Facing Race in Oakland After Tragedy

Although there are many of us working for progressive social justice, for all of Oakland, let's face it there are those who profit big time from our divisions and like it just the way it is. Not everyone wants the same thing for the same price, that's why there's a Macy's and a Target.

While working on a political campaign a few years ago, when the murder rate in Oakland was skyrocketing, I canvassed the hills and found there was virtually no interest in black and brown people dying on the streets in the flatlands. Their concerns consisted of where the next Trader Joe's and Whole Foods would be. When I spoke of change that would address the needs and problems of all Oakland residents they looked at me like I had 2 heads. As long as its us dying, they (in the hills) don't care. If its a cop or a white girl everyone is outraged. A life is a life, period. Unfortunately not all of them are equal in the heart of a capitalist system. I wish it were as simple as "can't we all just get along" but it ain't and won't be as long as we are supporting a system that can only survive on divide and conquer.

While I appreciate your call for peace and sanity, I think your article misses the point. If every person of color has a job in Oakland, then will attacks and deaths by cops end? Not likely. Because the issue isn't about poor people marauding through town causing trouble. It's about racist cops who are using unnecessary force whenever a person of color is before them. The issue is about cops feeling entitled to commit blatant crimes against the populace in the name of 'safety' and then being protected by institutional racism and white supremacy.

We have to keep the focus on race. The cops are not distinguishing between employed POCs and unemployed POCs. While I hear the call to address poverty in Oakland, this issue is not about people committing crimes because they're poor and how the police should deal with such people. (Even if it was, death by cop is not a justifiable or adequate response.) Scapegoating poor people is not the answer. Stopping a police force that is terrorizing citizens for no reason other than race is.

Thank you for such a heartfelt and poignant analysis of this past weekend's tragedies. Your call for efforts to revitalize and redevelop our community is right on point! For years I've heard missives about Oakland's "potential." We have community activists, teachers, youth. artists and everyday people making Oakland the vibrant and diverse community it is...but on the other hand we got helicopters hovering over our homes, statistics such as the ones mentioned above and a tense relationship between the people and the officers hired to protect them.

Who decides which of these narratives is given the spotlight to represent the O?

As we continue to revitalize and redevelop (of course by engaging a process which includes the current community), one narrative will rise above as the other falls by the wayside.

And finally, people will see Oakland for what it really is! The Town where racial and ethnic diversity is something to be celebrated, where one can find vegan Buddhist food and the best 1/2 lb burger, where music genres are born and revamped, where a thousand people will show up to march for something they believe in, where new educational models are created and where hundreds of artists and their supporters can show up to a City Council meeting and not only be heard, but heeded.

That's the Oakland I know. And it's the Oakland I love.

It's the Oakland I will protect and won't let nobody else steal my narrative.

Thank you for this. It's so rare, ironically, to hear / read the voices of young Black men themselves--in Oakland or anywhere else--in the media on the issues of police brutality, violence, crime and racism that so directly affect them. Until we as a movement and as a society can see young Black men as wholly human, as vulnerable, complex and as prone to emotional behavior as any of the rest of us.

"If every person of color has a job in Oakland, then will attacks and deaths by cops end? Not likely. Because the issue isn't about poor people marauding through town causing trouble. It's about racist cops who are using unnecessary force whenever a person of color is before them. The issue is about cops feeling entitled to commit blatant crimes against the populace in the name of 'safety' and then being protected by institutional racism and white supremacy."

S_Jones, I couldn't have said it better myself. I will add that as much as cops want us to recognize the "good cops" and not the bad ones, too many cops don't make any distinction. Even so, too many "good cops" defend bad cops. And yet, Mixon's family did something that cops don't do: offer sympathy to the victims' families. I don't expect the kind gestures toward the cops to make much of a difference, but I hope I'm proven wrong.

My intention is not to downplay the necessity or empowering and healing impacts of a community effort to focus on all the great, homegrown resources it has to create the life and environment that its people want. I just disagree with the implication that addressing poverty and unemployment will affect police brutality. I suggest focusing on race as an approach to stopping, specifically, the national phenomenon of death-by-cop. It is NOT suggested as the only or top-priority focus for community healing and restoration, for the reasons that Claudia and the authors mentioned.