Here is the thing–I am really getting tired of being thrown into the centrifugal like ride, media circus about race relations and racism in this country….I don’t think it is news when the manager and the police chief in Ferguson resign…this is a time warp thing that I knew would eventually happen. It had too- because there was at least a 13 year problem with racial profiling in that community, and I know because I viewed the report.

The Ferguson problem is a national problem, the experience of people of color are routinely rejected, dismissed, marginalized, and devalued. We say left, they say right, we say we hurt, they say get over it, we cry, they say go cry on someone else’s shoulder. Don’t get me wrong we have allies but like any cheerleader group the pom poms get worn, people go back home and we are left in the darkened stadium, holding little bic lighter like candles singing something from the past. I don’t want you to think that I am completely full of bitterness because I think there is hope even though that flicker of hope is way way way on the distant horizon.

I have learned to keep getting up even when it seems that all hope is gone, this is the spirit of my enslaved ancestors. Things will get worse before they get better but they will.

And no I don’t want to hear apologies, particularly if they are used just to save face, and any last moment utterings they have as they leave their offices, well, they can just save them as the door hits them in the ___.

There are times when we must just start from scratch and I think this is the case in Ferguson. Poor folks in Ferguson have been bamboozled, trapped in a never ending cycle of abuse, and municipal laws aimed to keep a massive group of people in economic and thus psychological chains.

At every turn it seems we, as people of color face health, social, legal, and financial disparities and then on top of it all, some folks want us to explain every social phenomena that we encounter, and provide detailed analysis on the origins and scope of black on black crime, etc,. etc. etc.

Being Black in this country means that we have to become social scientists on the entire history of our enslavement, civil rights, and provide scholarly dissertations to every mom and pop who think their questions worthy to be answered. Black lives matter recognize that, and please hold your questions and comments, because maybe what you are asking for is not going to get you the answer you want. The media just keeps running the same old video, offering the same old tired, broke down analysis…commentaries that only seek to substantiate their view of minorities as deficit, immoral, people who care nothing about nothing. Some of them are guilty of sensationalizing and profiting from our trauma and pain. Advertisers are part of the game as well.

And while I am ka-vetching, letting it all out in writing—I am getting a little exhausted by all the folks on social media saying “Disgusting” in response to the frat boy bus chant. Don’t get me wrong I think it is disgusting too, but for over a year now I have been writing on my blog (BrianRagsdalewriter.com) about the racial, legal, economic problems in our country, starting off with the senseless murder of Justice for Renisha Mcbride. I have written about health disparities, racial profiling, stand your ground laws, voting rights, whiteness, racism, unequal sentencing, and on and on and on. I write because I would like for us to take a more serious look at the effects of structural and institutional racism. Interpersonal racism while reprehensible are just symptoms of a larger problem, one that many of us just do not want to face. These one- offs and cast away of bad racists, treating them like pariahs that we hang scarlet letters, seem to minimize the larger stench and funk about our racism problems.

President Obama has tried to restore some civility, even though during both of his Presidential addresses he has encountered racist interruptions and disrespect. Our President is routinely and systematically faced with blatant racism, but I don’t hear people saying how DISGUSTED they are with that treatment. I think, for some, it is easy to say that there is a funk but then turn a blind nose when people are farting all day long.

If you don’t like the funk, don’t feed the fart that causes the funk!