Boo Too

The Gantt Report

Boo Too

By Lucius Gantt

      Every time a Black woman is body slammed on a concrete pavement, every time a Black child is gunned down in a park or on a playground and every time a Black man, a Hispanic or an immigrant from a Muslim country is murdered for holding a cell phone, killed for wearing a hoodie in a rain storm, or choked to death for selling loose cigarettes, the reason for the deadly actions are based on so-called fear!

You can turn on your television set any day of the week and see pale skinned people arguing with policemen, threatening law enforcers, talking back to cops, disrespecting officers, throwing punches at policemen and resisting arrest but seldom, if ever, are certain citizens shot down in cold blood!

Don’t act like you’ve never seen “Cops”, “Cheaters” or other reality shows.

People are afraid of terrorists but they don’t pull out guns and shoot everyone with a long beard and a head wrap. Some people are scared of gang bangers but don’t seek to beat down everyone that has gold teeth, a doo rag and a blood red or crip blue outfit. No one wants to face serial killers or rapists but looking like Charles Manson or Ted Bundy is no good reason to get tazed, maced, or pepper sprayed!

I believe poor, exploited, oppressed, neglected, denied, abused, and victimized residents of disadvantaged urban and rural neighborhoods and communities should be more afraid than anybody in America!

Poor people should be afraid of trying to live on fixed incomes when costs of basic necessities are going through the roof. People with no real access to capital should be afraid of being turned down for a mortgage loan, a business loan, or a car loan by a bank or financial institution that will redline an impoverished neighborhood and green light million dollar signature loans requested by pale customers who recently filed and declared bankruptcies.

Poor people of all races, creeds, religious, beliefs, and national origins should be afraid to face false criminal charges, legal allegations and exaggerated sentences just because they can’t afford to retain and hire a high priced lawyer or law firm.

You’ve heard the phrase “innocent until proven broke”!

If taxes paid by poor people go towards paying the salaries of the people that have a badge and a license to shoot anybody that looks and acts different from they do, that is a problem.

If every unarmed man or woman on a highway, a roadway, a dirt road or a city street should be looked at as “scary” to a person with a night stick, an automatic handgun, a shotgun and a lot of backup, that’s a problem too.

If everybody that lives in a barrio, a ghetto, a housing project, a trap house, a whore house or a gambling house causes law enforcers that live in gated communities in the suburbs to fear for their lives, Black people should be more afraid than anybody in America because, in the words of the late Tupac Shakur, “We not only fear the same kinds of people you fear, we live right next door to them.”

If you are poor, Black, Hispanic, Muslim or immigrant, the sandman, the candy man and the boogie man may have a badge!

Law enforcers are equally scary. They can say “boo” too!