Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Troy Davis and the American Way

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article29163.htm

No poor black man in this country can take the life of a white individual, even if in self-defence, and expect to live free. But we have progressed further. A poor black man who comes under suspicion of having killed a white man can expect the great ponderous machinery of the law to begin rolling inexorably against him until his life or his spirit or both have been crushed under its weight. Troy Davis is only one black man who is finding this out the hard way. There have been many before him; no doubt there will be many after.

It is necessary that a few black men die every so often for our pleasure, so that we can continue to beat our collective ego-chests and congratulate ourselves on justice being done, even as we perpetuate our long tradition of paradoxes that seem to define us as a people: the “greatest” country in the world is nothing but its greatest terror and bully; freedom is predicated (literally) on the legacy of slavery and domination, what we view as justice is too often its horrific miscarriage.

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