by Dr. Randy Short
Not all Black people are appalled at Micah X Johnson’s day of rage in Dallas. The author isn’t, and believes he has lots of company. Johnson is far from alone in his hatred of white cops. However, “unlike the majority of Blacks who complain amongst themselves, Johnson went postal – like white folks do all the time, for far less serious reasons.” He is a harbinger of things to come.
Micah Xavier Johnson: Made in America, a Failed Human Rights State
by Dr. Randy Short
“Johnson’s violent actions articulated the rage of millions of oppressed people wholly who are tired of being killed, jailed, poisoned and blamed for their plight created by an indifferent elite.”
As America and the World sit aghast at the orgy of violence in Dallas, Baton Rouge, and Falcon Heights, the most troubling subject is how to understand veteran soldier Micah Xavier Johnson, who shot 11 policemen, killing five of them. Law enforcement dealt with him much like America deals with any problem: with a bomb. As a society, America can embrace Black men as the perennial victims of fascist white police, because only powerless African Americans feel the losses. However, when a Black man violates the taboo of using violence against whites to express rage or hatred, he pushes a psychic panic button where white fear and (often feigned) Black empathy conflate. Many clamor to denounce Johnson as a crazed lone gunman, but others, holding a minority opinion, view his acts as a necessary evil to shake-up and sober-up White America and their compromised, quisling Black leaders. Johnson’s violent actions articulated the rage of millions of oppressed people wholly who are tired of being killed, jailed, poisoned and blamed for their plight created by an indifferent elite.
Exactly 50 years ago the cries for Black Power shook the middle class Black reformist leadership and frightened a hostile and callous white America. A young generation hardened by two years of riots and tired of oppression demanded that Black people to control their fate. The following year urban rebellions set Detroit and Newark to the torch and scores were killed and thousands were arrested. A shocked and angered President Lyndon Johnson commissioned the Kerner Report to study the causes of large-scale urban rebellions that had rocked hundreds of America’s inner cities. Johnson, disgusted by what he had been told about the report’s findings, never read the document. The Kerner Report’s most famous quote stated, "Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal." Decades later there are at least two Americas, still unequal, and the problems are more acute than ever. This is in large part because Johnson and all his presidential successors have treated Black people as a crime problem instead of citizens, heaping new and more repressive laws and policies to enforce America’s version of Apartheid.
“Perhaps the war that impacted him most is White America’s War against Black people.”
Micah Johnson was only 25 years old, and few media pundits or commentators on the nightly news are going to consider that he grew up in a society obsessed with war and killing. He was born the year the Desert Storm war against Iraq started, and he died amid the era of the War on Terror in which he served in Afghanistan. Perhaps the war that impacted him most is White America’s War against Black people, a conflicted manifested in the FBI’s Cointel-Pro, Johnson’s Safe Streets Act 1968, Nixon’s War on Drugs 1969, Reagan’s “Three Strikes Laws,” Bush’s “Weed and Seed,” and the Clinton’s infamous Omnibus Crime Act of 1994. These policies have resulted in the wholesale destruction of millions of lives, and those Blacks lucky enough to escape the talons of white man’s justice experience little solace. Many suffer hypertension and mental anxiety, hoping their diction, good manners, dress, and faith will protect them and their loved ones from arbitrary arrest or execution. Micah Johnson refused to live like a hunted animal. Unlike the majority of Blacks who complain amongst themselves, Johnson went postal – like white folks do all the time, for far less serious reasons. For one riveting moment last weak, white America felt fear of an overdue payback for centuries of crimes against the world. Tragically, the heroic real-time video shot by Diamond Reynolds and her daughter and the old speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., appealing to the delinquent humanity of white folks, does not reach the cold-hearted racists like a dose of violence directed at them.
If one took the time to consider that a trained veteran of the United States military turned his weapons on his own society, the question would by: Why? How many Blacks have to have their homes, children, neighborhood, or lives stolen without recourse before someone acts out his rage? How much Israeli-styled occupation policing and graphic videos of police murders is enough for a person to feel hatred for those that do these things? How many unfair tickets and fines and funeral tee shirts before someone losses his ability to accept subhuman treatment? And, why should anyone be forced to live this way? How does one escape police that kill law-abiding citizens?
“How many unfair tickets and fines and funeral tee shirts before someone losses his ability to accept subhuman treatment?”
Contrary to those who dislike this truth, Micah Johnson is a hero to grieving Black mothers, families and friends who had children slain by racist killer cops. Anyone, including myself, who has been humiliated and unfairly treated by a racist Black or White policeman feels that some of these bullies and killer cops warrant a comeuppance. As for the reactionary Greek chorus that sheds one-sided tears for police but scorns their victims, they are a lost cause. Their moment of revelation will come when this empire collapses and they become the new niggers for whatever power replaces this one.
Finally, the same militaristic USA that taught Johnson and millions of others to kill in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and the world over has long covered up the relationship between discharged servicemen and violence throughout the society. Why should Micah Johnson be portrayed as an anomaly? Neglected, sin-sick, mentally challenged, and guilty conscience-afflicted ex-killers for Uncle Sam—often homeless and disabled—are time bombs and a pathological inheritance to a society addicted to war. Furthermore, Micah is just a raindrop in the storm cloud of a new generation that came of age during the Great Recession with no prospects for the future. This cohort fears nothing and has little to live for, and their anger at being targeted for prison, addiction, senseless wars and early death represents a clear and present danger to the bigoted oligarchs in power.
Micah Johnson did us all a favor by showing us that America is a time bomb with bloody and dark days ahead.
Dr. Randy Short, Washington, D.C. Chairman of Brothers In Support the auxiliary of the Million Woman March We Charge Genocide Project 21 wrandyshort@gmail.com
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