"It's a dirty game"

(CNN) -- A Florida man has been charged with first-degree murder after authorities say he threw a 3-month-old boy out of a moving car on a Tampa interstate.

Richard Anthony McTear Jr., 21, was arrested Tuesday, hours after a confrontation at his former girlfriend's apartment in which he snatched the child, the Hillsborough County sheriff's office said.

A passing motorist found Emanuel Wesley Murray's body on the interstate. An autopsy determined the child died of blunt trauma to the head, the county medical examiner's office said.

Video on CNN affiliate WFLA TV showed McTear being led out of a Tampa police squad car after his arrest. He ducked his head as TV cameras surrounded him on his walk into a police building.

When asked by reporters if he had thrown the child out of the car window, McTear answered, "It's a dirty game. A dirty game."

McTear is not related to the child, said sheriff's spokeswoman Debbie Carter. Source

And so begin the ignorant, and vicious comments on the youtubes...

Don't get me wrong. I am sickened and disgusted by this man. Very rarely do I ever feel that putting someone to death is ever warranted. But when a child is tortured/raped/murdered by an adult, I believe that the punishment should match the crime. This pathetic excuse for a human being should be exterminated.

As a black person, I always hate when vicious crimes like these are perpetrated by blacks. There's almost a begging - more like a pleading, for the person to be anything but black, before their race is confirmed. I know I'm not alone in this. I had a black studies professor proclaim that when the Scarborough rapist was on the loose, many black people were hoping that the man wasn't black. A sigh of relief passed over the black community here in Toronto when it was confirmed that the man's identity was in fact Paul Bernardo.

It's the fact that many ignorant non-blacks are automatically going to make the assumption that this is typical behaviour amongst black people, when we all know nothing could be further from the truth.

May this child find peace in the afterlife.

R.I.P. Emanuel Wesley Murray.

...feeling the need to go against the carefully constructed grain...

I've been doing a lot of thinking lately. I'm tired of this world, I'm tired of my life. I'm tired of trying to be someone constructed by others. I don't want to be the norm. I want to rebel. I know by my age I probably should be at least starting to get the hell over myself, but I can't help it. I crave change.

And aren't we supposedly in the era of "change". I look at the identities that society has constructed for me...and somehow, something doesn't match up, they aren't me. So who am I? Where are the voices of those like me, where the hell is our story, why have we been ignored for so long?

You see, this is exactly why I ♥adore♥ Michelle Obama. Because she breaks the mould, she is everything she isn't supposed to be, and you either love it or you hate it. Me, I'm lovin it! Finally there is an alternative to the stereotype. Someone young women can admire and strive to be like. She most certainly may not be perfect (even though in my eyes she is), and the fact so few black women who exhibit these same characteristics are basically ignored is just pathetic - but its a start.

She just has so much damn class! She manages to be strong, beautiful, and feminine; a privilege almost never extended to the black woman. We can be strong, sure we can even sometimes be seen as beautiful...but feminine? It seems like the only time I see a woman like myself represented, her image is skewed in someway to fit neatly into some category: she is the Mammy, the angry black female, or the Jezebel whore. Michelle so far has proved herself to be none of the three. It's about fucking time.

Even at the scholarly level when black women are the subject, and the authors too are black, it still feels like the story is missing for women like me. Take some of my favourite books, Mama Day, I, Tituba Black Witch of Salem, or There Eyes Were Watching God. Sure, they are all stories of "black" women...but they are of European ancestry as well. The conditions in order to be deemed worthy of having your story reproduced seems to be, a) be anything but black, or b) be mixed, or at the very least male. Don't get me wrong, I love these books and I am grateful to the authors who produced them for letting the products of their creativity out into the world...but where is my story?

This...



...is not my story.

Every now and again, I come across a bit of positive truth on the youtubes. Considering Youtube has got to be one of the most damaging places on the Internet to the psyche of a black woman, I am always shocked to say the least when I come across something that doesn't follow this painful norm.

Well now, talk about some truths some people are really not gonna want to hear. These are facts, that can't be disputed - colour them and twist them all you want to make them more palatable. Its truths like these that make some people squirm. Take the other day in class. The question was asked whether one could conclude that in black hip hop and dance hall culture the black female body was exploited for the sake of the otherwise powerless black males elevation of self, and why. The answer is obvious: because in society, black people really don't hold any true power. The white girl beside me cringed when I said this. Later, when I made the point that white people need to get over the violence in hip hop because the white privilege they rely on on a daily basis was seized through means of a very bloody and violent past that exploited and raped pretty much every other group in existence, their was more cringing and squirming around the room. I think I pissed off some white girls that day. whoops.

Now the issue of the environment is extremely interesting to me. It is no secret that the destruction of the environment was due to the "rise of the West," which really is code for the rise of the white man. As a student who is studying this as her major, I am constantly having this fact repeated to me over and over again. Their is a duality which seems to exist in the persona of the white male environmentalist. He elevates himself above everyone else, and yet feels guilty for doing so at the same time. Apparently, not guilty enough, since the conditions of our planet remain on a path to destruction to a future that looks starkly bleak. A small group of rich white men make decisions that affect a large number of impoverished women of colour. And again I repeat, the future looks starkly bleak.

It is also no secret that with the "rise of the West" came the restrictive bindings of patriarchy. I am tired. Have I said so before? I never considered myself a feminist before taking the time to do some research into the concepts of Ecofeminism, but I guess now I must make this consideration. I just want to be free. I just want to be heard. I just want my story told, as a woman, as a person of colour, as a human being. Because I am important, and I will not be forced into some neat little category, to be filed away, and forgotten...

Right now I'm listening to: