Code of silence corrodes morality, puts blacks at risk

[Ballygrl]

http://www.tampabay.com/opinion/columns/code-of-silence-corrodes-morality-puts-blacks-at-risk/1110709

Code of silence corrodes morality, puts blacks at risk

By Bill Maxwell, Times correspondent
In Print: Sunday, July 25, 2010

For committing an act of pure decency, three black women are being ostracized by many other black people.

On the night of June 29, Delores Keen, Renee Roundtree and Rose Dodson rushed outside Keen's apartment after they heard gunshots. They discovered two Tampa police officers, David Curtis and Jeffrey Kocab, lying together on the ground. The officers had been shot. Dontae Morris, a 24-year-old black ex-convict, would be charged in the shootings.

Roundtree checked the officers' pulses, and Keen dialed 911. The three women stayed with the dying officers until others arrived. The Hillsborough County Commission honored the women for trying to help the officers.

Since their identities were made public, the woman have been criticized by fellow blacks almost everywhere they go, walking down the street, at local social clubs and in stores.

Their sin, considered by many to be perhaps the worst in American black culture, was helping "the enemy" — the police. You are guilty of helping the enemy in two main ways: You give the police, or another authority, information about a black person who has committed or is suspected of having committed a crime, which is "snitching." Or, as is the case with the three women, you physically aid and comfort police in distress, which is treated the same as snitching.

-Continued at the link-

[Crazy Horse]

That's as ****ed up as a soup sandwich

[Eupher]

This is the same philosophy that resulted in the sheer amount of crime - the looting, arson, murder, and general mayhem - done during the Detroit riots of 1967 and the Watts riots of 1964, among others.

Black-on-black crime,  that is. 

[RightCoast]

We are such racists.   

[Ptarmigan]

The 3 women who helped the police did a very human thing. If I saw a down police or any person, I would help them.

[thundley4]

The 3 women who helped the police did a very human thing. If I saw a down police or any person, I would help them.

I would think long and hard about helping if they had an Obama T-Shirt on. 

[docstew]

I would think long and hard about helping if they had an Obama T-Shirt on. 

I've treated the Taliban when they were brought to my aid station by the sf guys who captured them.  Get over your objections to their beliefs, they're people.

[thundley4]

I've treated the Taliban when they were brought to my aid station by the sf guys who captured them.  Get over your objections to their beliefs, they're people.

The    was meant to imply it was a joke.  OTOH, treating a member of the Taliban isn't much different than treating one of the DUmmies, is it?

[DefiantSix]

The    was meant to imply it was a joke.  OTOH, treating a member of the Taliban isn't much different than treating one of the DUmmies, is it?

I understand that when you treat a talibani, they don't smell as bad as a DUmp monkey. 

They're also just a smidgen more intelligent, and certainly more capable of harming you if you aren't careful. (You could drop a talibani on a desert island, and left to his own devices might not be dead in 3 days, unlike the DUmbass.)

[Gratiot]

That's really despicable.   

A few years ago, I actually saw a bed-sheet/banner celebrating that a family was burnt alive in their home, because they were snitching.     It's maddening how some people have given up all shreds of decency, empathy, or even their humanity.

[vesta111]

That's really despicable.   

A few years ago, I actually saw a bed-sheet/banner celebrating that a family was burnt alive in their home, because they were snitching.     It's maddening how some people have given up all shreds of decency, empathy, or even their humanity.

OK get with the program, how many Mormons in a settlement where they marry off their 12 year old daughters would help a Black police officer that came to arrest them.----

[NHSparky]

Jesus, vesta--what the **** does that have to do with the price of rice in China?

And it wouldn't matter if the cop was black or white.

What it basically means is we have institutionalized hatred towards authority of any kind, or at least the kind that enforces the law.

The authority that gives people stuff, well, that's a slightly different story--then they're only hated because they don't give "enough" free stuff.

[Eupher]

OK get with the program, how many Mormons in a settlement where they marry off their 12 year old daughters would help a Black police officer that came to arrest them.----

Apples and oranges, IMHO.

I've lived in Utah, where plural marriage is still practiced illegally and I've seen (from a distance) those enclaves. There is a respect for law enforcement, I believe, and a basic religious dogma that compels these folks (most of them, anyway) to render assistance if it comes to it.

Not to stray from the OP so much and I don't want to derail the conversation, but even though it can be argued that the Fundamentalist Church of the LDS (not to be confused with the mainstream LDS) allows fraud in the sense that subsequent "wives" of one patriarch with her children are eligible for welfare, and then is collected by the mother and used in the "family", that kind of practice does not compare favorably with allowing two police officers to bleed to death without rendering aid.

We're talking a culture of staying silent due to threats of violence by gangs and criminals within the black community. I'm simply not sure that's the case with the LDS community, regardless of Fundamentalist or mainstream.

[vesta111]

Apples and oranges, IMHO.

I've lived in Utah, where plural marriage is still practiced illegally and I've seen (from a distance) those enclaves. There is a respect for law enforcement, I believe, and a basic religious dogma that compels these folks (most of them, anyway) to render assistance if it comes to it.

Not to stray from the OP so much and I don't want to derail the conversation, but even though it can be argued that the Fundamentalist Church of the LDS (not to be confused with the mainstream LDS) allows fraud in the sense that subsequent "wives" of one patriarch with her children are eligible for welfare, and then is collected by the mother and used in the "family", that kind of practice does not compare favorably with allowing two police officers to bleed to death without rendering aid.

We're talking a culture of staying silent due to threats of violence by gangs and criminals within the black community. I'm simply not sure that's the case with the LDS community, regardless of Fundamentalist or mainstream.

 Point well taken here.      But in any society where life revolves around getting something for nothing, then the collective Enemy is those that come in to threaten the way of life. 

So out of the blue some members give aid and comfort to the enemy---in this case the police that can in a heart beat arrest your kids and grandchildren for their actions.

This is hard to except for people who have a common enemy.

These woman acted on knee jerk reaction, they were woman that who never gave a thought to the politics of the neighborhood just rushed in and helped a fellow human.

In their way they went against the thinking of their collective society as they went to aid the society's enemy.  Are they traitors to their society or are they just woman who with out thought or discussion went to help an injured man ??

[Eupher]

Vesta:

But in any society where life revolves around getting something for nothing, then the collective Enemy is those that come in to threaten the way of life.  

I'd submit that ANYBODY that comes in to threaten a society is an enemy - and whether or not they're getting something for nothing has nothing to do with it.

I'd be willing to bet that these women who attempted to help these officers are a cut above the gangland atmosphere that they live in - but that doesn't mean they're carrying a 'victim' card. They simply overcame their innate resistance due to a willingness to help, despite the crap that was coming their way.

From the article:

"I expected it," ['it' being the ostracization] Dodson told the Times, rationalizing the criticism against her. "I don't want to say black folks, but I've got to say black folks — some have faith in the cops and some of them have been harassed for so long, been profiled, that they don't want nothing to do (with the police).

Some have faith, she says. Yet she claims that some of her neighbors have been harassed for so long, been profiled, that they're not interested in helping.

So even one of the three women who helped the officers thinks that the cops are out to harass and to profile.

I'm not convinced that that's true, and until black Americans can begin to understand that they're the masters of their own destiny -- certainly not whitey and certainly not the government -- they're going to stay exactly where they are in witnessing and living with the amount of crime they live with.