Hold on now. I've seen this video already (it's been going around the internet like wildfire) and I think it's obvious that this girl is not some "urban terrorist" but clearly has some severe mental health issues and is in serious need of medication and professional help. In fact it was just announced that she was arrested today by the Atlanta police and her sister gave an interview to a local radio station claiming that her sister has serious bi-polar disorder and had recently stopped taking her meds because of bad side effects.
So believe me, though I have no love for "urban terroists" that plague our community, I think in this case we should cut some slack here for this poor girl (who according to her sister is also a mother) and hope that she gets the help that she desperately needs.
is she high?
Serg, you and I are normally 98 percent of the time in sync with many of the current issues that are afflicting folks of color in our communities but I may have to differ with you this go around...heck, it's healthy to disagree and flesh these matters out. Perhaps this girl WAS "off her meds" but I have heard that phrase tossed around quite a bit when something dastardly occurs in the hood and I'm just not buying it. We may have to cover this for our Mother's Day show tomorrow but there are so many angles I could take this matter that the show may be more appropriate. I'm not sure about Chi-town but at one time in NY there were quite a few cases where mentally deranged folks (of many racial strata but the Black and Brown folk appeared to get the notoriety) that would seriously injure innocents by bashing their heads with bricks!! I'm not sure you will want to give slack if you were the victim. MANY of our people are mentally unstable...do you want to give a gang banger the same leniency because I'm sure an appropriate diagnosis can be conjured up. Why would this woman be entrusted to have sex and breed if she could act this way? There have been efforts to deem racism as a mental disorder but to no avail....again, I respect your opinion but if that elderly woman were seriously injured..and I can tell you some cases that would blow your mind under the guise of mental derangement ..this would be a different conversation. Let's talk about this tomorrow...now you know the "cornbread and greens" crew (Tavis, Cornel, Dyson, Al, Jesse) they're all about cry me a river paradigms...not here...again, let's talk about it.
One more thing...check out this article that I came across several years ago by Gary Null..perhaps he IS a progressive (as he was a frequent radio host on Pacifica's WBAI) but this article on Blacks, Pathology & Psychiatry must be read...here is an excerpt and then the link...check it out and tell me what you think:
"What we see happening in the African American community today has, in the minds of many, been created: blacks-against-blacks violence, suicide and drug abuse at an all time high, children who cannot read or write and a very high level of unemployment. Psychiatrists involuntarily commit African Americans three to five times as often as they do whites. Psychiatrists diagnose African American men in public and private mental hospitals as having schizophrenia at a rate of up to 1,500 percent higher than white men. African Americans are given significantly higher doses of psychiatric drugs, major tranquilizers, and neuroleptics than are whites. More than twice as many African Americans as whites are classified as mentally retarded. Psychiatry -- heavily financed by the National Institutes of Mental Health along with this Community Mental Health Centers Program, which began in 1963 -- has been, in the minds of many, destructive in the oppression of the African Americans. Community health centers have provided numerous frontline sales outlets operating within the fabric of society, entrapping greater numbers of unwitting victims. The growth of this network parallels the declining statistics among African Americans.
William, a young African American, provokes a stark example of the psychiatric approach to mental health. William lost his job and was worried about how he was going to support himself. He could not write. He could not read. He visited a local community mental health center to talk to someone about it. Instead of listening to him, the psychiatrist asked stereotypical questions about whether he abused his girlfriend and if he felt angry. Well this frustrated him. He raised his voice. Within minutes, the psychiatrist had called in two men to involuntarily admit William to a psychiatric institution. He was held for three days against his will, and was forcibly injected with major tranquilizers. For the first two days the main question asked of William was do you have any insurance. He was told that if he wanted help he would need to pay for it. William had no money. Two hours later psychiatrists interviewed him and suddenly found he was fit to be released. Before being discharged, William was told to sign a paper that he could not read. He was later told that this form indemnified the hospital. It said that he had been fully informed about the drugs prescribed to him and he had been willingly able to take them. This is not an isolated case. It is typical of how easy it has been for psychiatrists using diagnostic procedures and repressive mental health laws to incarcerate African Americans."
Now here is the link:
http:
oops:
http://chestrockwell.multiply.co...hiatry_-
_Part_1
DBurt
I admit saying that we should "cut some slack" regarding the girl was a poor choice of words. In no way did I mean to imply that what she did was excusable. And if she had attacked the woman in the video, which she almost threatens to do in some moments, then that would have been totally unacceptable and the girl punished to the full extent of the law.
But I've seen enough crazy people on the streets, on the subway and on buses to know one when I see one and clearly this girl is bonkers. And having two dear friends with close family members with severe mental illnesses I know the kind of emotional and mental toll it can take on relatives. So I'm not going to join with everyone and point her out as ab example of the kind of nonsense and stupidity that black people deal with every day from knuckleheads whose main goal is to destroy the community. Even if things were perfect we still would have to deal with people like her
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