Hey, All Y'all Who Whine That 'All Lives Matter': Tell It To This Little Black Girl
Wise.
We don't have much to say about this video clip of young 9-year-old Zianna Oliphant speaking before the city council in Charlotte, North Carolina, one week after Charlotte police shot and killed a black man named Keith Scott. That came not long after Tulsa officer Betty Shelby gunned down another black man named Terence Crutcher, whose hands were up, and who had apparently committed the crime of having car trouble while black. And before that, and before that, and before that, and before that, and ... white folks might not have all their names seared into their hearts and their souls, but black folks do. We have no snark about this, no pithy jokes. Just a little girl with tears streaming down her face, because she already knows what's up, and she wants it to stop.
We will hand the mic to little Zianna, because fuck if we can add any wisdom to what she has to say:
I come here today to talk about how I feel, and I feel like we are treated differently than other people, and I don't like how we are treated just because of our color and it doesn't mean anything to me.
I believe that we are black people and we shouldn't have to feel like this. We shouldn't have to protest because y'all are treating us wrong. We do this because we need to and have rights.
I've been born and raised in Charlotte and I never felt this way until now. And I can't stand how we're treated. It's a shame that our fathers and mothers are killed, and we can't even see them anymore. It's a shame that we have to go to the graveyard and bury them.
And we have tears, and we shouldn't have tears.
We need our fathers and mothers to be by our side.
Like we said, what else is there to say?
[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/daily-caller-and-redstate-post-thoughtful-reactions-to-dallas-police-shootings-wait-what"></a>[/wonkbar]After the Dallas police shootings, which happened at the end of the same week that saw cops kill Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge, we saw some white conservatives' hearts starting to open to the simple fact that THERE IS A FUCKING PROBLEM IN THIS COUNTRY. We hope that continues, and that people might watch this little girl and forget the racist fuck-shittery they've been taught, and just LISTEN for a goddamn minute.
Oh look, we can listen more, because here's Zianna talking about why she went in front of the Charlotte city council in the first place:
Pretty sure she's said it all, so we'll just end with trite aphorisms about "From your mouth to God's ears, Zianna," and "A little child shall lead them," and we're sure there are some more, but we forget.
[ BBC ]
Fine. Then go away!
Well, you could ask me questions rather than jump down my throat. I am not equating all black people with a few rappers.
But since I have your attention:
When NPR had a show on called News & Notes the host Farai Chideya had a round table discussion on during the 2008 election titled "Is Barack Obama Black Enough?" She also interviewed Russell Simmons the next year and he wanted to talk about yoga, being a vegan, rainbows, butterflies, etc. When the conversation turned toward misogyny and violence in rap lyrics he threatened to bolt the interview. She didn't challenge him and they went on to talk about strawberries, marshmallows and pixie dust.
Black culture has a lot of problems. The biggest of all, I think, is the notion of what being black is. I went to a 70% black high school. I was and still am a card-carrying nerd and have always been teased about it. When my black nerdy friends were teased they were "trying to be white". We live in a world where Michael Eric Dyson teaches college courses at Ivy league schools about how wonderful Tupac Shakur is and how he was a "ghetto saint". From where I am sitting it seems to me that many black kids out there are taught that being a thug is being "authentically" and being good at math is "selling out". To many blacks, being black is being misanthropic, ostentatious and sociopathic. If you are trying to be the first Black President of the United States then you fall under the scrutiny of both the Tea Party and Farai Chideya as being inauthentic.