By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
Dear readers, please allow me to get small and petty, just for a moment if you will. Now that White America has seen the wrath of Trump & Company come down on fellow white citizens such as the despicable executions of Renee Good and now recently Alex Pretti, can we now say, “Ya see what we were saying for hundreds of years!”
For hundreds of years, Black people and activists were yelling to the world and anyone else who would listen to them that too many times, law enforcement was indifferent to the murders and kidnappings of Black people for simply being Black.
History is replete with graphic stories and reports of Black people being indiscriminately brutalized and killed but for the most part, White America was numb to it because, after all, these were people who were seen as not worthy of due process and the full protection of the law.
They were deemed inhuman, animals and threats to the moral order of a god fearing White nation which characterized them as being only good for pulling the plow or cleaning slop off of kitchen floors for Mista’ Charlie and his delicate wife.
When pogroms were done against people of color, the biased local media outlets or the racist police investigations merely made excuses for their sudden disappearance or killings by
“persons unknown.”
For a searing example of this, read the book, A Death In The Delta regarding the kidnapping, torture and death of the minor, Emmett Till. The court proceedings were a mockery and justice was akin to a desert mirage of water. Google the data if you wish.
Space in this column does not allow for the thousands of “cases” that resulted in Black men and women and minors being brutalized all the while we trumpet the laudable goals of due process and the rule of law.
Now once you time travel back from 1619 to current dates, it is eerie seeing the tried and true chestnuts of people in power scrambling to get their lies in order regarding the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti.
Trump’s incompetent henchmen and women especially Kristi Noem and Gregory Bovino and Kash Patel have no conscience to go on national news and with a straight face tell us not to believe our eyes, but rather their concocted lies about the deaths of Good and Pretti.
I mean, this is not even about the deaths of Black activists who were imprisoned and evidence fabricated against them in sham trials whose only purpose was to degrade and pillory their names for political and racial purposes.
I mean…when White America, without shame or conscience starts executing “their own,”
things have taken a drastic turn for the worse!
Like me, if you have taken the time to see all of the cell phone recordings of what happened to both Good and Pretti, you should be shaken to your core to realize that Trump and his conscience seared minions have no moral or intellectual problem lying in your face and daring you to punch back with the truth.
They explicitly know that if they are ever brought to justice in a federal courtroom and are convicted, Trump will, as he did with the January 6th rioters and insurrectionists, pardon them
in a heartbeat and call them patriots!
That is an indication how America has fallen in its professed beliefs that no one is above the law.
From where I sit, both Good and Pretti were executed as if they were gang members who stole from their capo bosses, were caught; were made examples of how you do not cross the established order.
Is White America shocked over seeing how America, a divided America, will eat their own if it means maintaining the present narrative and to keep gas lighting us with “trumped up” lies?
Former President Obama recently stated that this current period of political turmoil caused by Trump is a wake- up call for people to realize that democracy is like a fragile butterfly that needs constant attention and protection so as to remain alive and well.
The acid test will come when the investigations are complete and if they white wash the obvious facts of their deaths, then America will have a simple decision to make and that is, turn your heads away and allow anything that Trump wants to come to pass or…you can
say No! and vote the feckless GOP out of office.
Just think, we have another three years of this White House induced madness to contend with and if things continue to sour, what can heal this rupture or will the polarization just saunter along and we wake up one day and realize we have involuntarily joined the ranks of those banana republics that America used to sneer at?
Contact Lafe Tolliver at lafe5x@gmail.com