Time for the obligatory Colin Kaepernick post: y’all should’ve listened to him in 2016

Most Americans, myself included, do not endorse looting in response to injustice. But your preference to discuss looting over racial equity right now misses the point Kap was making nearly four years ago. I’m breaking an editorial rule for this blog by stating what seems to be the most obvious viewpoint that’s been proven by […]

Columbus, Ohio police attacked US Congresswoman Joyce Beatty during George Floyd march

Rep. Joyce Beatty (D-OH) was attending a Justice for George Floyd protest in Downtown Columbus, one of the many protests taking place across America, where police officers pepper-sprayed the Congresswoman and her colleagues. No one from Representative Beatty’s group was arrest. By the way, brilliant camerawork by Columbus Dispatch photographer Kyle Robertson. Tweet of the […]

To all White people who say they are not racist — you all are neither innocent, nor safe, from White supremacy

You’re living in White supremacy. What will you do about it? African American George Floyd’s slow death under the seemingly-knowing knee of Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin is a symbol of White supremacy’s death spell for both America and the freedom this country celebrates. Note that I didn’t say “ … death spell for Black […]

Colin Kaepernick Kneels Because You Kneeled First

One Saturday morning about 47 years ago, soldiers entered a tropical hamlet in search of enemy fighters and killed more than 500 unarmed civilians, many at point-blank range. One of the execution methods also included throwing a villager down a well, and then chasing the lethal cocktail with a detonated hand grenade. several of the […]

Charlottesville, White Terrorism and History — a Black Man’s Viewpoint

President Donald Trump’s difficulty with specifically denouncing the “Unite the Right” rally and White terrorist violence committed in Charlottesville, Virginia this past weekend confirms what many people of color already felt about the Trump regime: it’s Al-Qaeda or Islamic State in khakis and polo shirts, hiding behind perverse and ancient renderings of a noble religion […]

Whose Streets? Film and the New Black Leadership

Although I plan to see the Ferguson, Missouri uprising documentary Whose Streets? in a theater this week, I’ve declined to write about the film up to this point because mentalunrest’s editorial policy typically forbids me from writing about media I’ve neither seen nor experienced, but I have to share some thoughts about the recent and […]

The Decision to Murder Jordan Edwards

As the car carrying then-alive teenager Jordan Edwards departed a house party where everyone in the vehicle collectively felt was no longer safe to remain, Balch Springs, Texas police officer Roy Oliver’s calculations went from zero to I-need-to-kill-somebody within sub-seconds. Or perhaps Oliver was able to arrive at his deadly conclusion so quickly because he […]

Fire Spicer; Shut Down Pepsi; United Still Not Down

Politics aside, US Press Secretary Sean Spicer should be fired for being an idiot. President Trump is free to choose any Conservative he wants to serve as his mouthpiece. I’m just asking that he chooses among the smart ones. No need for me to break down Spicer’s waves of failing “Assad worse than Hitler” remarks […]

Sunday Smack: Will Black Lives Matter Movement Wither Under Trump?

This week’s Sunday Smack concerns the Black Lives Matter movement in a Trump world. In September 2015, historian Victor Davis Hanson placed the BLM on death watch, and predicted its end to occur one year later: But like all the other past racially chauvinistic movements, “Black Lives Matter” will fail to convince anyone outside a small subset […]

POST-ELECTION MEDITATIONS: WE’LL SURVIVE TRUMP

We lived under the leadership of a Ku Klux Klan-loving President who broadly rejected Japan’s 1919 Treaty of Versailles amendment that would view all races and countries as equals — likely because this President had more colonial ambitions to chase that involved nations of color. We lived under a president whose treatment of Black Mississippi […]