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| From left are fired Memphis police officers Demetrius Haley, Desmond Mills Jr, Emmitt Martin III, Justin Smith, and Tadarrius Bean. Photograph: MPD/Reuters/The Guardian |
© January 25, 2023, the Griot Poet
Sources:
Wikipedia/Death_of_Tyre_Nichols
2 Memphis FD employees are relieved of duty in connection toTyre Nichols’ death: NPR
5 fired Memphis officers charged with the second-degree murder of Tyre Nichols: Washington Post
I am a political poet.
I typically riff on things like our antebellum electoral
politics,
Gaslighting on Critical Race Theory,
Translation: actual American history.
Because what criminal have you ever heard of,
That wants to hear from his targets the evidence of their
malfeasance?
I don’t shrug off or shrink,
When evil comes from places,
That I would rather not see it.
Every out group has an element,
So addicted to wanting power,
They will do violence to others within the group that they are
a part of,
At worst, it’s a form of psychosis,
At best, it’s self-loathing.
Five black men killed Tyre Nichols,
Carrying the five-pointed badges from the antebellum enslaved
patrol,
He was beaten by people who he should not have feared.
I thought this was the logic of having more diversity in the
police force!
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond
Mills Jr., and Justin Smith,
Pulled over Tyre for supposed erratic driving,
I would like to think that initially, he was relieved,
Seeing the unmarked car filled with people like him,
He might have also been terrified,
We live in constant fear of the police,
We drill our kids with “the talk”:
Make sure you cross at the corner with the light: Don’t
jaywalk.
If you’re driving and you’re pulled over,
Have your wallet ready with your license on the dashboard and,
for God’s sake, NO expired insurance!
Philando Castile taught us, don’t tell them if you have a gun,
registered or not,
Keep your hands at “10” and “2” on the steering column,
Visible,
Don’t make sudden moves,
Ask if you can give them any items,
Obey all orders given,
Do you want to know why discipline in the hood is so severe?
We’d rather beat you now than plant your remains later!
Dr. Seuss barely registers in the hood, and Dr. Spock’s
irrelevant!
White picket fences are in reruns of Wally and the Beaver.
It’s the place your kids go back to after buying their drugs
here,
Ferried by planes in a place where no one is a licensed pilot,
Our kids can’t talk sass to a cop,
The wrong one-liner WILL be their last!
Three Nobel laureates
Won the Physiology or Medicine prize in 2009,
Dr’s Elizabeth H. Blackburn, Carol W. Greider, and Jack W.
Szostak,
Pointing out that the DNA telomeres,
The gangly ends are the last to separate during cell division,
And controls how fast the cells go through senescence:
biological aging,
Telomeres are remarkably shorter in African Americans than in
other groups,
Which means we age faster,
And die younger,
Are prone to diseases and cancers,
"Black don't crack" is a misnomer.
Before the first traffic stop,
Before the first racist cop,
Particularly in this country,
The conclusion in this context:
"African Americans are under considerable stress in their
current environment."
Yeah.
The same that it has been from 1619 to the present!
When Tyre met,
The five dark horsemen of his Apocalypse,
He was eighty yards from his front door!
Home plate is supposed to be where you’re safe,
And, in the spirit of Terry McMillan: exhale.
His beating,
Or lynching,
After Tyre mentally reset,
Causing his sprint,
Realizing that he might as well have been.
Eighty miles away from his parents,
There was a confrontation,
He ran,
From five Black Klansmen,
Followed by a second confrontation,
Tyre was beaten severely,
His mother couldn’t get through the surveillance video,
A young man had shortness of breath,
A young man, profusely bleeding,
The ambulance was called too late to intervene,
A young man died of cardiac arrest!
News flash:
Some white supremacists have Melanin.
WHO can we trust?
It’s no wonder that our telomeres are stressed!
A popular pejorative in the community is the colloquialism: “Uncle Tom.”
That’s a misread of Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novel.
The villain was an Anglo-Saxon Negropean named Sambo.
An overseer for their master,
KRS-ONE wordsmith-ed it to “officer.”
Who,
After Tom forgives him with his last breath,
After beating Tom
to death,
Humbled Sambo into religious piety after Tom’s chastisement.
The five horsemen of Tyre’s Apocalypse were fired.
Two EMTs were put on administrative leave.
Ben Crump was called to the scene.
I don’t think this lessens his parents’ grief.
Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills Jr., and Justin Smith,
Are the products of a system,
A color-coded, cisgender matrix exquisitely designed that,
And are willing to keep the inequality status quo by applying violence.
I don’t know if they were humbled,
I think their sin was getting caught!
Black Anglo-Saxons and Negropeans are more dangerous than
Klansmen.
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