Imagine you are an EMT. You get summoned to the scene of a horrific accident. You get rid of the Starbucks coffee you’ve been sipping on for the last hour. It’s been a slow morning, suddenly some excitement. This is why you are an EMT. You know the dangers of the world we live in and you want to do your part to help make it a better place for everyone. 

As you pull out, sirens piercing, and you get more information about the accident you push down on the accelerator even harder. You get to the scene of the accident and you immediately get a sense of how terrible the situation is. It’s worse than you thought! You are shaken to the core by how bad it is, but you do not freeze up. You are a professional, and like the pro that you are; you begin to assess the situation to see where you are needed most. 

There are dead bodies lying all around. Some people are badly injured. Some are bleeding profusely, some are unconscious, others have have broken bones, some are in shock. The scene of the tragedy is really dreadful, but in the midst of all the horror, you also notice that some of the people involved in the accident escaped with some injuries that are not as bad as the others. They definitely need medical help, but in the mean while they can apply some self care, do what they can to ease their situation, and perhaps bare the discomfort until more help arrives.

As you and your team begin applying first aid to those who need it the most, one of the people who is not so badly injured begins to complain that you are not treating the scrathes on his face. Another man walks over to you while you are treating an injured child bleeding profusely on the ground. The man complains that he has a really big bump on his forehead and he needs you to turn your attention to him. He is distracting you as you try to stop the bleeding on the child. You ask the man with the bump on his forehead to step back. He walks over to another member of your team and begins to complain to the technician applying life saving CPR on another victim of the accident. 

As noted before these other people do need medical attention, but compared the other patients that your team has to concentrate are the priority. Losing patience, as you continue to treat the patients who really need your life saving skills, and the badly injured, the less injured people begin complaining that you are ignoring their injuries. They continue to hinder you from doing your job.

You try appealing to their sense of reason by pointing out all of the people who badly need your attention more that they do, but it makes no difference to the people harassing you as you try to do your job. They will not listen and they accuse you of deflecting. They claim that you do not want to help them because of other reasons, and you are just using all of those badly injured people as excuses to avoid helping them. 

Of course this is not a real scenario and it is hard to imagine any thing like this ever really happening, but this can be likened to some segments of black America, but with a slight twist. Many black Americans keep complaining about the lesser injuries, and sometime death that occasionally come at the hands of  the police, and they ignore all of the bleeding taking place in their own communities.

They look at the thousands of dead bodies, the carnage, the chaos and the mayhem caused by other black people taking place in their own streets, and they don’t seem to be bothered by those issues as much. The only thing that matters to these black people is when something unfortunate happens with the police, or some act of racism.

When sober minded people attempt to point out that anger over police misconduct is understood, but it is not as big a problem as black people think it is, too many black people get even angrier. When people point out that addressing the problem of black on black violence is an issue that is exponentially larger, and that needs more urgent attention than police brutality; too many black people accuse those pointing  this out, of deflecting. And the vicious cycle continues.

Facts do not matter to them. What matters more than anything is basking in, and maintaining the posture of victim. 

Oh well, that’s just deflecting.