What is the value of human life and is racism worth it?
This Lockdown Voice is dedicated to the #BeBest Americans who sent $170 to Ireland during Black47. I've never understood how the Choctaw tribe managed to send money to strangers starving in Ireland when they were being decimated by white Europeans who tricked, stole, murdered, and then broke treaties.
We are talking about a genocide that is rarely talked about.
$170 was a lot of money 170 years ago but last Monday the world learnt of the shocking murder of George Floyd who I believe was killed over a suspected counterfeit $20.
FOOTNOTE IN HISTORY
America is on fire over $20 and under a different president, that twenty dollar note might have had Harriet Tubman printed on it instead of Andrew Jackson but we can't change the past even if some people like Harriet Tubman have seriously been short-changed by President Trump.
This footnote in racism is no different than the Malcolm X quote:
that's not a chip on my shoulder, that's your foot on my neck.
When George Floyd was arrested on suspicion of counterfeit money, the law had been broken.
You see, a person is innocent until proven guilty and every violent act that followed showed how lawless our society is when we deputise people who should never be trusted with a pen nevermind a badge and a gun.
It is not the rioters who have broken the law but the law that broke all trust with the people.
When Trump said he would show his tax returns and didn't; when he said he would step aside from his businesses and never have time to golf and then didn't step aside from his dodgy dealings and golf properties; when he broke the emoluments clause and broke every moral code expected of him; some possibly for ratings; and when he threatened his lawyer to be quiet and called him a rat, we saw the trust and accountability of the Commander-in-Chief.
We saw it before the elections when he claimed he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and when he boasted of grabbing women by the pussy while claiming Mexicans are rapists.
What we saw was organised crime that wasn't very organised. One of his first acts was to break the Paris Treaty that Barrack Obama had signed and Europe learnt what it was like to sign treaties with the people who betrayed the Native American Indians.
We can be better than this but not when we are prepared to kill over an alleged counterfeit $20 and arrest and shoot at journalists who report on it, we are lawless and need to stop playing Cowboys and Indians.
The Choctaw tribe is $170 out of pocket for helping the low-life Irish of the 19th Century but I'd like to think that they made an investment back then and when their tribe was badly affected by Covid-19, a GoFundMe campaign apparently raised over $2,000,000 to repay them in their hour of need.
Thanks to Coronavirus, we slowly coughed up the $170 that we owed them but there are people in America who can't breathe and people being told to shut their mouth about it.
People are dying in America over $20 and I am not saying that Donald Trump is a racist, Eric Trump says he isn't, Trump's son claims that "Green is the only colour he sees" but that almost sounds worse than being a White Supremacist who at least cared about people and not just money.
I would feel better if Harriet Tubman was on that $20 note and not a slave trader like Jackson but I imagine President Jackson knew more about the value of a person of colour than Donald Trump ever will.
This footnote in history will be as famous as the forgotten Tulsa Riots that took place 99 years ago.
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