Look Who it Was Random video

If Michael Brown had been shot by a black man, nobody would have cared

2,194 views · Published 26 August 2014 · 12:43 · Indexed 20 September 2026

Channel: The Dr Boyce Watkins Black Excellence Channel · 2014 · People & Blogs

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I’ve had an interesting week, at least as it pertains to my conscience.  I agreed to join Dr. Cornel West, Carl Dix,  Pastor Jerome McCory and Michelle Alexander in a month of resistance against police brutality and mass incarceration about two weeks before Michael Brown was killed.  After Michael was shot in an unfortunate incident involving a police officer in Ferguson, Missouri, I saw a kind of rage I hadn’t seen for a while.
There were reactions from people who paid no attention when we asked them a year ago to help us fight racial profiling and abuse by police.  I heard from my middle class, corporate friends who’d previously been convinced that black people are safe and fine as long as we learn to dress well and behave.  I even saw rappers getting involved in protests after many of their colleagues had spent years promoting black-on-black genocide like it was a fashion statement.
I was glad to see this energy, this is what we need.  We need black people who aren’t afraid or embarrassed to be angry.  There’s a lot to be angry about.
But here’s where it got a little odd.  In one of the same mental exercises that led me to write the book, “What if George Bush were a Black Man?” I did another mental exercise and asked, “What if Michael Brown had been shot by a black man?”
After running through this scenario in my head, I came to some very simple conclusions:
1) The national media wouldn’t have covered Michael’s death, and local media would have probably covered it for only one day in the back of the local paper.  They did the same thing when my best friend Greg Wilkins was shot in the head in front of his daughter by another black man right after Tupac was killed.
2) Black people would not be marching in the streets. We didn’t march when a 9-year old boy was killed in Chicago last week.  Perhaps some feel that his life doesn’t matter as much because he wasn’t killed by a white police officer.
3) Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Iyanla Vanzant, Nelly, and all the other celebrities supporting Brown’s family would never have taken the trip to Ferguson.
4) The Obama Administration would have never gotten involved.  They rarely get involved when all the black males are being killed right in our president’s backyard.
5) There would be no independent investigation and the murder may have not even gotten solved.   Even though my best friend’s brother knew who killed Greg, the police didn’t want to do the work necessary to gather evidence to prosecute the homicide.
You can see where I’m going with this.   Black male homicide clearly doesn’t matter if the victim doesn’t have the luxury of being killed by a white man or a cop.  If he’s killed by a black man, then we might even let the killer make money writing a song about it.  He could then market that song on a Clear Channel radio station or at the BET Awards.

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