My grandson, Kameron is 3 years old. He is a bright, energetic and inquisitive boy. Unfortunately, his entry into this world coincided with the rise of a racist/white supremacist shyster reality television personality to the highest office and the most powerful position in the world. In that way, Kam’s timing was really fucked up. But like most 3 year olds, he lives a sheltered existence with narrowly circumscribed responsibilities.

Kam has one job… developing his intellect and ability to think critically. He is well on his way on both counts, he is eagerly learning to count and read… His quest for knowledge is quite voracious… My young beautiful, Black grandson thinks.

A decade from now he will be in a middle school classroom and the subject of riots spreading like wildfire across America’s urban centers will inevitably become a topic of discussion.

As sure as the sun will rise tomorrow, racist/white supremacist police officers will continue to murder unarmed Black men.

At some point, I am quite sure, Kam will ask, “Pop-Pop why did the Blacks loot and destroy their own community?”

Fortunately, I will be in position to explicate some carefully considered ideas to my grandson. He won’t have to search beyond his grandfather and our personal library for thoughtful explanations of behavioral problems that continue to baffle most Black observers.

When he is around 13, I will have to share and explain Neely Fuller’s often cited quote with Kam:

“If you don’t understand white supremacy/racism, everything that you do understand will only confuse you..”

I fully expect that Kam, like most Black people, will struggle mightily with this conceptualization.

His initial response will likely be something along the lines of “Pop-Pop… I’m talking about Black people that participate in the looting, burning and destruction of businesses in their own community. That hurts them as much as, if not more than, it hurts white people.”

Kam will be correct. Their behavior is NOT rational.

Eldery Blacks, the grandparents and great-grandparents of many of the looters and arsonists are disproportionately harmed when community stores, markets and pharmacies are destroyed. The actions of the looters make zero sense when assessed from what is commonly referred to as a rational perspective.

It will be my responsibility to help this highly intelligent young boy understand that while the destructive pattern of rioting, looting and destructive behaviors exhibited by Blacks in the mid-1960’s, the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s and now 2020 is not ‘rational,’ it can be considered functionally ‘sensible.’ Although these behaviors take certain forms we usually consider the height of irrationality, they are sensible because they are well-adapted to the exigent circumstances that accompany the racism/white supremacy at the core of the American creed.

It will be challenging, but I know my grandson will grasp the dynamics at play.

For most observers, both academic and journalistic, behavior is best explained utilizing a cost-benefit, reward-punishment approach. The key thing I will want Kam to understand is that the persistence and all-encompassing nature of racism/white supremacy severely limits the explanatory power of the rational choice approach when it is applied to frustrated Black behavior.

Son… racism/white supremacy ain’t rational… and, racism/white supremacy ain’t goin’ nowhere anytime soon.

Police, as you are told over and over in school and through the mainstream media, are there to protect and serve the community as a whole. The narrative is familiar… Citizens experience a threat to their person or property, they call 911 and the police respond. The responding officers take the report and make very effort to solve the crime. The victims are treated in a respectful and professional manner by law enforcement officials. More often than not, the criminal matter is resolved, the culprit is identified, the prosecuting attorney indicts and the justice system holds the criminal to account for his actions. After such encounters with police, every attempt is made to full fully respect the rights of the victims and alleged perpetrators. “Americans are innocent until proven guilty,” that’s what they teach you in school, right?  In this way, citizens develop a preference for solving matters within the system in full accordance with the law. This is typical “goal-motivated” behavior. This is what my grandson will come to expect, given the manner in which the educational system and mainstream media deal with crime. This is the world familiar to white Americans, where correct choices lead to benefit and where wrong choice are costly.

That’s NOT the world in which Black America lives.

What happens if justice is made random and unpredictable for Black people? What happens is exactly what “rationalists” would expect; after some trial and error, Blacks sensibly refuse to call upon the police; one might say that rewards being random, they reduce costs to zero.

But what if Blacks are forced into encounters with the police. Real life, after all, frequently forces Blacks into police entanglements when avoidance may be their preference. Suppose you are Amadou Diallo, an unarmed 23 year old Black man, standing in front of your front door and four white plain-clothed officers—Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss claim to have mistaken you for a rape suspect from one year earlier and fire a combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which strike and instantly kill you, outside your apartment in the Bronx.

Suppose you are Abner Louima, a 31 year old Black man and you get into a fight in a Brooklyn nightclub. You are arrested and on the ride to the station, racist/white supremacist cops beat you with their fists, nightsticks, and hand-held police radios. On arriving at the station house, they kick you in the testicles, and while Louima’s hands were cuffed behind his back, a sadistic cop squeezed your testicles and then sexually assaulted you with a broken broomstick. After sodomizing you, the racist cop walked through the precinct holding the bloody, shit-stained instrument in his hand, bragging that he “took a man down tonight.”

Suppose you are Rodney King and you try to outrun the police in a high speed chase. Once the police stop you, they use their nightsticks to batter your joints, wrists, elbows, knees and ankles. Officers attempted numerous baton strikes on you, resulting in some misses but 33 blows hitting you, plus seven kicks. You was taken to the hospital after your arrest, where you are found to have suffered a fractured facial bones, a broken right ankle, and multiple bruises and lacerations. In a negligence claim filed with the city, you alleged you suffered “11 skull fractures, permanent brain damage, broken [bones and teeth], kidney failure [and] emotional and physical trauma”.

Suppose you are Walter Scott and you end up shot five times in the back after a traffic stop for a broken brake light. Suppose you are Philando Castile and you inform a cop during a traffic stop that you have a licensed gun in the car and he shoots you five times at close range. Suppose you are John Crawford III and you pull a BB gun off the shelf in a Wal-Mart and a cop shoots you twice killing you instantly inside the store.

Suppose you are George Floyd and a store clerk alleges that you used a counterfeit $20 bill to purchase a pack of cigarettes. Seventeen minutes after the police arrive on the scene, you are dead. Three officers have you pinned on the ground, in the street next to a car. One of the officers is using his knee and body weight to literally crush your throat.

Existing within an explicitly racist/white supremacist society, Black men in America have always faced an insoluble problem. Frustration is inevitable when faced by problems that are impossible to solve. Black men want to live but racist/white supremacist police repeatedly kill them and, for the most part, are not held accountable by the justice system in America.

What happens, essentially, is that frustrated ‘raging’ behaviors become stereotyped. Some Black males loot. Others destroy property proximate to their communities. These behaviors are consistent across geographic regions and over time. These stereotypical behaviors persist whether or not their friends, families and neighbors will be negatively impacted. Most striking is the fact that the stereotyped behavior persists even when sanctioned and approved protest opportunities are available. Frustrated Black males are aware of the locations and times of sanctioned protests, but they pillage and loot anyway.
This is evidence of the extent to which, these patterns of frustrated behaviors have become fixated.

Virtually every cop killing of an unarmed Black man is accompanied by raging behaviors among young Black males. So much so, that by now it should be evident that a percentage young Black frustrated males no longer inhabits a world of choice at all.

Kam, after centuries of existing within a racist/white supremacist society, a segment of the Black community that has a developed an infrequent orientation to the future… Plainly stated… They don’t “give a fuck!” They have developed a level of resignation and fatalism and tolerance for behaviors other regard as pathological. Kam, people will continue to ask “what’s wrong them?”

Racist/white supremacist law enforcement officials will continue to murder unarmed Blacks. A segment of Black men, unable to reasonably expect the criminal justice system in America to hold racist cops accountable, will engage in fixated behaviors that severely damage their immediate surroundings.

“Pop-Pop… What can be done about it?”

Kam… As long as racism/white supremacy exists, anything done that is not intended to eliminate racism/white supremacy and to help produce justice, is a waste of time and energy… Racism/white supremacy is a helluva drug son…

Don’t trust cops!

America… led by President Donald Trump is regressing toward it’s historical norm… For 350 or so years, racism/white supremacy was the unquestioned guiding principle of life in what came to be known as the United States of America. President Trump, Steven Miller and Steve Bannon are ‘traditional’ Americans. Like the Founding Fathers, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson, Richard Nixon, Strom Thurmond and legions of other “great” Americans, they are ardent racist/white supremacists.

This is their time… The recent lynchings Ahmaud Arbery and George Lloyd are merely the latest episodes in a horrific saga stretching back four centuries.

The last half century has been the aberration. Indeed, for many supporters of President Trump, the clock has run out on the Great Society experiment focusing on inclusion, power-sharing and human decency.

FUCK THAT, they say… These racist/white supremacists want to MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

They want to ensure the 400 year legacy of unquestioned white dominance in all things political, economic, social and educational continues even after white people become a numerical minority in 10-20 years.

These racist/white supremacists are NOT crazy, they are NOT misguided… In fact, they have a much better understanding of the dynamics of American history than the 55-60% with opposing views. They understand REAL American history… The rest of us have consumed a fictitious fairy tale.

Driving their politics is a deep seated fear that minorities will do unto them as they have done unto minorities.

Americans in general… Especially Black Americans, have been woefully mis-educated. Thus, they find themselves shocked and dumbfounded when forced to confront the reality that the United States of America, like South Africa throughout most of the 20th century, is a profoundly racist/white supremacist nation-state.

Lately, Black Americans are being treated like puppies being potty trained… White America is rubbing our faces in the big pile of steaming shit that is racism/white supremacy. It’s seeping into our mouths, it’s in our eyes, it’s up our noses… It burns… It hurts…

Black Americans are literally mad because the racist/white supremacist dog is barking… Yooo… That’s what dogs do… ‘Good’ white Americans, on the other hand, remind of fish being told they are wet… Huh?

This mis-education is intentional and begins the moment American children exit their mother’s womb. It is reinforced from the moment they step foot in an American school building. With determination and skill, patently false and historically inaccurate narratives are deeply ingrained. Americans, from pre-school through Ph.D programs are taught that the United States is a “liberal democratic’ society shaped most by free and equal conditions and the Enlightenment ideals cherished by white colonists fleeing Europe and the American Founding Fathers. History, as it is written for public consumption and taught in public schools, tells us the United States of America was born a liberal society governed by the popular will.

It’s a lie. A dirty MUTHAFUCKIN’ lie!

American history is the story of the struggle between racist/white supremacist males and the rest of us. The history of American societal development has been PRIMARILY defined by the ideologies and practices that defined the relationships of the dominant white male minority with subordinate groups, and the relationships of these groups with each other. The placement of anything other than racist/white supremacist male dominance at the center of analysis is distraction at best, obfuscation at worst. The democracy founded by the founding fathers and endlessly lauded in textbooks was nothing more than a narrowly circumscribed set of social relationships among wealthy land and slave owning white male elites entrenched on mountains racism/white supremacy. The overwhelming majority of people in America have caught hell at the hands of racist/white supremacist American males for more than 400 years.
The MAGA crowd knows this and longs for a return to this American societal normalcy.

Since their arrival on August 1619, Blacks in America have worked to erode those mountains of racism/white supremacy over time. However, on many occasions, the mountains have proven to be volcanoes of evil, hate and rage. Presently, we are witnessing yet another volcanic eruption of racism/white supremacy as the tanning of America pushes these “traditional” American to their limits.

The emergence of an intensely racist/white supremacist movement is entirely understandable… These folks have had it their way for 87.5% (350 out of 400 years) of American history.

“Da fuck you mean? I can’t kill a nigger?”

What’s unfathomable is the level of support for the racist/white supremacist movement that has emerged among Black Males. To the 13-15% of Black males supporting President Donald Trump, I offer the prophetic words of Sociologist Neely Fuller:

“If you do not understand White supremacy – what it is, and how it works, everything else that you understand will only confuse you.”

Dr. Carson… Brother Kanye… Brother Jim Brown… Sister Diamond and Sister Silk… Y’all are fully embracing the re-emergence good old-fashioned American racist/white supremacy… We see you…

You know what? Fuck y’all…

Four hundred years ago, racist/white supremacist Americans chose sides. John Rolfe, Secretary and Recorder of the Virginia Colony wrote the following entry “about the last of August, there came to Virginia a Dutchman of Warre that sold us twenty Negers.” Thus, a year and a half before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, twenty enslaved Blacks were high-jacked from a Spanish ship and sold into a life of bondage in what would become the United States of America.”

Dr. Carson… Brother Kanye… Brother Jim Brown… Sister Diamond and Sister Silk… Let there be no doubt, you are on the side of the Dutch slaver, John Rolfe and racist/white supremacist colonists. For four hundred years they have writing and enacting laws making it very clear that they don’t fuck with you…

The first “law” making reference to Blacks written in 1639.

“1639. Act X. All persons except Negros are to be provided with arms and ammunition or defined at the pleasure of the governor and council.”

Game… Blouses!

From the outset… Laws were written to uphold, sustain and strengthen brutally enforced the rigidly enforced racist/white supremacist social order.

Shit only got worse over time… By 1680, the superiority of whites in the emerging social order was explicitly written into law:

“1680. Act X. Whereas the frequent meetings of considerable numbers of Negro slave under pretense of feast and burials is judged of dangerous consequence [it] enacted that no Negro or slave may carry arms, such as any club, staff, gun, sword, or other weapon, nor go from his owner’s plantation without a certificate and then only on necessary occasions; the punishment twenty lashed on the bare back, well laid on. And further, if any Negro lift up his hand against any Christian he shall receive thirty lashes, and if he absent himself or lie out from his master’s service and resist lawful apprehension, he may be killed and this law shall be published every six months.”

Black Trump supporters… you are siding with the folk that wrote and enacted this shit… These people have historically sought to completely dehumanize your ancestors. How do you watch the life literally squeezed out of George Logan and not realize that racist/white supremacists remain committed to precluding Blacks from responding in a manner thought normal for human beings?

Candace Owens and Paris Dennard… Who raised ya?

Amy Cooper, the white damsel in imaginary distress, understands what you refuse to acknowledge. She played the game for keeps… That racist skank tried to bring the full force of the NYPD to bear on a brother trying to watch birds in Central Park. George Cooper, a Harvard educated bird watcher, had the audacity… the temerity… to ask the skank to comply with the posted leashing laws. For this, the skank sought to ruin Cooper. Why? Because, this former banking executive knows she lives in a racist/white supremacist nation and knows she could conceivably wreck Cooper’s life and permanently tarnish his reputation or perhaps even main or kill him with the lies pouring out her privileged white mouth. She knows… It has NEVER been criminal for a white man to have sexual relations with a Black woman, forcibly or consensual. However, racism/white supremacy has always sought to protect white women from the Black male penis.

Always been that way… Many want to make America Great Again along those lines…

In 1705, the Virginia General Assembly declared that a white woman indentured servant who had an illegitimate child by a Black or mulatto was fined fifteen pounds; if she was unable to pay the fine she was sold for five years at the expiration of her time of service. If the unwed white mother was a free white woman she was also subject to a fifteen pound fine or five years of service.”

The 1705 statute imposed a prison sentence of 6 months for “whatsover white man or woman” marrying a Black person. In 1848, the sentence was increased to 12 months. In 1932, the imprisonment was imposed on Blacks and whites and the sentence was increased to a maximum of five years.

I was 2 years old when interracial marriage were finally banned in the United States of America.

The vestiges of America’s long dominant racist/white supremacist factions have come together. They have lined up, in neat formation, behind President Trump. He has been strongly endorsed by the KKK, David Duke, Richard Spenser and virtually every contemporary far-right/wing alt-right organization in existence.

What the fuck are y’all Blacks doing over in that camp?

If Trump, Miller and Bannon are able to further exert their political will, we will inevitably witness the reemergence of America’s core value in American public policy.

Racist/white supremacists are enthralled with the Founding Fathers and the social order prevailing in colonial America. They long for a return to a time when publicly lynching Blacks was a spectator sport.

Colonial Virginia explicitly declared, “it shall be lawful for any person or persons whatsoever, to kill and destroy [runaway] slaves by such ways and means as he, she or they shall think fit, without accusation or impeachment of any crime for the same…”

These colonial laws formed the basis of the Virginia society from which George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison emerged. Hence, it makes sense that they were ardent racist/white supremacists and viewed Black as less than human and established a nation whose economy was based on the work of enslaved Blacks on armed labor camps.

It makes prefect sense that enslaved Blacks were afforded absolutely no rights under the Constitutional arrangement formed by these Founding Fathers.

It makes sense that 7 of the 9 justices on the United States Supreme Court determined that Blacks have no rights white people are bound to respect in 1857.

“We think… that [black people] are not included, and were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On the contrary, they were at that time [of America’s founding] considered as a subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power and the Government might choose to grant them.”

It makes sense that racist/white Americans installed, entrenched and rigidly enforced, through terroristic means, an Apartheid-like Jim Crow social order throughout much of America from 1877 to the mid 1960s.

It’s the American way. Racism/white supremacy is at the core of the American creed.

Donald Trump stuck a syringe full of racist/white supremacist hate and mainlined it into veins of America’s body politic. After that initial hit, those addicted to hate have been riding around in pick up trucks, SUVs and police cars in search of next their fix.

Look at the face of the racist/white supremacist cop as he choked the life out of an unarmed, handcuffed Black man being restrained face down by a total of three (3) police officers.

This is America!

It make sense that Donald Trump would harangue President Obama about his place of birth and nationality.

It makes sense that President Trump would restrict immigration from Black and Brown countries.

It makes sense that President Trump would attempt to suppress the vote in Black and Brown communities.

What doesn’t make sense is 13-15% of Black males and the few women like Diamond, Silk and Candace Owens that support the contemporary racism/white supremacy embodied in the Trump movement…

The only plausible explanation is what Carter G. Woodson identified in 1993 as The Mis-Education of the Negro:

“The so-called modern education, with all its defects, however, does others so much more good than it does theNegro, because it has been worked out in conformity to the needs of those who have enslaved and oppressed weaker peoples.”