For more than two years, Clarise Coleman faithfully attended every track practice and every cross-country meet for her son, Chase.
A few weeks ago, Chase, who is a nearly nonverbal autistic child, was running in a meet in Rochester, New York, with his team from Corcoran High School – was assaulted by a stranger in the middle of a race.
Coleman was waiting for him at a part of the course where runners would come down a hill but he didn’t appear and she went looking for him. She was shouting his name and then she started to meet people who pointed in the direction of her son. One of them said:
“I see a grown man, who is quite tall and fairly heavy … exit the vehicle and give this young man a shove that puts him back 10 feet and flat on his butt. Like, just shoved him across the road. The kid didn’t seem to be doing anything but standing there, obviously had nothing in his hands and weighed all of 130 pounds. This guy was easily twice that.”
This tall white guy was a 57-year-old man named Martin MacDonald who told the police that the reason he attacked the Black kid was he thought Chase was going to mug his wife and take her purse.
“My son is a minor. [MacDonald is] a grown man,” Coleman said she told police. “He put his hands on my son. Of course I want to press charges.”
However the police was deaf and on Oct. 21, Rochester City Court Judge Caroline Morrison sent a letter to the Colemans that shocked them:
She had denied their warrant application, and MacDonald would not be charged for second-degree harassment.
Now the autistic Black boy refused to go to practices and skipped running in his last meet of the season. He turned his running uniform in to his coach, who gently encouraged him to change his mind. Chase refused.
“We just keep telling him, ‘You didn’t do anything wrong. Chase is good. There are mean people and there are nice people and this person was just a mean person,’ ” Coleman said. “We just keep apologizing to him that happened. Especially me. I kept apologizing to him that I couldn’t keep him safe.”
The attack deeply traumatized him and he lost one of the few things that gave him a sense of pride and belonging.
Please, make a shout out to this outrageous accident! The white man still didn’t receive any punishment for ruining life of the Black boy. THIS IS HELL!
#StayWoke #BlackChildrenMatter #WhitePrivilege
Every reblog that includes Martin MacDonald in it is another web page to help make sure that when you google Martin MacDonald’s name, it’s in connection with child abuse and racism.
I’m so tired of stereotypes that come along every Black women. And the fact that they were created by the white media really pisses me off! I am very proud of all Black girls and I admire all their accomplishments despite the hate of the modern society.
#BlackGirlMagic is not just a hashtag, it strengthens our self-respect and emphasizes our importance!
A gentle reminder that the “last lynchings” were between 1981-1991, so
it’s less than 40. The CRA act was passed 54 years ago. Not enough
people want to hear or remember that.
I couldn’t help but become angrier and more angrier because it shows ain’t shit changed.
As a white person to any white followers, if this doesn’t piss you off, get the fuck off my blog and educate yourself and swallow your own superiority complex.
I’m not seeing much information or outrage about Orlando Brown (outside of social media), a Black Canadian man who apparently was killed by Barrie Police Officers who tasered him to death.
These are the only articles I could find, none of which name him or make it explicitly clear that a black man was killed by the police:
Barrie police say the arrest took place at around 2:30 p.m. on Friday. Police have not confirmed the exact location of the ordeal.
They say the man was then taken to the Barrie Police station for processing where he went into “medical distress.” Paramedics provided first-aid at the station and transported him to Royal Victoria Regional Health Centre where he later died.
Family and friends have identified him as 32-year-old Orlando Brown.
A witness who captured video of the altercation on his cell phone later posted it on social media. The video has been viewed thousands of times.
The video appears to show the officers struggle with Brown while trying to arrest him near some trees between two buildings.
Throughout the video, the sound of a Taser being deployed could be heard before Brown is brought to the ground. An officer shouts “stop resisting” and “put your hands behind your back” while the others forcibly hold him on the ground.
Lance Freeman, who recorded the video, told CTV News Barrie that he watched the officers approach Brown while he was asleep near a bush.
“They asked him to see his ID and before he even had a chance to pull his ID out, the one guy just kicked him and the other started chasing him,” Freeman said.
He said he pulled out his cellphone when he saw one of the officers kick Brown “right in the temple.”
“Everybody was telling the cops to stop, that they were using force,” he said. “How do you expect someone to sit still when you’re Tasering him?”
Freeman claims he stopped recording when one of the officers pointed at him and said he was “next.”
Barbara South, Brown’s aunt, said her nephew was a generous and loving person who has “never been aggressive.”
“Yes he goes off the track a little bit… nobody’s perfect, but he doesn’t have a mean bone in his body,” she said.
South believes Brown would have never died after his arrest if he was white.
“They de-escalate and they find ways to get to calm a situation without any violence when the person is white. But when you’re black, your life has no value,” she said.
“My nephew was murdered… There’s no doubt about that.”
The mother of the victim’s 11-year-old child told CTV News Barrie that she’s beside herself with grief.
“She’s left without her dad,” Donna Dubois said via phone. “How do I explain this to her? How is she going to think that police officers are safe when this is what they did to her dad?”
Dubois said Brown was a “fantastic dad” who was always willing to help a friend in need. She said she believes Brown had “run-ins” with the law and had a warrant out for his arrest but intended on turning himself in.
“He did not deserve this whatsoever, not whatsoever,” she said. “I’m completely devastated I couldn’t even watch the video. I’m disgusted.”
BLACK LIVES MATTER.
#ORLANDOBROWN
This is why I never go up to Barrie. The cops there have the most disgusting attitudes. We always get stopped for “standard/random checks”. So tired of fucking country cops being overly aggressive, like your not a high crime area, you live in small pocket towns. Just because there aren’t many minorities up there doesnt mean that any there are “dangerous”.
Fuck Barrie, Port Credit and Innisfil. Those three areas suck ass if your a poc.
1. Stop slandering our natural features. Stop with the dark skin jokes. Stop with the natural hair jokes. Stop dehumanizing black women for our features. Black women–especially young black girls–internalize these “jokes” and grow to sincerely hate their blackness. Cut it out.
2. Respect our choices. All of them. You don’t have to like it but you need to respect it. If we choose to wear our natural hair, respect it. If we choose to wear weave, respect it. Stop chastising us for the choices we make for ourselves. Stop policing how we choose to live our lives. Let us be great. Gahdamn.
3. Stop with the respectability politics. You can’t say you love black women and then pick and choose which black women you’ll respect based on your standards. You still give a black woman respect regardless of how she chooses to live her life. You respect all black women because we are human just like you, not just the ones who wear natural hair, listen to erykah badu and shit.
4. No means no. If you approach a black woman and she says she’s not interested, oh my fucking god, my nigga, just leave her alone. Move on. Let it go. Please do not persist. Take the rejection gracefully. Don’t call her out name, don’t follow her, don’t assault her. Let her be. She doesn’t owe you an explanation. Her “no” is enough and you will deal my friend.
5. LISTEN. Bruh, when black women are telling you something you’re doing is harming them, can you put your ego aside and just L I S T E N. Why is that your first reaction is to get defensive? If you love black women like you say you do, wouldn’t you want to know when you’re doing something harmful to them? Stop getting defensive every time a black woman calls out your misogynoir. Stop brushing that off as “bashing black men.” Stop calling black women “shea butter bitches” for calling out how you harm black women. Black women are just asking for empathy at the end of the day. That’s the least you can do.
6. Stop slut-shaming. Stop shaming black women for their sexuality. Stop calling black women “thots” and all kinds of hoes because her sex life is something YOU disagree with or because she presents herself in a way that conflicts with YOUR standards. Someone’s sexuality has nothing to do with you and you don’t have the right to police what a woman does with her body. Stop reducing a black woman’s worth because you don’t like what she does with HER body.
7. Understand that our identity intersects. Stop telling black women they have to “pick a side.” Black women aren’t black men or white women’s “side kicks.” We are our own people with our own unique struggle that, yes, may have similarities to BM’s and WW’s struggles, but is not identical to theirs. We are black and we are women. You can’t be an ally to black women and not be intersectional when our existence is the epitome of intersectionality. Black women don’t just experience racial violence, we experience gender violence as well. Stop insisting that we have to divide our identity down the middle to suit you.
8. Say something when you see black women being attacked. When you see black women being harassed online and offline, do something. Ya’ll gotta start holding each other accountable. Stop @-ing me telling me how terrible it is that I’m being attacked. @ ole dude who’s attacking me. Tell them to stop. Have my back. Intervene in the best possible way you can. Stop allowing the violence against black women to persist right in front of your eyes.
9. Please kill the “strong black woman” narrative. Placing this title on us constantly, denies us humanity. Black women aren’t allowed to be vulnerable like everyone else. We’re constantly told be strong or we’re written off as only angry and bitter. We’re told how we’re suppose to feel and how to respond to violence against us. Black women are humans. We laugh, we cry, we smile. We can’t be your idea of “strong” all the time.
10. Show up for black women. Black women consistently show up for everyone else but when it comes time for us, hardly anyone is there to be found. Police brutality doesn’t just happen to black men. Recognize it. Know the names of the many black female victims of state violence. Know their stories. Share their stories. Fight for them like you fight for Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and Sean Bell. Fight for black women like black women fight for you. Organize and show up for black women. Stop leaving us hanging. Stop expecting our support and giving us little to none in return.
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