other country in the world. I wonder how the rest of the world interprets that?

    America is definitely a land of many things and our freedoms allow for a person to migrate here and have an unlimited earning potential. But for a place so plentiful, how can we not protect our justice system? Nevermind that we know there are thousands of innocent people there because the system has flaws. African Americans make up 13 percent of the US population but 38 percent of the prison population. There are 4200 people in federal prison right now that are serving life sentences for nonviolent crimes. Think about that.

    Furthermore, the number one reason for incarceration is drugs. This is interesting because when a drug user steals to keep up with a drug habit, they should not be sent to jail but rehabilitation. The war on drugs is responsible for mass incarceration. And it is interesting that none of the drug dealers had boats, planes or any other means of transporting drugs to America.

    Once a person becomes a  felon in America their freedom is pretty much over even if they make it out of jail.  You see, our Christian nations provides no way to be reconciled so you suffer for life. Even when you are out of prison we still have a way to keep you on the crooked path.

    What’s worse is that neither political party has made strides to correct our justice system and since the prisons have been privatized, it would be extremely difficult to fix because that would mean we would be greatly effecting someone’s bottom line.

    It seems that this would be low-hanging fruit for a political candidate but apparently the bribe to keep things the same must be pretty good. I believe the solution is simple: Have 6 months of amnesty with each prosecutor or solicitor because I believe they already know many of the people who are falsely imprisoned or have been sentenced way to long. They would have 6 months to release these people. After six months, a special task force would be deputized to go over the prosecutors work and if they found anyone still falsely imprisoned, the prosecutor would have to replace the prisoner in jail.

    The special task force would be made up of law school graduating classes at various universities. The law department could oversee this venture while the students did the research.

    No one should be in prison for having a drug addiction. They should immediately be taken to rehabilitation. Everyone who has not committed a violent crime and has been incarcerated for at least 5 years should be released.

    All prison sentencing should only carry a maximum sentence of 10 years no matter what you do and anyone who has served 10 years should be released. Being a felon should be a thing of the past and prisons should get their charters to operate based on the percentage of prisoners who are actually rehabilitated.

    If we did these things in 20 years we may not have a need for prisons… or maybe I’m just dreaming!

  • Do you seriously care about causes?

    One of the great things about living in America is the freedom to protest. This government claims it will defend your right to do just that. I have to say “claims” because I still have the images of the protests during the Civil rights movement where water and dogs were used on peaceful protesters. Also, within the last 5 years with the Black Lives Matter movement and how brutal the police were to them.

    But my point is that causes are connected. It’s almost impossible to just protest one thing because chances are there are several issues within the cause you want to champion.

    Then, we tend to fail in the areas most important with causes — our solutions suck!

    For example, once upon a time teen pregnancy was shameful and the idea that you may get pregnant was a good deterrent for abstinence. Our country at that time was conservative and had a much better observance and reference for the word of God. There were government agencies that controlled what was acceptable over the airwaves and we made sure that what kids could see and learn in media would be something beneficial to their development.

    There were definitely protests regarding unwanted pregnancies and then adoption was the main source of handling them. Then some where the pregnancy dynamic became worse and some women (mostly poor and disenfranchised) sought their own methods of handling the problem (sometimes with a coat hanger of all things). Then Congress sought to solve this issue and put a bandaid on our unwanted baby problem and abortion was legalized. If you can’t beat them, join them philosophy.

    Now before abortion protests started, did we not see the deterioration of the American family? Did we miss how sex was overused to sell everything? Where were the protests for these because this is still happening today.

    We are depleting our resources, making animals that don’t belong to us extinct and using persevatives and additives in our foods that are slowly killing us. What’s our big cause again??

    The largest drug in America is not opiods, it’s sugar. Sugar is responsible for more degenerative diseases then anything else. Where are the protests?? Of all the “walks”, “races”, and “marathons” for cures, we haven’t cured a thing. Our health care system makes the majority of it’s money treating us instead of curing us and their prices are astronomical.

    Is it possible to have a cause of abortion, but not murder? Aren’t they the same thing. There are Christians in this country who are quick to protest abortion but won’t even speak of an unarmed Black man being murdered by police. We protest fur coats, but could care less about the treatment of pigs, chickens and cows.

    We would do well to check our causes so that when we protest (and I believe we should) we can be more productive with our solutions and actually make life easier for others. And above all else, we must avoid hypocrisy!

  • I’m baaaack!

    Yes. The headline is true. I have started writing again. I’m older, wiser and I have lived. I’m been through comedy and tragedy and I’m now back to share the experiences. Some of the experience will be spiritual and others will feel like therapy but it’s all being done to build you up and give thought-provoking commentary.

    There are more books in the works as well as a podcast. I am even working on an R&B band and a cooking channel. I am praying that these things will be a blessing to all.

    So for my first blog back I just want to share a bit about judging others. It seems that we are extremely hypocritical about this category because everyone has an opinion, but that only seems to apply when YOU are giving the commentary. It doesn’t feel so good when it flows the other way. The problem with judging is that it allows us to elevate our own sense of self-worth over another. What gives you the right to judge? It’s because I feel I have something very important to say … because I am that important. It seems that instead of the bias commentary, we ought to be engaged in helping.

    The bible says it this way: “If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important.”
    Galatians 6:3 NLT
    https://bible.com/bible/116/gal.6.3.NLT

    The point here is that since we have the energy to burn, why not use it to build someone up instead of tearing them down.

  • Too much pain!

    America is in too much pain.

    When you think about your worst pain, what comes to mind? Is it from body aches? Is it all in your mind? Is it a result of loving too much? Not enough? Is it emotional because you’ve experienced abuse? Is it spiritual because you are disappointed with your church?

    Whatever the pain, your senses have confirmed that it is just that … pain. We hurt. We cry. And we cry some more.

    Has your pain ever made you wonder how much more you can take? Are you avoiding someone because they hurt you? Have you altered your lifestyle because of someone? How long must you endure this suffering?

    Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a judicial system set up just for morality? Now before you start saying it could never happen or we wouldn’t do it right, let’s have a little fun.

    I say that if someone has wronged you, you should be able to sue for damages.

    Every guy whoever took advantage of a woman because she was codependent or lonely should have to pay a price. One thousand dollars would be good.

    Or what of the person who cheats on their significant other instead of just telling them the truth about how they feel in their relationship?

    Or better, what if anyone caught bullying had to serve jail time?

    And then, anyone who filed a false claim would have to pay $5,000!

    I think there should be a $500 fine for swearing in public, dressing inappropriately, stalking, gossiping and  being rude.

    This is a simple exercise to help you escape the rat race and forget about the problems of the day. You should come up with your own list. And have fun with it! Create a place where you make the rules and you decide what happens.

    Try it!

    We all need a break from the pain.