I hope you have had a chance to read about Jordan Neely. He was the mentally ill, Black, homeless man that was choked to death on a New York subway by a blond Marine man.
Every one of those details matter to the story. Race, mental illness, inner city, homelessness, gender. All these things matter.
The picture here is my gun. I carry it every single time I go to hang out with my homeless friends. Guns are everywhere in this city. The more poverty there is the more guns there are in Akron.
I carry it primarily for a couple mentally ill, Black, violent, homeless men that are friends of mine.
That’s not to say I don’t have mentally ill, White, violent, homeless men friends. I do. But their violence tends to be slightly less erratic. They burn down a friend’s tent for some injustice they feel was done to them. They seem just slightly more in control.
The Black guys I’m thinking of are completely random and wild. I have no idea what is going to set them off.
And they are strong. Stronger than any white guy. Both physically and mentally. The guys I’m thinking of are like terminators. Nothing will stop them.
I have one guy like this that kicks in every single door in our house. It’s to the point I think he just doesn’t like doors. This week he unscrewed the hinges of a door because he couldn’t break the padlock I put on the door. Now I have a door just hanging from a lock.
I think race matters in this story.
It’s very possible that I’m overly worried about these men because I’m more afraid of Black people than White people. But I’m not afraid of any of these people. Fear does not enter into this world for me. I am not afraid of any of these people.
And the Black men I’m thinking of here are some of my most favorite people to be around. They are so smart, so strong, so wild. They are beautiful in their own way. But that doesn’t mean I trust them. They are dangerous. Very dangerous. They can and will strike at any time.
I personally believe race matters in this situation because of how neglected Black men are in America. For 400 years we have treated them like animals. Now the good jobs are gone, income inequality is extreme, the drugs are flowing and the mental health facilities are gone. We have turned some of these men into raging, wild beasts.
I can’t get these guys in jail because everyone is terrified of them. If they report one of these guys and they don’t go to jail they will die. These guys will kill you for reporting them.
So we are forced to live with them because the police system doesn’t protect us from them.
We MUST bring back mental hospitals where these kinds of people can do.
This is the one glaring area where my social libertarianism breaks down. If you want to do drugs, sell sex or leave your serious mental illness untreated that’s fine with me. But the minute you start hurting other people, now I’ve got a problem with you. You need to go away. Maybe for life.
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