Peggy Hubbard, a black woman from the Belleville, IL area, posted a video on her Facebook account that went viral. She expressed outrage that people were protesting for a "thug" instead of a nine year old girl that was killed.
In a follow up video post, Ms. Hubbard mentioned that people were saying she wasn't black enough, calling her a sellout, and a house nigger. Although, I strongly disagree with some of the tone and sentiments expressed by Ms. Hubbard, I certainly do not think she's a sell out. She has been brainwashed by a lifetime of racial conditioning that we have all been subjected to. A sellout is someone who purposefully tries to improve their condition at the expense of others. I believe she was genuinely concerned about the state of black America, but simply misguided.
It's natural to be upset about the senseless murder of an innocent nine year old girl. I am outraged myself! But simply because there are multiple problems and one seems greater than the other, you don't ignore the lessor problem simply because it's not as important as the other.
For example, let us assume that a person with diabetes has a heart attack, unrelated to the diabetes and is rushed to the hospital. The doctors at the hospital won't ignore the diabetes simply because the heart attack is the more pressing issue. Additionally, those doctors will seek to discover the reason or cause of the heart attack and instruct the patient what he needs to do to improve his chances of avoiding additional heart attacks.
Just like the heart attack is a symptom of something going wrong in the body; the protest, riots and reactions to real or imagined police excessive force is a symptom of a much larger problem, maybe a problem that Ms. Hubbard escaped, but currently an issue for those still trapped.
There's a certain amount of compromise that has to be made for achievement by black people in this country. There's an ancient saying, "when in Rome do as the Roman's". Success requires a certain amount of assimilation. Most black people in this country speak and think using a European language, English. I don't know many brothers that speak languages indigenous of Africa.
Even people that consider themselves extremely Afro Centric drive cars manufactured by white companies and live in a home built by a white builder. You may not want to work for the man, but you must use the man's monetary system to purchase goods and services within the man's capitalistic system. As a group of people we don't print money, own major manufacturing, water purification or electric generation facilities. We don't even control any means to communicate on a mass scale with one another. We are unfortunately dependent on others who control the means of production, including durable goods and food. However, with that said, a person still needs to know when something runs counter to their best interest or the group of people that they most closely identify with.
When an individual is protesting society's refusal to acknowledge his dignity as a human being, his very act of protest confers dignity on him. – Bayard Rustin quotes
Below is the transcript of Peggy Hubbard's video with commentary made in bold.
Hi, I'm Peggy Hubbard. By now you guys probably already know, what happened in St. Louis last night. Police officers went to go; ah pretty much what they did was they went to execute a warrant for an arrest for a very very bad guy. When they came to get him, instead of going peacefully, having his day in court, he decides to pull out another stolen gun, shoot at the police, police shot back and he was killed.
Mansur Ball-Bey, an 18 year old recent graduate of McCluer South-Berkeley High School, was killed by police who were serving a search warrant (not an arrest warrant) at a relatives home, Ball-Bey did not live there. According to a relative Ball-Bey worked part-time for FedEx and was in his uniform at the time of his death and was headed to college in the fall and planned to become an engineer. Police alleged Mansur Ball-Bey pointed a gun at them, but did not shoot. An autopsy later revealed that Ball-Bey died from a single gunshot wound to the back.
Within the same timeframe, news broke out about a nine year old girl in Ferguson, died in drive by shooting, in her room, doing her homework; she dies by a stray bullet to the chest.
Jamyla Bolden was a nine year old girl killed while she was doing homework on her mother's bed. This was a senseless, cowardly act.
“Last night, who do you think they protested for? The thug, the criminal, because they’re howling, ‘police brutality.’ Are you fucking kidding me? Police brutality? How about black brutality.
The goal of a protests is to create awareness of an issue so that it can be the catalyst of real change. From that perspective, nonviolent protest or resistance is a broad concept encompassing education, organizing, alternative social structures, personal-witness, noncooperation — and, of course, direct action protests.
As Dr Martin Luther King Jr. wrote during the Letter from Birmingham Jail, "The purpose of our direct action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation".
Protesters may organize a protest as a way of publicly making their opinions heard in an attempt to influence public opinion or government policy, or they may undertake direct action in an attempt to directly enact desired changes themselves.
Protest usually involve a known target such as, changing an unjust law, the indictment of a particular person or persons, complaining about the practices of an institution or industry such as banking reform. In the case of Mansur Ball-Bey, the targets were the individual police officers, police brutality, racial profiling and unnecessary killing by police officers.
A vigil attended by more than two hundred people was held for Jamyla Bolden. However, as far as a protest, who are the targets? Are they neighborhood thugs? Are they white supremacist drawn to Ferguson who randomly picked a shooting target? Was that home targeted by mistake? Was someone harboring a grudge against Jamyla's family? At this time, no one knows.
The universal expectation is that once the killer is identified, they will be brought to justice. There is no expectation that once identified that they will suffer no consequences as is often the case with police who have killed unarmed and sometimes innocent people. Remember Amadou Diallo? I suppose you could protest near the police station for more resources to be aimed at this investigation. However, unknown murderers and criminals will not respond to protest. Vigils, however, will encourage solidarity, empathy and may move someone with information about the murder to come forward.
When a police officer who is supposed to protect and serve, while exercising government sanctioned lethal power, abuses that power, and then not held accountable, that is cause for protest. There is certainly probable cause to scrutinize the police officer's version of events. The Ferguson Protest resulted in real measureable change. The municipal court system of the entire state of Missouri will undergo reform this week. Hundreds of thousands of bench warrants for minor offenses have been recalled. Judges have been removed. The amount of traffic ticket revenue that a municipality can retain has been reduced. People's eyes have been opened.
You black people, my black people, are the fucking most violent motherfuckers I have ever seen in my life.
There were 391,467 violent crime arrests in 2013 of which 228,782 were white and 151,627 where black. In just about every other category of crime, whites were arrested at rates almost three times that of blacks, but somehow we see a majority of black mugshots displayed in the news.
The 2013 FBI Uniform Crime Report, a compilation of annual crime statistics, shows that 83 percent of white victims were killed by white offenders and 90 percent of black victims were killed by black offenders. Black offenders usually don't randomly target schools, federal buildings, churches or movie theaters. The genocidial slaughter of natives was not caused by black people. The vast majority of domestic terrorism in this country including lynchings and other atrocities committed by Klan members and other supremacist groups were not committed by blacks.
A little girl is dead. You say black lives matter? Her life mattered. Her dreams mattered. Her future mattered. Her promises mattered. It mattered.
Yet, you trifling motherfuckers are out there tearing up the neighborhood I grew up in. I was born and raised, I was raise by a single mother, eight kids. This woman raised eight kids by herself she lost one, one. Because that boy did not listen and he died by the gun.
The protesters were peaceful. The people looting and destroying property were criminals and possibly infiltrators or spies using the peaceful protest as a cover.
You want to be upset about black lives? You want to be upset about police brutality? There is real police brutality out there. I will give you that. But night, after night, after night on Channel 4, Channel 2, Channel 5, Channel 30, Channel 11 and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch: murder, murder, murder, murder. Black on black murder.
ProPublica analysis of federal data from 2010 to 2012 found young black males were 21 times more likely to be killed by police than their white counterparts. Racially biased media reporting consistently over-represent Black people as perpetrators of crime. They are unfairly and disproportionately focusing their crime reporting on Black suspects, and inaccurately exaggerating the proportion of Black people involved in crime.
The FBI reports 12,253 murder victims in 2013, of which 51.7 percent of the victims were black, 45.7 percent were white; 53.6 percent of the murderers were black, 43.9 percent were white. The sad fact is that their are more black murders than white murders. Oppression and systemic racism prevents opportunity which helps fuel the conditions that results in murder. Inequalities lead to unemployment, poverty and crime.
But yet you ass holes are out there tear up your own shit, it's not your shit other people’s shit for a criminal, for a thug. Bailing out criminals and thugs.
The two police officers allege Ball-Bey pointed a gun at them, but he was shot in the back. The thug label until more facts are known is premature.
Let me tell you something. I got a kid locked up. Oh yeah, I put him there. I turned his ass in. Yes I did because I’m a strong black woman. I am a black mother. I told my children that if you fuck up, if you go to jail, I am not getting you out. You will stay there. You will do the time. I'm not putting nothing on your books. I ain't coming to visit you. I ain’t sending you magazines. I’m not doing shit for you because I did everything I could for you out here and yet you chose to go in there; fuck you. I'm from the Madea school of hard knocks, fuck you. If you don’t care about me and your father working and putting in time and effort to raise you and be there for you. To go to every function, everything that your were interested in. We took note of, we nurtured, encouraged and yet your stupid ass ends up in jail. You belong exactly where your are; don’t drop the soap. That is what I told my son, don't drop the soap.
Seems a little harsh, especially the comment about the soap. I don't know the circumstances here so I won't comment further.
You guys need to stop. You’re hollering this black lives matters bullshit. It don’t matter. You’re killing each other. The fuck, white people don’t care. They don’t care. Save us some tax dollars. I need new parts for my Harley. If you want to die, die. Go ahead and knock yourself out. Your life does not matter. If it doesn’t matter to you it sure in the fuck doesn’t matter to us. That just the truth of the reality. If you don’t care we don’t care.
The media pundits have spun the "Black Lives Matter" motto out of context. The sentiment expressed by "Black Lives Matter", means that black lives matter "also", in addition to other lives; not that black lives matter more than anyone else's.
If you don't give a damn about your life, why in the fuck should we care. Why should we go out and protest for your ass? You broke the law. You’re carrying another stolen gun. You’re yelling fuck the police; fuck you. You’re shooting at the police. Police drops your ass. Oh, poor ‘so and so’ he died due to police brutality. 127 homicides later… Y’all want to holler ‘police brutality’? Black people, you’re a fucking joke. You're tearing up communities over thugs and criminals. You’re putting plaques in the ground over somebody that would not stop. He had a chance to stop. How may times is somebody going to tell you to stop doing that shit before they do something to you?
It is a tragedy when a person's life is violently taken away. Unfortunately, in large metropolitan areas, crimes occur including murder. The sad reality is that, St. Louis, with the exception of only one year, has seen at least 111 murders every year since 1963.
1963 was the pivotal year for civil rights, when MLK penned his Letter from Birmingham Jail; Bull Connor turned fire hoses and dogs on black demonstrator; Medgar Evers was assassinated; the March on Washington where King delivered the "I have a Dream" speech, and four little girls were killed when their church was bombed. Before 1963, only 4% of Americans thought civil rights was the country's most pressing issue; afterwards it was 52%.
In 1963 there were 138 murders in St. Louis. By 1970, the year I enrolled in kindergarten, the number increased to 309. During my junior year in high school there were 265 murders and by the birth of my first son in 1993, the murder rate peaked at 69.9% with 267 murders.
Many of the 127 people you mentioned were innocent murder victims, and I wouldn't assume that they didn't care about their lives. Your assumption that all those victims being criminals and thugs is offensive. I'm certain the lives of those victims mattered not only to themselve and their families, even if they didn't matter to the murders.
Do you think the police are out here for fun? Do you think they’re out here for games? They’re not going to tuck you in. They’re not going to give you a cookie and sing you a lullaby and tuck you in. No, they’re going to pop a cap in your ass. You shoot at them and they’re going to shoot at you. That's just the realism of it. If you try to kill them, their job is serve and protect, not serve and die.”
Mansur Ball-Bey did not shoot at the police, some of your details were wrong.
There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest.- Elie Wiesel quotes
Ms. Hubbard's follow up video is below:
Ms. Hubbart, please consider the possibility that the racially biased media picked up on your message and used it as propaganda to create negative imagery of black Americans. It's ironic that you mentioned in your first video that you have a son in prison, but you find fault in the parenting skills of others if one of their children gets caught up in the system. I won't comment any further, not sure that if would do much good anyway.
Take at look at the documentary White Like Me, produced by a white man about Race, Racism & White Privilege in America. Hopefully, it will educate you about some realities you may not have known about and provide some clarity for you to better use you platform.
