Why America SHOULD have been anxious long before Dallas bruh! “Empathy”

Annie Lennox, the Scottish singer, once said, “Humankind seems to have an enormous capacity for savagery, for brutality, for lack of empathy, for lack of compassion.” Daniel Goleman, the famous author and psychologist, gave it to us like this, “If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” Then Alice Miller, the Swiss psychologist, put it where the goats could get it when she spit, “Learning is a result of listening, which in turn leads to even better listening and attentiveness to the other person. In other words, to learn from the child, we must have empathy, and empathy grows as we learn.” 

Well playas…empathy has shown up today in America butt naked and forcin’ EVERYBODY to take a chill pill whether they wanted to or not. We started last week with two white police officers shootin’ and killin’ two African-American men in separate incidents that were completely unjustified. Then some idiot figured he was solvin’ our problem by shootin’ and killin’ 5 white policemen in Dallas. COMPLETE IDIOT!!! Then we had some fools literally losin’ their minds by shootin’ policemen in Tennessee, Georgia and Missouri. Now we’re all standin’ around lookin’ at each other tryin’ to figure out how we got here. 

Let’s keep it real or all the way 100, whichever comes 1st! What blows my mind is that all of the headlines this mornin’ keep readin’ “America is Anxious” or that “America is on Edge!” The sad part about this anxiety is that America is feelin’ this way today because it didn’t become real until people that looked like the majority of America were unfortunately and tragically affected. 

It’s sad that no one cares about the death of a human being until that human being looks just like them. ALL deaths at the hands of someone else SHOULD matter to ALL of us whenever it happens. Black men and women have been dyin’ at the hands of police for years and even decades in this country and the mainstream media as well as the vast majority of Americans move on because those people don’t live in their neighborhoods, go to their churches or attend their kid’s schools. So they see it but they can’t identify with it so it’s not important to them. 

Unfortunately, the vast majority of America is rural. If you travel as much as I do around this country you would see that most people in America don’t live in urban areas and most people don’t have relationships with black people. Not because they don’t want to, it’s because they’ve never had to because of where they grew up and chose to live. So therefore, when things happen in the black community they can’t identify with it nor does it become real to them. Why? Because they don’t know anybody that lives in those communities. 

If folks that were gay, lesbian or transgender were bein’ killed by white police at the same rate as black folks. EVERYBODY would identify with them because everybody knows and has a real relationship with someone that’s gay, lesbian or transgender. Why? Because bein’ gay, lesbian or transgender isn’t confined to race. Then all of this foolishness would have become real to them long ago.  

America is no more anxious today than black men were two days, two years or 200 years ago. Welcome to my world bruh! America wasn’t anxious when black folks were enslaved for more than 350 years! America wasn’t anxious when black families were terrorized by the Ku Klux Klan for decades! America wasn’t anxious when black men were lynched, tarred and feathered for sport! America wasn’t anxious when Emmit Till was beaten for simply lookin’ at a white woman and his body was unrecognizable to his OWN mother! America wasn’t anxious when duns like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were both assassinated! America wasn’t anxious when Treyvon Martin, Eric Gardner, Sandra Bland, Alton Stirling, Philando Castile and hundreds others were killed for no justifiable reason! America only became anxious when 5 white police officers were killed in Dallas and that’s a shame. 

It shouldn’t take the deaths of people that only look like you for you to become anxious! We’re ALL God’s children, we ALL bleed red, we ALL have families and friends that love us and WE’RE ALL AMERICANS regardless of our color, race or religion. If one of us is killed unjustly we ALL should be anxious to correct the systemic problems that create an environment for this foolishness to exist. I’m just sayin’! Stop me when I start lyin’!