Btw, my previous comments about people in the media are not criticism of Al Sharpton as one might expect, today they are mostly against Nancy Grace at this point. I listened to some of her show on Sirus XM driving home from work last night (I don't have cable TV) and she seemed to be trying her best to get people angry, I get that's the point of her show but it's pretty sick when people only care about ratings and not what they are doing or trying to do to your city. How many news agencies would love to have more lootings and burnings and shootings to show on TV?
What has caused so many people to sink to the level of doing these things... Well in my opinion it's a poisonous brew of:
1. Many families without fathers - young men not raised by fathers are known to have anger issues. Heck even young elephants are! When I wrote up my accident reports at the Wal-Mart, I don't think I filled out one where the child had the same last name as the mother.
2. Racism exists and builds up fear and resentment. Those who are not racist are judged by some the same as people who are. Those who have committed no crime are judged by some the same as those who have.
3. A high tolerance of crime in some segments of society. If all these criminals didn't have women who sleep with them and have their babies and mothers who let them live with them, where would they be? If you tolerate selling your food stamps (discussed openly in the Wal-Mart break room as a normal accepted practice), next you tolerate accepting money from stolen goods, next thing you know your house is the one getting robbed, next thing you know your neighborhood is ruled by crime and no one will report anything because they are afraid. And predators have no loyalty to your race as much as you'd like to think they do. "Selling drugs to the brother man instead of the other man" as Public Enemy put it in one of their songs. Their only loyalty is to themselves. One cashier reported to me that a customer tried to get her to put merchandise in his bag without payment as loyalty to her race and she refused. I told her he was not loyal to her - he was a predator on her making her take the risk and she was smart not to fall for it.
4. It's difficult to know what the truth is in any racially charged situation. Occasionally I investigated racial incidents at the Wal-Mart. Sometimes I was able to find witnesses. Once I found that an incident committed by an associate (white) against two customers (black) was witnessed by another associate and her mother and the ugly racial incident was 100% true. It's easy when you're white to assume racism is imagined, especially when some people routinely assume you make decisions based on race when you know you didn't, but sometimes it is not. What happens when the investigator does not want to know the truth or does not want it to come out? When I investigated incidents, I was told to find out the truth and higher ups would deal with the truth whatever it was. That's what I would do anyway, but it was made clear my job was not to cover stuff up in the store's favor. What if your higher ups tell you to cover it up or else?
5. Some people who don't own much don't care what happens to other people's property because they don't know what it's like to really have a stake in anything. If you've been on welfare your whole life, do you have any understanding of what it's like to try to earn your own living the honest way? Or to you are people who try to earn a living the honest way just chumps and people to target? When you work at a store you learn what percentage of the people are on welfare and it's really scary.
6. Toxic pop culture.
7. Fear of having open and honest conversation about why there is an underclass and addressing the real causes for political reasons.
8. People act different in groups than when they are alone, pack mentality gives them license.
Believe me, while working at the Wal-Mart I had hours and hours in which to observe what's going on around me and think about this question. Although there were no riots in the store as bad as what happened recently while I worked there, an associate was trampled during a Black Friday sale once (not injured fortunately) and on many days where the store was really busy the store looked at the end of the day like a riot had taken place even though it was just business as usual. The racks would be askew, half the merchandise on the floor, the parking lot filled with trash, once there was a pile of poop on the floor with a cigarette put out in it, etc. One of my jobs was to lead the crew in cleaning this up every night. When you know there are large numbers of people who you can't really call civilized you know it doesn't take much for things to get out of control. And no I'm not saying all these people are of one race or all people of one race are like this. All societies have their underclass. I guess it's just human nature. I don't think it's smart to concentrate large numbers of people like this in one place, but on the other hand people fear with some reason that it spreads like a cancer.
One thing I tried to do at the Wal-Mart was make everyone feel welcome unless they became unwelcome due to their behavior. Not their appearance or race or age or economic status or anything else. Like my boss told me once about a customer (white) who was kind of a pain in the butt, "She doesn't have much but what she does have she spends here". Once I had a complaint from a customer that someone was playing loud rap music filled with F-words in the electronics dept. So it was my job to shut that down. I got there and the guy playing the CD is exactly what you'd think a gang-banger looks like. Eye patch, cane, tattoos, the whole bit. If he has a problem with me, my only defense is the walkie talkie I carried on which I can ask someone to call 911. I asked him, "Would you mind playing a different CD to test out the equipment? It's making other customers uncomfortable. I'll be glad to open one up for you if we don't have one open." (Wal-Mart didn't sell any CDs with F-words so that was safe). He said sorry and left. I didn't want him to leave if he really wanted to buy something but if he just wanted to make other people nervous it's better if he left. Now how would he have reacted if I had said "Take your G-D cd and get the F out of here". Probably not very well. So if the cop in the Mr. Brown situation really did tell him and his friend to get the F out of the street then I don't think that's a smart thing to do. But I didn't have a gun backing me up and I didn't have to deal with these minor "in your face" actions all day every day for years and years and years. (I was only a manager at the Wal-Mart for about a year and half - a high stress job so I changed professions completely). I really do feel for the police having to deal with people at their worst. I do understand putting on a certain attitude with certain people to keep yourself from getting killed. What would have happened if the police officer had said "I don't want you to get hit by a car - please get on the sidewalk" and then escalate only if necessary. I'm not saying this didn't happen. But if it did start out this way and it escalated anyway, what hope is there to have a peaceful society? Have you ever tried to drive at night in certain parts of the city when people prefer to be in the street? If you're not from a big city you probably don't know what that's like. If you hit one of these people by accident, you know what will happen.
