If you haven’t watched the documentary Kids For Cash, please do.  I am obsessed with our legal and prison systems because it tells what kind of people we are in how we mete out justice.    Another good one is Werner Herzog’s Into the Abyss.  A haunting indictment of how we perceive ourselves.  We as a society demand justice and justice comes in the form of prison, jail, death, and rarely reform, because punishment should not be rehabilitative, even if these very people are to be released into our midst in the future.  Who are we to be judge, jury and excecutioner, but more importantly, who does this system benefit?  I especially abhor the treatment of children and how we escalate their judgement equivalent to that of an adult’s.  For what purpose does this serve other than to make us feel superior?

Recently, I’ve heard of kids being tried as adults in the news such as the 2 12-year-old girls from Wisconsin in the ‘Slender Man’ attempted murder and recently, a 14-year old girl, who slit the throat of her brother’s girlfriend.  I condemn their actions and they should be punished and treated for their crimes, but to be tried as adults is an affront to everything we should stand for.  What we should stand for is justice, but what justice is there in treating kids like adults?  If these girls were to be raped by someone, the perpetrators would  be tried as someone who raped a minor, but do they lose their minor status when they also commit a crime?  How can they be a minor in one situation and not in another?  That is not justice but cherry picking of a justice system that favors severe prison sentences for all.

Why do we even have minor statuses if we do not follow them in every case?  You are a minor as long as you don’t commit a crime.  Because hey, you should’ve known better, like an adult, to not commit crimes, and as such, you will be punished as one.  Does that make any sense?  Who is benefiting from this thinking?  Are we as a society more protected?  Or do we just feel better about ourselves when we have the power to change the rules to suit how we feel?  There are plenty of laws that were enacted to make us feel better, but didn’t quit work out such as the Three Strikes Law, which resulted in some people serving lengthy sentences for non-violent crimes while others served shorter terms for one specific violent crime.  Perhaps we should stop enforcing laws and rules based of how we feel and how they actually affect society as a whole.

I think a lot of people were well-intentioned a few decades ago when they were trying to combat racism and taught kids my age that ‘we are all the same.’ The people who grew up with this mantra understood the concept of the idea that the color of our skin should not matter in determining who we are as individuals.  However, it also had an unintended side effect, where white people took this phrase to mean that we all have the same experience, and since they didn’t see in color, they didn’t need to acknowledge the differences that we had.  I’m not blaming them, but it is important to note where this notion came from: the best of intentions.  It is mostly benign because they honestly do not see the color of one’s skin, which was the ultimate goal of ‘we are all the same,’ but in doing so, they erased the differences of who we are.  My friend’s husband is White and she is Asian.  He says he does not see her as Asian, and as such, he does not understand when she claims that people at pre-dominantly white establishments treat her differently.  Why would they treat her differently if she is the same as him?  When you fail to see the differences in who others are, you negate their experience.  Because you think that ‘we are all the same,’ meaning we all shared the same upbringing, parenting styles, culture, and so on, you can ignore someone’s experience based on the color of their skin.  And yet, I continue to hear this phrase uttered because it has saturated our youth and now our adult lives to the point where some people don’t understand the phrase ‘Black Lives Matter,’ and instead implore that ‘All Lives Matter,’ which is very close to ‘we are all the same.’

We are the same in our genetics, but we are not treated the same based off of factors we cannot control. To acknowledge and celebrate our differences does not alienate us, but makes us more aware of OUR diversity.  To continue to proclaim that ‘we are all the same’ propagates the idea that differences don’t matter.  It is important not to assign blame and to know that it is not anyone’s fault for believing it, but we do need to educate ourselves on how that phrase has affected society as a whole.  Oftentimes, White people bear the brunt of this guilt and push back because they are weary of being blamed for race relations.  This in itself also needs to be addressed because if it is not, it results in stagnation.  Change comes in not actions, but thoughts.  Change how you view the situation and each other and a revolution can be born.

The Dallas shooting shows those who are divorced from radicalized religion and terrorism how they can become who they are. These groups decided to arm themselves due to real or perceived threats to them or their perceived ways of life and are trying to fight a war that will bring attention to their cause.  I’m not trying to say one is more or correct than the other, but that these are the seeds that plants such discord.  This is a turning point for our country, for there will be those who will back the snipers and their point and view and there will be those who oppose them.  What happens is that we become more divided as a nation as we live in constant distrust of others.  There will be retaliation on each side and then you become the country you never thought you would be.

Where is the accountability? Who is accountable for years of oppression?  Who is accountable for the rage?  You can definitely disagree with me, but this is what I believe can help the trauma of the past.  We need a better understanding of our own history.  Some learning institutions do better than others, but what they all fail at is to ask the students how they feel about it.  It’s okay for minorities to be outraged and whites to feel disgusted, but it’s also important to remember that that is the past and we are not those people.  If we all understood our history better, we may understand our present predicament.  I also think the media needs to stop showing pictures of those who commit crimes and be more accountable in what they are reporting.  If the only time you see a Black man in your life is when you see images of them committing crimes on the news, your perception of them may become biased.  If you only see White cops murdering people, your perception may become biased.  Lastly, we need to make the decision to invest in more extensive training of those who police us and enforce clear consequences of their actions.

The fact of the matter is we need each other. We need police officers.  We need teachers.  We need Whites, Blacks, Asians, Latinos, and more.  We just need to know we can do better than this where a person feels they  must kill others in order to be heard.  There is injustice that needs to be acknowledged and there is also accountability that needs to be dealt out.  No matter who you oppose in this country, know that the person on the other side also wants what is best for the country.  They may have different notions of going about it than you, but if we can just agree to that one idea, we can come together.

 

If you haven’t watched ESPN’s 30 for 30 series about the murder of Nicole  Brown and the descent of O.J. Simpson, please do.  It is an extremely thought-provoking piece about race relations, police brutality, impartial justice systems, and the rise and fall of one of America’s golden boys.  The story still rings true today as some in white America have no idea why black Americans are rioting and frustrated from a lack of social justice.  It begins with one’s experience.  If you were never accosted by the police, treated well by the justice system, and society at large welcomed you, that was your experience and you didn’t understand why someone else would accuse these institutions of racism.  If you were black and encountered the opposite, you would view these same things wearily.  Of course not all black people felt this way and not all white people the other.  Then there were those who were untouchable.

Racial tensions still run high and you can trace the arc of it through history.  Some people have adamantly stated that everyone has the same rights, so why are some people complaining?  They are right. Everyone has the same rights, but what they refuse to see is that everyone is not treated the same due to personal biases that have been built over centuries of oppression and aggression.  O.J was in a class of his own.  In the series, it is noted that he tried to sound more white in commercials and welcomed criticism of his speaking abilities to sound more white.  He was an incredible athlete who was charismatic and very good looking.  He used these traits to propel himself into the world of rich, white America, where there were relatively few Blacks.  He refused to acknowledge the racial divide and partake in social protests because he wanted to be seen on the merits of who he was and not the color of his skin.

Unfortunately, I have to agree with him.  I don’t agree with him overall, but I agree with him on a personal level.  Not everyone is cut out to be a social activist.  Not everyone is ready to put their career and earning abilities on the line.  Not everyone is capable of thinking outside of who they are.  And in his own way, he did help contribute to the cause by offering himself as a role model to Blacks and Whites alike.  This was only possible because he did not see himself as Black and deferred his Black identity.  Lee Daniel’s The Butler is pretty much an apologist movie supporting individuals such as this.  Oftentimes, you want someone to rise to the occasion and fight, but unfortunately, it is not their job to do that.  It was his decision to further his career and that was his right.  In the end, he actually benefited from the outrage of black Americans in his upsetting verdict, but at this point, I don’t think he was aware of that.  He was already untouchable in his mind.

 

My Game of Thrones theory is that Samwell Tarly represents George R. R. Martin. Many authors represent themselves through their characters and Sam is him.  You can especially see this in the scene where he enters the library in the citadel.  Books were his refuge in his childhood, and he is Sam.  Always the learner, rarely the doer.  But the doers need people like Sam and it’s important he wrote himself in because it was his imagination that made it possible.  I remember an interview he did where he recalled that he was pretty much a recluse as a kid and would watch the outside from his window atop the world.  As such, it was his imagination that took him places and he invented whole worlds that no one could even dream of.  It’s interesting then that Sam will be atop the world high in the citadel reading.

 

I listened intently to season one of Serial’s podcast about this 10 year plus old murder case involving the murder of Hae Min Lee.  Her body had been found strangled one month after her disappearance. With a confession from Adnan’s accomplice, Jay Wilds, he was put away for her death.   Recently, he was granted a new trial due to a witness that was never interviewed.  The episodes were gripping, especially when you thought an innocent, young man’s life hung in the balance, but the more they delved into the case, the more the innocence wore away for me.  The whole appeal of the show was an innocent guy rotting in jail for a crime he didn’t commit.  That’s the Holy Grail that reporters look for in a great story.  It’s better when their guy is charismatic.

Here’s what I think about the case.  He killed her.  If you listened along to the podcast, you’ll know that Jay admitted to taking part in the murder.  There is evidence to back up parts of his stories even though some of it doesn’t match up.  The facts are that 1. Jay drove either Hae’s or his car to dump Hae’s car, and 2. He needed someone to drive the other car to leave the scene.  Also, he knew exactly where they went to drop off the body.  All the other details may be fuzzy, but the evidence corroborates these two facts.  If you agree with this, you must contend that there were two people involved in her murder.  The only possible people who could’ve murdered her are either Jay or his accomplice.  It wasn’t a stranger.  If you can find who drove the other car, you will find the other half of the story.

I believe Adnan killed her because Jay confessed to this.  He even asked in the podcast ‘if Adnan didn’t kill her, who did?’  I don’t think Jay has reason to lie as he was the person who implicated himself and if he hadn’t, no one would’ve known who the murderer was.   Despite what I believe, I think he does deserve a new trial because the timeline they convicted him of doesn’t work. I think that Jay was telling most of the truth, but since it didn’t fit the prosecution’s timeline, they just left it out and made him more of an unreliable witness.  Whatever our beliefs are on his guilt or innocence, we should still believe in his right to a fair trial.