The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt
I feel sorry for any person that is arrested for paltry or undeserving reasons but I have to laugh when people get civil rights religion the moment they get in trouble.
If you don’t know, there are no Black Nationalist revolutionary Black people, former inmates or even outspoken community activists being hired in mass by white American corporations, colleges and other institutions. To get high level jobs in most upper crust schools and businesses you oftentimes need to be acceptable to the powers that be.
One way to show acceptability is to be quiet and decline to speak out about issues of interest to people that live in ghettos, in barrios, in the hood and in the trap!
When you are hired by “the boss man” nobody is “biased” an no one is “discriminatory” but when you run into trouble with police or law enforcement, poof, the whole police department becomes klan-like, white racists and white supremacists!
It is easy to say cops are racist when you are arrested but how many agency heads, department heads, professors and scholars will stand up and speak out for you when you are arrested on shady circumstances?
Not many, if any!
Don’t take my word for it but many “leading Blacks” run to the NAACP, SCLC, Nation of Islam and other groups when they get fired, laid off, suspended or arrested.
Those same folk never attend a civil rights organization meeting, never donate to a community activist group, never complain about the misfortunes of others and never care about any of the above!
What we have to understand is that we’re all in the same boat, we’re all in the same bag and we all have the same enemies regardless of where we live, where we work or where we play!
They, bad cops, feel the same way about the editor of The Gantt Report as they feel about the handkerchief-headed, boot-licking, neck scratching neo-colonialist modern day Uncles Toms and Aunt Jemimas!
They will arrest you at Harvard just as fast as they will arrest you in Compton, in the Fifth Ward, in Buttermilk Bottom, in Bankhead, in Liberty City, in Little Haiti or on Canal Street. In Harvard communities, they arrest you with a Harvard accent. In New Orleans, they arrest you with a Cajun Creole accent!
The result is the same. You’re Black, you’re innocent and you’re handcuffed and thrown in a jail cell!
Some uppity Negroes scream when they are victimized by poorly trained or insensitive law enforcers but they laugh and crack jokes about Wayne Williams, Michael Vick, O. J. Simpson, Iman, and Little Kim when they are hauled off to jail.
Life is a double-edged sword that swings both ways. When you close your eyes, ears and mouths to the mistreatment, victimization and brutalization of the little man or the common woman, some of those same people will laugh at you when you become Malcolm X with suspenders and designer bifocals after being falsely accused and over charged by a prejudiced judicial system with a racially motivated police force! Somebody text your morning radio show and ask the clowns to make a joke about each other!