A couple of Friday nights ago I was browsing Yahoo News and came across an article about threats made to NYPD officers.

Personally, I think threatening all police is a ridiculous risk to many innocent and good-willed police officers. There’s no justification for it either. You cannot kill violence by using violence, but that topic is a whole other article in itself.

I decided to take a look at the comments section; I usually don’t read the comments because the ignorance and narrow-mindedness are sickening and disturbing. I came across a disheartening comment by a white male that read as follows:

“If I was African American, I’d be saddened and horrified by the reaction to the abuse of Eric Garner (I won’t include Mike Brown – that thug asked for it).

Crazy black americans calling in threats and wanting to really kill cops as some sort of sick “eye for an eye” retribution only serves to harden their image in all other ethnicities’ eyes as overly violent and lacking any self-control.

Protest peacefully – then get on with your life by being a good example of African American.

…Unfortunately – I’ve seen African American’s – people I know loosely on facebook, saying things like “they had it coming” or “now maybe they will understand our pain – you give it out you gotta take it back”.

Just horrible. And not too atypical sadly.

Come on, black America: Do it the way MLK did it. Use your brains. Impress us – don’t reinforce the stereotype.”

If you’ve read any of my editorials then you know, or at least get the gist, of how I feel about racism and stereotypes, so I won’t go on a rant about this comment. To be honest, it doesn’t deserve that much energy, but I will make a few points. I want to say that comments such as that above don’t deserve attention, but at the same time they do because he is an American, our fellow American, and this comment single-handedly reflects the opinions of thousands.

First off, I don’t understand why this ‘I shouldn’t care because I’m not black’ mentality exists. Why do people think that their skin color is some type of get-by-free-pass of ignoring injustice within the world? And why isn’t he  “saddened” and “horrified” by what happened to Eric Garner just because he isn’t black?

Anytime a young black boy is killed he somehow becomes a ‘thug’. What is a thug? Who is a thug? The word has seemed to evolve from a name for a violent person to an alternative for the derogatory term nigger.  Thug, in an alarming parallelism to nigger, is specifically used to demonize and dehumanize black people. And from observation I’ve heard and seen the word be applied to black characterization more than anyone else.

Michael Brown smoked marijuana, but so did Miley Cyrus. Michael Brown used his middle finger, so did Justin Bieber. And yet people idolize them and condemn people similar to Brown. Why? Why is it that we send young black boys out into the world teaching them to feel afraid and cautious, rather than secure and confident?

I don’t understand how this commentator can make such an irrational media-based assumption about Michael Brown’s character and, even more absurdly, deem that he deserved to die. So why does this person feel reluctantly compelled to announce that Michael Brown ‘asked for it’ for it but so burdened when “African Americans loosely” say the officers who were shot “had it coming”? It’s a double standard that has long existed in a deafening silence.

He speaks with the exact condescending tone, that cages black people, as if saying “be a good little black American and you’ll get a cookie.” He speaks to emphasize a system that was not built to defend black people, but to control them instead. He says that black people should “impress us”; he and billions of others don’t seem to understand that white doesn’t translate to superiority. What’s even worse is that he is oblivious to his role in the larger destructive force in our country.

But black people are the problem, right? Wrong. People with similar or identical views to the commentator want to say that black people are the problem because blacks refuse to sulk in the sickening silence surrounding injustice. They are disturbed by many of black people’s refusal to be angry amongst themselves any longer and they are confused by our refusal to allow oppression to control us. We’re speaking out and we aren’t the problem, oppressors are. As Martin Luther King Jr. once said “freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed.”

So to all the people who wince when black people scream “injustice,” to all the people who claim “stereotypes don’t exist,” and more importantly to all the people who disclaim the presence of racism and prejudice, here is your proof:

As of 2010, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that black males are 6 times more likely to be incarcerated than white males.

Two years ago white households had a median wealth 13 times higher than that of black households.

And of course impoverished areas (minority areas) have lower and poorer education rates.

80% of Congress is white. Eighty percent. Can someone please explain to me how Congress can understand, let alone make policies for, people they don’t relate to. How can Congress as a whole sympathize with the struggle of black Americans, when they haven’t experience it? How can a majority white Congress represent a diverse United States. It’s literally impossible.

This is not progress.

People keep claiming that we’ve made such progress and dismantled the race barrier.  If progress is allowing racists to degrade us for our color, we don’t want it.

David B.’s comment symbolizes that progress is merely a vision. And sometimes a vision won’t make sense to people because it’s too big for their small minds.

The question remains “what should we do?” and we stand as all Americans collectively because the cycle of oppression cannot be broken without the acknowledgement of both the oppressed and their oppressors. I alone cannot answer this question because I cannot fathom a way to deteriorate mindsets as destructive as commentator David B’s. I also cannot fathom a way to destroy the anger and tension entangled and engrossed in America’s racial history.