Yesterday I read this article as the lead article on CNN’s website. I was surprised it was the lead story as the American media usually avoids journalism. And, while they surely didn’t point out the scary prospects of this Draconian measure of paranoia, it was still nice for once to read about my governments march towards fascism in an American media outlet instead of having to find out from the newsmedia of other countries.

Yet, the fact that the media published this and promoted it to its front page still doesn’t assuage my fears of a “Minority Report” or “Nineteen Eighty-Four” style existence.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/TECH/02/04/fbi.biometrics/…

My Thoughts and My Response

I do not identify myself as black or white. My father is white and my mother is black from Tanzania, that makes me a whole new race. For lack of a better term I am bi-racial, but I am also international and I have no “black-American” heritage. I learned quickly that just because I was as white as I was black didn’t extend certain racial priviledges my father had. And, for that matter, as far back as I can remember my father always told me I’d have to work twice as hard for everything as my classmates needed to. I refused to accept it, and though I often do, I still don’t believe it is right and I never let it as an excuse.

But the fact remained, when people see me they don’t think, “Oh, he’s half white!” They think “He’s black.” If they think of it at all. Growing up mixed in a world that said I was black meant I learned a few things incongruent with who I was as an international person and a bi-racial person. Assumptions about my history, identity, personality traits, amongst other things were stereotyped and prejudiced against or on me without my even speaking or moving.

One of the greatest lessons I learned, and thankfully in no great legal way amounts to “guilt by association” but the problem is I don’t have to be associated with the guilty. For many of my teachers who didn’t know my background, or neighborhood adults, or store employees, I was a potential trouble maker or shop lifter or ruffian because that was the stereotypes they unfairly place on black-Americans in this country. I was guilty by association, even though I’m not black and I’m not black-American and I’m not white.

So let me explain what this means through a fictional example:

Let’s say I’m at a convenience store and I’m waiting in line to pay. Let’s say the guy in front of me is white. Let’s say he shoots the cashier dead and in panic I run out the store. I might run out and even call 911. The killer takes the money and flees.

Now lets say they review the videotape and they can’t find the white man. Who are they going to look for next? Me. Let’s say they put me on trial and I go to jail for accomplice to manslaughter, maybe even second degree murder, armed robbery, accomplice to a first degree murder, and all this gets lumped as premeditated (guaranteeing felony even if a plea deal were struck). Even though the video shows I ran away from him. Even though I called 911. These things have a way of not mattering when they need to insituations of crime and the desire for “justice” (or more accurately revenge and retribution).

Now lets say that I’m in prison for a few years and they catch that white man, and he says I wasn’t involved and he says he didn’t know me. Well there’s a good chance I’m staying in jail. Likely for the rest of my life. Because see I was black and on the scene. It isn’t like a rape case where even the judge can’t refuse DNA evidence which overturns a conviction. See I was guilty of being black and in the wrong place at the wrong time.

But you say, “But I’m not black, and I’m an attractive white male or woman, what does it matter to me one way or the other what happens to you? In fact, there’s almost no chance I could be profiled in that way.”

Well, that’s what makes this FBI program so scary, such invasion of privacy, such categorical identification of persons is what the NAZIs were trying on a low level with stars on arms. This is your new government, a fascist regime. The first evil superpower of the 21st century.

Beyond that? If you don’t care about the destruction of innocent people in your name and with your tax dollars……and don’t see how this is Minority Report in real life, the first step to those who have always salivated over George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four……figure this: I just compared the American government to the NAZIs and called them fascist.

When they decide to clamp down because they can tap every American’s computer and email  and harddrive and internet history without a warrant and they arreest me and send me to a prison where the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus means I never reappear, and they look at who I emailed and who read this article and who ever talked to me and add it to the comprehensive genetic files they have, well then you too will see how this effects you.

You read this article, you may not agree with it. I may not even agree with it. Nobody has to agree with it. It doesn’t matter. When one freedom falls, they all eventually fall. Here goes privacy, when too will the freedom of speech be a thing of the past? I fear sooner than our generally optomistic minds and hearts like to think. And when they knock on your door, remember it will no longer be an excuse to be privildged in America.

Right now we American’s are safe. They only attack innocent Muslim’s as terrorists. That won’t last forever. Eventually it will be everyone who doesn’t agree with the opinions and status quo of the government. Soon not believing in the right religion won’t be the only thing resulting in them sending you to Guantanamo. So when they decide to inaccurately label me a terrorist because they don’t like that I see this country has moved from aristocracy to oligarchy……they’ll arrest you too. Welcome to 21st century America. You don’t have to be black anymore to be guilty by association. You opened this link, you didn’t even have to read the letters, you just gave up your “freedoms” on account of apathy and the New American Order.