Opinion : Say their names: Say them all, until all lives matter

At a rally last week, where a famous Hollywood personality used the word “murderer” to describe police killings of black people, that man read the names of 250 or so black men and women  who have been killed by police this year.

“Say their names” was a highlight of the “Black Lives Matter/Rise Up October” rally in NYC.

The organizers said the names of many people who died in confrontations with police, with the implication that each of these was an innocent victim, on his way to church, hands raised praising God, only lowering his arms down to reach out to give a dollar or pull some lost soul from the gutter, when a cop came along and shot him in the back.

There’s even a song about them: “Hell You Talmbout” (An abbreviation of the phrase which means “What in the (expletive deleted) are you talking about?”) by Janelle Monae.

“Say their names, oh won’t you say their names,” she sings.

Ok, let’s say them.

One of those names Janelle Monae mentions is that of Jerame Reid, another “unarmed black man” who was either “murdered or wronged by police.”

I have just spent the last hour reading the report of the death of Jerame Reid, and watching the dash cam video.

“Officers 1 and 2 recognized the passenger, Jerame Reid. Officer 1 had arrested Mr. Reid for resisting arrest on August 3, 2014. Both officers knew, based upon that arrest of Mr. Reid by Officer 1 and the checking of his criminal history record at that time an additional fact: Mr. Reid had been convicted of shooting at law enforcement officers,” according to the report.

On the video, Officer No. 2 (a black cop named Braheme Days) repeatedly tells Reid not to reach for the gun. The officer removes the gun and Reid exits the vehicle in a threatening manner. The driver, meanwhile, places his hands outside the car.

Reid gets shot to death. The driver, who obeyed orders and held his hands out the car window, did not get shot, as Reid did.

Janelle Monae wanted me to “say his name.”

Apparently, she was less interested in having me recite the facts of Reid’s death, or the way he earned a reputation as someone who shoots at law enforcement officers.

Another name that was said during last week’s rally was that of Cinque Dhaspora, who first threw a hammer at an officer, then stabbed him before being shot to death.

Say their names.

Ok, let’s say some names – some names of unarmed black people who were NOT mentioned in this NYC protest.

Angel Hooper, 6, Kansas City. She was shot to death in crossfire between black gang members in convenience store parking lot, where she had gone with her family to get some chewing gum.

Juliette Cleveland-Davis, 46, St. Louis. The grandmother died trying to protect her three young grandchildren from crossfire between black shooters. A 20-year-old black man was arrested for the murder.

Those two unarmed black females died within weeks of the Micheal Brown protests in Ferguson, Mo. Not once did anyone protesting there mention Angel or Juliette – or the race of their killers.

Darren Foggey, 16, Chicago. This unarmed black youth was watching TV in his room with friends when he was shot by a black teenager.

Another unarmed black youth was shot because he was suspected of relaying signals to a rival gang. Yeah. The suspect in this murder is also a young black man.

I could go on and on. Of the first 500 murder victims in the Chicago Sun Times/Homicide Watch Page, the overwhelming number of both victims and suspects are black. Exactly 25 of the 500 are white. Look it up yourself; the link to this data base is among those at the bottom of this column.

Yeah, there is unfair racial profiling in some parts of the U.S. I have written about it. Famous black men – from entertainers to basketball stars – have told stories of ridiculous “Driving While Black” incidents.

“I was so scared that I thought I had stolen my car,” says comedian Chris Rock.

Locally, my black brother-in-law (He is Haitian, not African American, although some white morons have yelled at him to go back to Africa) has been stopped way more often than his wife’s white family members, even though he drives his car like a golf cart and his sister in-law (i.e., Mrs. Close) drives like A.J. Foyt on meth.

And yes, there have been way too many incidents of racism for years, in many parts of the U.S. Any discussion of black crime has to include this horrible part of American culture and history.

However: Experience has taught even influential black men to accept racial profiling as a defense mechanism; these black men fear black men.

“If I’m walking down a street in Center City Philadelphia at two in the morning and I hear some footsteps behind me and I turn around and there are a couple of young white dudes behind me, I am probably not going to get very uptight. I’m probably not going to have the same reaction if I turn around and there is the proverbial Black urban youth behind me. Now if I am going to have this reaction—and I’m a Black male who has studied Marshal Arts for twenty some odd years and can defend myself—I can’t help but think that the average white judge in the situation will have a reaction that is ten times more intense,” said Judge Theodore A. McKee, U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

You may remember this quote:

“There is nothing more painful for me at this stage in my life than to walk down the street and hear footsteps and start to think about robbery and then look around and see it’s somebody white and feel relieved.” -- Reverend Jesse Jackson.

Most of us in 98-percent-white Vinton have never really had to deal with black and white race issues. We have no real understanding of inner city families, and how that lifestyle leads to crime. And overall, dealing with virtually nobody from a different race or culture limits our ability to understand others.

And anyone who has seen our Vinton Today police stories knows that 99 percent of our criminals, from mailbox vandals to murderers, are white. It’s not about the color of skin God gave you; it’s about the choices you make and the people you make your friends.

But still, with all we need to learn, we can clearly see that black lives clearly do not matter nearly enough to way too many people in the "Black Lives Matter" movement. Their deafeningly-silent response to the deaths of the black people named above is clear evidence of that.

And now, the “lives matter” debate has hit way too close to home. A black man – a violent career criminal who has already killed one person – was back on the streets last week, when he repeatedly shot an officer. That policeman, whose daughters live in Iowa, died today.

Say his name: Albuquerque Police Officer Daniel Scott Webster.

Say it at every “Black Lives Matter” rally.

Say it every day until every police officer – and every black civil rights leader – feels less threatened when he encounters a young black man.

For more background about topics mentioned above, click on these links:

Homicide Watch Chicago

Prosecutor's report/dash cam video of Jerame Reid shooting

The Counted, a database by the Guardian newspaper of every person who died at the hands of police in 2015, with links to media stories about them.