[BRC-NEWS] Black Americans Shudder When 'The Force' Is On The Loose Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit source - David Richardson via BRC-News http://boston.com/globe/columns/jackson/ The Boston Globe 06/02/1999 No wonder black Americans shudder when 'The Force' is on the loose By Derrick Z. Jackson, Globe Columnist For white Americans, the ''Phantom Menace'' is a long time ago, in a galaxy too far away to personally experience the Force. On the big screen, the Force ''surrounds us and penetrates us'' to ''bind the galaxy together.'' African- Americans have a far less sanguine interpretation of this, given how many times we have been surrounded, penetrated, and blown apart by the Force. No white women need fear the Force like Tyisha Miller. Miller was the 19-year-old woman with a flat tire who was awakened by impatient members of the Riverside, Calif., police force. Miller had called her family to inform them of the flat. She went back to her car to wait. She decided to take a nap, with doors locked, windows rolled up, and her gun on her lap. When relatives arrived, they could not wake her. They feared she was in medical distress. They called 911. The police came. They could not wake her. But seeing the gun, they went from being the advance guard for paramedics to imperial stormtoopers. The relatives who watched said the police shouted, ''Throw out the [expletive] gun or we will kill your black ass.'' The officers said she reached for the gun. They pumped 23 bullets into the car, hitting her 12 times, including four times to the head. The Force killed her in what was dismissed as ''Episode I: The Mistake.'' The local DA said it was ''a mistake in their judgment,'' but ''there is no evidence whatsoever that these four officers killed Tyisha Miller because of her race.'' No white immigrant need fear the Force like Amadou Diallo, the unarmed West African immigrant who had 41 bullets fired at him in at his apartment by four impulsive members of the New York City police force. Nineteen bullets hit Diallo. The Force killed him. The officers are on trial for second-degree murder, but they were cheered at a public rally by their white colleagues. To them it was ''Episode II: Another Mistake.'' A colleague said, ''I don't think any police officer should be treated like a criminal if he makes a mistake. A mistake isn't a crime.'' No white businessman need fear the Force like Jonny Gammage, the African-American businessman and cousin of former Pittsburgh Steelers player Ray Seals. Gammage was stopped in his luxury car in suburban Pittsburgh and assaulted by police officers. The officers threw him down to the ground, where he died of asphyxia. Gammage's family won $1.5 million in civil damages, but the Force was cleared of any crime in ''Episode III: The Accident.'' The Brentwood police chief said, ''It was an accidental death.'' The episodes of mistakes and accidents have piled up in the 1990s to a point were no one can seriously debate whether racism remains a potent force, the force that determines who gets Officer Yoda and who gets their throat crushed by Lord Vader. Elderly white ministers are not literally scared to death by the police as was Accelyne Williams in a botched Boston raid. White people are not being dragged out of nightclubs and sodomized by the police as Abner Louima was in New York. Unarmed white thieves and knuckleheads are not being fatally shot or wounded in the back like the 14-year-old black boy this spring in Hartford and the 16-year-old boy last week in New York. In Boston, the signs point to another big ''mistake'' coming. Since the Williams death, African-American cop Michael Cox was beaten by white cops who thought he was a suspect. An African-American officer found a noose, the American symbol for lynching, on his motorcycle. Last week in a foreboding irony, the Rev. Filipe Teixeira, of Cape Verdean descent and known for his antiviolence work, was handcuffed, called ethnic slurs, and jailed. When he is in his clerical robes, Teixeira, is an angel to police for his antiviolence work. Without his robes, he is just another dark devil who is often stopped and questioned for no reason. His arrest came as Police Commissioner Paul Evans and Mayor Thomas Menino dismissed a call from the Rev. Eugene Rivers for an outside commission to study racial tensions on the force. ''Whatever the outside look can bring, we've done it.'' Evans said. Menino meekly said that he was satisfied with Evans's new internal Committee on Fairness and Professionalism. As evidenced by the national search for answers in the shootings in predominantly white schools, we of course would have a more serious reaction if cops were suddenly to start firing 23 bullets into the cars of 19-year-old blondes, 41 bullets at unarmed Irish immigrants, or smothering cousins of Carl Yastrzemski. After the city settled with the widow of Accelyne Williams for $1 million, Evans said, ''Out of every tragedy, some good comes. Hopefully, we will have a better department.'' Three years later, with many episodes of ''The Mistake'' playing nationally and with plenty of trouble at his feet, Evans is in danger of being seduced by the bad side. He wants us to believe that black folks are whining about a phantom menace. Meanwhile, black folks, even in his own department, wince and duck whenever someone says, ''May the Force be with you.'' Derrick Z. Jackson is a Globe columnist. (c) Copyright 1999 Globe Newspaper Company -------------------------------------------------------------------------- BRC-NEWS: Black Radical Congress - General News/Alerts/Announcements Subscribe: Email "subscribe brc-news" to ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytrc-06.06.99-21:52:49-2507