Peace of Mind: A Social Issue Blog

Like it or not, even with reform, the police are not going anywhere. While I do think reform needs to be on a Federal level. There is also work that needs to be done at the local and city level as well in conjunction with that reform. Each community is different, faces a variety of distance challenges and so it requires a different lens from place to place. This is not an attack on police officers. Of course there are the ones who do their job with integrity and uphold the law and citizens they swore to protect. But we are not talking about them. We are talking about the other officers. The ones who use muscle memory as an excuse to shoot someone, the ones who show up and start shooting and asking questions later, the ones who profile. On the topic of reform and integration police need to be properly integrated into the community that they serve. If I sat here long enough, I could think of a laundry list of things, but at the most basic and human level of things, reform needs to inc...

Today’s topic starts with another inappropriate apology. We all know the present crisis of contaminated water and lead poisoning among Flint residents. But let’s peel back the onion a bit here. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder   gave a   State of the State address   Tuesday night, following remarks he made a day earlier on how he's made mistakes in handling the   Flint, Mich., water crisis. "I'm sorry and I will fix it," Snyder said near the opening of his speech, directly addressing the residents of Flint. "Government failed you at the federal, state and local level." And…pause. First of all a mistake is an understatement. Secondly, it was local officials who made the decision to change the water source so why add higher government into the mix as far as failures? By his own admittance, he never called a state of emergency to ask for Federal help. This issue really came to a head and received national attention from local residents speaking out, fili...

I had to post pone my original blog post to address black love. What is black love? Well I know what I would like it to be. It deeply saddens me to see people like Raven Symone, Stacey Dash and Lark Voorhies denounce who they are. On the one hand you can say that they are thinking ahead of their time, to a time where the color of our skin does not matter. That is fine and they are entitled to that opinion. We all have traveled our own twisting and dark roads and we are all at different points in that journey. It is not just high profile celebrities. The lack of black love and self hate can be seen everywhere. Memes degrading our black men, painting them to be womanizing, no good hucksters who only show up to claim their children for the tax money. Black women painting each other as whores, gold diggers, food stamp selling, neglecting their kids for weaves/wigs, big bootied baffoons. I see husbands and wives that cannot even hold each other up and be happy for one another. It is sad. ...

There are so many things wrong with this. The Mayor of St. Paul was correct that an apology was in order. However, A lot of things go into an apology. Some off the hip forced gesture is certainly not going to pacify anyone and I for one do not consider it an apology. The community is not going to heal overnight. They need to process what happened and true healing cannot begin until an open and honest statement is made. I personally would feel better if he would have just admitted that his comments were inappropriate and asked for forgiveness.  That forgiveness asking is what was missing here. He also should have asked local community leaders to help him work to repair the damage by performing community outreach and engaging in dialogue with that community.   But, he did not do any of that. He made excuses and made and gave an explanation that made no sense. He is not sorry for his insensitive comments and for trying to incite a killing spree.  He is sorry that he was o...