Rudy Giuliani is back! His racist blather is being spewed on an endless round of television shows, many of which are allowing him ample time to add vitriol to a time of tragedy in need of calm and thoughtful ideas.
Calm and thoughtful ideas are hardly the watchwords for a man people in this city know so well, particularly Black Americans, who he has never hesitated to assail and to blame for their own victimization.
Once again we hear him chiding Black parents, mainly Black fathers, for being less than caring in providing their sons with the proper conduct when encountering the police. “Be very careful of those kids in the neighborhood and don’t get involved with them because, son, there’s a 99 percent chance they’re going to kill you, not the police,” he said recently, words he would say if he were Black.
Well, last time we checked you were not Black, and neither can we remember any statements of concern and compassion about the mounting atrocities that results daily when white police officers stop and frisk, hold in custody, or on the grounds of “justifiable homicide,” shoot and kill unarmed Black youth.
Yes, Giuliani is back, and one deranged Black man in Dallas has given him all the fodder he needs to change the narrative, giving him opportunities to return to the mishmash of misinformation about racial violence that we have heard ad nauseam.
One of the former mayor’s pet themes is to evoke the notion of “Black on Black” violence as a way to counter the accusation against police brutality that he perceives as the mantra for the Black Lives Matter movement.
He is as misguided on this assessment as he was years ago, when he chose to release the juvenile records of Patrick Dorismond, an unarmed Black man who was shot and killed by undercover policemen. This act was an egregious attempt on the part of Giuliani to criminalize Dorismond and thereby justify the shooting.
Rudy Giuliani is back and just as wacko as ever, not that we expected any change. His words and conclusions do not seek to repair the serious, and often lethal gap, between the police and the Black community. What advice he chooses to expend to Black parents might be better served at the police academy—not that all men and women in blue are trigger-happy and imbued with racial hatred.
Of course, as we know so well, there is an inordinate amount of Black on Black violence in the nation’s troubled neighborhoods, but there’s also white on white, Latino on Latino and Asian on Asian violence. To compare them in any sense is odious and does little to resolve the problems each community is experiencing.
But solving the problems these communities face, especially young Black men who are disproportionately the victims of police misconduct and brutality, is apparently not at the top of Giuliani’s agenda. His purpose appears to make sure the police are exonerated and justified no matter how they handle an encounter with the Black community. Black folks are to blame and need to respect the police, he asserts.
Giuliani needs to know that respect is a two-way street. What we really need is less heated discourse from him and more of the CPR (Courtesy, Professionalism, and Respect), from the cops who are paid to protect us, not kill us.
Okay, we should tamp down our charges against Giuliani because all it does is give him the attention and notoriety he unabashedly seeks. Maybe we should not dignify his nonsense and just let him do his spin of negativity and disappear.
Away with all pests, and that includes you know who!