Gun Violence in America Portrayed in Childish Gambino's - This Is America Music Video
Sometimes to unwind, Ini and I like to watch Saturday Night Live on YouTube. After a few "off years", the cast of characters this season is fantastic. Last weekend Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino, a hip-hop artist was the host. I hadn't heard of him so I googled his name and was brought to one of his latest music videos, This Is America.
It was quite a way to end the evening. We were brought into the video with some upbeat even carnival music and then abruptly brought into an image of Glover himself shooting the man who was previously playing music.
The video has gotten a lot press for its symbolism (click here and here to read and watch more) around the Jim Crow costume choice and facial expressions, American Ignorance, Appropriation of Black Culture & Music while black people are being killed by police, the role cell phones have in making Black Violence go viral, and more.
It's really an incredible video and I would recommend watching it.
With more and more news around Police Shootings of Black people, this video comes at the perfect time.
If you're out of touch:
“Most police shootings are found to be legally justified,” said Philip M. Stinson, an associate professor of criminal justice at Bowling Green State University and a former police officer who tracks police crime.
As Glover highlights:
"This is America (skrrt, skrrt, woo)
Don't catch you slippin' now (ayy)
Look at how I'm livin' now
Police be trippin' now (woo)
Yeah, this is America (woo, ayy)
Guns in my area (word, my area)
I got the strap (ayy, ayy)
I gotta carry 'em"
Gun violence in America has escalated to epidemic proportions. With school shootings and gunmen shooting up churches, movie theaters, music venues and on the streets, it's something we must face as a culture and tighten down on gun laws, especially where youth buying guns are concerned and those with records and mental illness.
It's a complex debate, but the bottom line is that being black in America puts you at a higher risk of being shot by a police officer.
As America consumes music & art made by black people, we need to take a look at this and reflect on the similarities between the hundreds of years when black people were enslaved and entertaining their slave owners and now. This is what the video brought up for me at least.
As the Atlantic wrote:
America is a place where black people are chased and gunned down, and it is a place where black people dance and sing to distract—themselves, maybe, but also the country at large—from that carnage.
What are your thoughts?
banner by @radicalunicorn
I remember seeing an episode of Looney Tunes that marked me, watching it after being much older. In the episode, Porky Pig was walking around getting his way every time he waved his rifle around (gun violence). He went to Arabia to get oil from the evil Ali Baba (middle-east bad guy thing). I remember thinking it was pushing it a bit. Then I went back and watched some other episode, where I realised the black duck (I forget him name) represented black people and Porky Pig, represented the typical white person, and Porky Pig kept picking on and shooting the black duck, his head was smoking, or his ass was on fire, and all sorts of things. The symbolic subliminals are crazy and it teaches young kids to think that pointing guns around to get your way is fine, that shooting people is fine.
I beleive that gun violence and prejudice against certain types of people of different ethnicities than plain white began before even Looney Tunes, but it's clear to me that even back then, in the 60's, they were programming people to think this way.
Something needs to be done and it needs to stop. That's why we are doing everything we can to educate my stepkids and to ensure they don't see people of colour as lesser than us, but as equals. We are all beings of energy. Energy has no colour. Energy simply is. And everyone deserves to be treated with respect and we all need to respect Natural Law. That's the way I see it.
wow. such a powerful symbolism in that show. thanks so much for your comment. i didn't know that, but i grew up watching that show as many of us did and i think it contributes to the pervasive way these things seep into all of our consciousnesses until we go about making them clear and bringing them to light!
agree completely with your last paragraph and also realize we have a long way to go until people see it that way. person by person <3 thanks for the efforts to raise your kids seeing everyone this way though!
Thanks. I figure it's easier to educate and make a change in the world starting with the self and those close to me, than trying to change the entire world. And hopefully it will have a positive snowball effect.
How much time have you spent digesting the counter arguments to this narrative?
not much. why do you have some interesting counter-argument news?
It's concerning to me that you would write an article expressing certainty about these things without understanding the other side of the argument.
If you're interested beginning an exploration here is a good place to start:
I am happy to provide more content on request. There's a lot.
first off i wasn't sure what you were referring to in saying the "counter arguments" to the narrative as i touched on quite a few things in this post -- were you referring to violence from cops on black people, gun violence, or something else? now i understand a bit more where you're coming from after watching this video.
as far as systemic racism is concerned, this is a topic that i've studied for many years, and i think this man's arguments are problematic on a number of levels because he's taking these specific cop violence on black people out of context to prove that system racism doesn't exist. there are generations of systemic violence against black people and the tearing down of black communities which black on black crime is a result of- so to share that statistic as "proof" that systemic racism is no longer a factor i find completely misleading. also, black men make up a smaller % of the population so the fact that less of them have been killed is a misleading statistic.
also, some black people have been shot for not resisting, but just for reaching for a phone or sitting in the car. i'm not sure what this man's purpose is in saying "all black men are resisting police and that's why they're shot; they should just take a more chill approach" as it's entirely misleading. in philandro castile's case, he was informing a police officer he had a gun (and wasn't using it on the cop) when within 1 minute he was shot dead- his child and girlfriend were in the car. resisting arrest is also not grounds for being shot and plenty of white people give resistance to police officers and aren't shot dead on the spot (and not charged for manslaughter).
in fact, white people can resist arrest in much more severe manners and cops just deal with it - as shown here. this is white privilege at its finest.
i understand it can be a scary situation for the cop as well and it's a very complex argument, but i think to make the conclusion that systemic racism against black people isn't real because of those stats that man shares in the video is simply misinformed.
this graph alone shows how impossible it would be to completely have equality with black people in america.
The key takeaway from the video I linked for me is that blacks commit more crime than other races especially against their own race, which is the explanation for the statistics you see in the final graph of your post.
As for claiming that slavery is the cause of that issue, if this were true then the situation should be getting better since the 60s as we get farther away from the era of slavery, but it's getting worse. It's actually correlated strongly with the increase of single motherhood in the black community as a result of welfare.
This video explains the statistics on the drastically poorer outcomes for children coming out of single mother homes, including crime, mental health and sexual abuse:
You are relying heavily on hand picked anecdotal stories of encounters with police in your latest response and not addressing the key points Larry made. He was simply demonstrating that these individual publicized incidents are not as cut and dry and the media is portraying. He's not saying bad situations with cops never occur. In fact, the likelihood they occur will be higher in groups which commit more crime than the average population, and it's a mistake to assume its purely the white cop's fault. You may want to consider the possibility that making that assumption is itself racist.
I understand and appreciate your concern, I used to agree with you completely, but we can't solve problems if we ignore the true causes.
certainly nothing is as cut and dry as the media makes it and whether or not the below statement is true is not that important to me as i see systemic racism as a very big thing in our culture.
i really don't want to keep going back and forth using this medium. irregardless of the correct stats, i believe from this statement that you obviously care:
...as do i... and would prefer just to leave it at that-- we see things from differing angles (and i don't want to keep debating and getting further into various points).
my article was not only about police violence against black people, but also about the consumption of black entertainment and even of violence relating to black people (whether against or caused by them) while the world goes on watching and the problems aren't being solved...
Is there a medium where you would discuss it, or are you really saying you prefer to agree to disagree?
In person or even private message
The "mental illness" part of the gun debate is off: people suffering from mental illness are far more likely to be victims than perpetrators (from the police, too: people call when someone is in crisis expecting the person will be taken to the hospital, and often they end up dead). But of course when it's a white guy shooter, they always act like he's a "lone wolf" and "mentally ill." A far more reliable metric would be to restrict gun ownership from people with histories of domestic violence.
But of course, then half the cops couldn't be cops anymore, so that'll never happen!
great points phoenixwren! when a white guy shoots up a place they say he is mentally ill- anyone else is a terrorist or a thug.
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