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Ugh forgive me for ranting but I really want to yell to somebody and I can't do it in this house.
My parents got a blue light to put outside our house, apparently this is a thing people are doing now "in support of the police." Because you know the police are the people who need support right now, not the families and communities of the people they've killed who will never ever receive justice for them because our system is so flawed that the police can literally get away with murder.
I just . . . I really hope they're just badly misinformed because the mainstream media reporting has been so one-sided and shady and not being willfully horrible (and, you know, racist). My mother is generally, or at any rate used to be, a very liberal, progressive person politically, but my sister's Virginia Good Ole Boy husband is a cop, and ever since they got married I've noticed my mother's attitudes shifting to accommodate him and I find that really upsetting. She keeps saying things like "Well, we can't know what it would be like to be in Clint's position, to make the kinds of decisions a police officer has to make." You know, the decisions police have made to shoot unarmed teenagers, on several occasions.
When I expressed my disapproval of the light she said, smiling dismissively at me, that it was "to show that there are good police officers, and we're supporting the good ones," but you can't express that much sentiment in such a simple symbol. Knowing one good cop doesn't mean that atrocities haven't been committed by other cops, and moving attention to the support of "good cops" just feels like a way of ignoring the corrupt ones and the things that they've done, and refusing to address the problem. When you make a gesture like that, you're taking sides, and the way things are right now the two sides to take are either in support of ALL the police or in support of the people they've wronged, and it looks like the rest of my family has come down on the wrong side.
My parents got a blue light to put outside our house, apparently this is a thing people are doing now "in support of the police." Because you know the police are the people who need support right now, not the families and communities of the people they've killed who will never ever receive justice for them because our system is so flawed that the police can literally get away with murder.
I just . . . I really hope they're just badly misinformed because the mainstream media reporting has been so one-sided and shady and not being willfully horrible (and, you know, racist). My mother is generally, or at any rate used to be, a very liberal, progressive person politically, but my sister's Virginia Good Ole Boy husband is a cop, and ever since they got married I've noticed my mother's attitudes shifting to accommodate him and I find that really upsetting. She keeps saying things like "Well, we can't know what it would be like to be in Clint's position, to make the kinds of decisions a police officer has to make." You know, the decisions police have made to shoot unarmed teenagers, on several occasions.
When I expressed my disapproval of the light she said, smiling dismissively at me, that it was "to show that there are good police officers, and we're supporting the good ones," but you can't express that much sentiment in such a simple symbol. Knowing one good cop doesn't mean that atrocities haven't been committed by other cops, and moving attention to the support of "good cops" just feels like a way of ignoring the corrupt ones and the things that they've done, and refusing to address the problem. When you make a gesture like that, you're taking sides, and the way things are right now the two sides to take are either in support of ALL the police or in support of the people they've wronged, and it looks like the rest of my family has come down on the wrong side.
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Meh.
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It's not so much that the porchlight thing is being done .. it's how it's being handled. 'Oh no - there are police officers murdering people that I will likely never meet ... but I am VERY likely to meet members of the police. And they may murder me unless they think I am their friend.' *PANIC ENSUES* 'How can I let the police know that I am NOT like those people? I know!! I will put a bumper sticker on my car / I will mark my HOME with a special light that shows I am their friend. See Mister Officer? I am your friend. Please do not murder me.'
And THAT is the reason that many people will mark their home. Maybe they don't consciously even recognize that they are rolling on their back and baring their throat so the alpha wolves leave them be. But it IS what they are doing.
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