There are selfish people in this world. There are people who devalue human life and high five their friends. Ok...I don't mean normal selfishness in terms of wanting certain things out of life and making choices over one's time. That isn't selfish unless you are unfairly damaging others. The kind of selfishness I'm talking about is along the lines of chill your bones selfishness with no regard for others (You know the type that scoff, smirk, make jokes and spread intentionally misleading information when you demand they respect your familys boundaries.).
What is worse is that the friends that associate with them support these behaviors and engaged in them without really thinking about what they are doing (They acted but didn't think about why they were acting or the information provided to them as being out of character.). It is a sign of deeper dysfunction within their friend network (comprised mostly of amateur highschool players from 30+ years ago). While the group feels that such behaviors (I will share some of those later) are appropriate they move beyond distasteful to serious legal violations (Except if you have a corrupt law enforcement official and there is an assumption that they will never be held to account).
This is selfishness juiced with serious mental health issues as members sought open ethnic conflict and targeted kids for exploitation in their financial and ego driven goals. While there are plenty of legal violations that likely occurred, the group should have had some "common sense" and stopped before it got out of hand (That is often the problem with how people view minorities and how they discount the lives of others, their rights, their freedom, and their property. It just seems a little less important than their own.). They accepted at face value some very false and misleading information to deflect responsibility and in turn acted on that "information" with no proof other than their perceived notions of "people like them"(They have no clue what that person has or hasn't done to serve their country/others. What they do know is the color of the skin, the religion, and their need to not have their perceptions of being the "best" shadowed by anyone.)
Highly motivated by self interest individuals matched with poor values is a problem for society when mobs with police corruption are given a free hand to act (We remember the Tulsa Riots where no one was held to account even though there were plenty of witnesses. We will need a more enlightened view of the direction of our country where race and religion are not the deciding factor in who gets to harm and who is given "immunity".). When surrounded by people who have a lack healthy independence of thought we have a problem that appeared in the past, relived in the present and without intervention likely going to occur again. (Left over bully culture in sports. The sad thing is most of them were just sort of mediocre in ability and never really excelled in sports but they have devoted their entire life to maintaining the perception of being the "sports people". BTW that doesn't mean everyone that plays sports or in that crowd is guilty of something but some of those individuals coordinated their activities to please their social networks.).
Thus we have self-interested parties that lack any natural boundaries on their own accord. In most cases law enforcement would be the back stop. However, in this case one of the law enforcement officials was part of this group and in turn engaged in corruption not only here but also at other times within the community (Their friends don't really know that because they haven't had the capacity to think beyond the surface impressions. It was nearly impossible to protect your child when you know that any time you protest the officer either followed you home, encouraged other officers to "get the Muslim", or started an illegal investigation with no regard for local, state, national or international law.)
I could talk over and over about how wrong these behaviors are and the absolute lack of anything that smacks of civilized behavior. Most likely I will continue to talk about this the rest of my life because there MUST be some accountability for these behaviors (Its not going away just because its inconvenient and disturbs someone's lunch.). At present we have a traumatized Black genius that was used and discarded by people who should have never got kids involved in their manipulative games in the first place (Not to mention they taught their children how to act like racists and bullies.).
These are not American values as far as I know, read, or understood (There is a difference between what some of us say and how some of us act.) Yet, no one is going to step up to help this child even though both parents and their extended family know what happened and have seen the radical change in behaviors (Their extended family is also Black so likely what they say doesn't count much either.) If we cannot stand up in this society to help where we failed to act then we might come to a couple of conclusions. 1.) The laws are inadequate for the modern era, 2.) Our politicians are inadequate to lead the masses and 3.) We have discounted the value of the majority of society and we have not learned from our historical mistakes.
I wish I knew what the solution was (Helping this kid is even more important than understanding the lack of moral aptitude of those who stand on the sidelines not helping). More importantly, I wish I knew what to do and how to fix the problem. While I found something on the "Selfish Goal" it is wholly inadequate to describe the illegal, immoral, and intentionally destructive behaviors I have seen here. Worse, these behaviors were done with the full knowledge of people around them and with their support. Still today there is no sense of remorse from this group or people. See the Selfish Goal.
What side of truth do we as a nation stand on and what values are we (including these perpetrators) teach their children? I have studied hate for a long time and likely one of the leading authorities in this country on these issues. I promise that until there is some level of justice this issue will not be swept aside, ignored, or circumvented like we have done to so many other minorities in this country when their rights were violated. Yes...even Black Muslim kids have rights that should supersede the selfish needs of adults (I'm an idealist by nature but I have learned that for many people it is ok to take from one kid of the "wrong" type and give to others of the "right" type.). Yaaa I know, many of our leadership are tired of hearing about the dirty word of "rights" but you would think by pure annoyance alone they would take steps to solve problems like this. I guess its one of those subconscious things that people can't put their fingers on but a large swath of society intuitively feel is true.
If we want a great nation that is based on equality we can't push our Black geniuses in the ditch because we don't want to expend the energy to "do the right thing". (We also didn't mention the advantages the other kids got from this behavior.) I suspect in the future, we will be forced to deal with issues like this. There are just too many people in this country that are now seen as the "wrong type". Sounds like we are being wholly subjective on the value of life....and that is likely why we keep having issues bubble up when the only thing we need to do is embrace universal justice where wisdom, virtue and law coexist in the same space and time.
I am a Republican (socially a Democrat) and I am disgusted by the way we treat minorities in this country. This isn't about politics..this is about building something beyond our own needs so that our children and grand children (all of our kids!) can have opportunities to succeed and compete as a single people (regardless of their race and religion) in pursuit of the idealized goals of our nation's founders. I look around and I see some trying to do the right thing but perhaps we just don't yet have the right environment for higher levels of advanced human capital development.
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