KTLA news has confirmed that the body of Mitrice Richardson has been found after being reported missing almost a year ago. My prayers go out to her family and loved ones.
It was on September 17, 2009 (about 1:30 a.m.) that a visibly confused Mitrice Richardson was released from a police station in the Malibu area without any concern for her welfare because they released her into the night with no identification, phone or anyone to assist her in her confused state.
The circumstances surrounding her disappearance have always reeked! And from reading this LA Times article there are still more questions than answers. The article stated that the Los Angeles police department were the primary investigators in her disappearance based on where she resided and not where she went missing. It's puzzling that the sheriff's station that released her did not participate in her search until much later even though she was last seen leaving the Malibu Sheriff departments station. That is all kinds of 'something ain't right'. This very same article stated that she was a fixture on cable and TV news after her disappearance... she was never given the same amount of attention as a Natalee Holloway. <- That's a wikipedia link just in case you're wondering.
I hope that Mitrice's family will not allow the police to bury this case because there is definitely something foul going on. And if there weren't doubts about the shadiness and carelessness in the search for Mitrice it was definitely confirmed when the Sheriff's department scheduled a press conference to confirm Mitrice Richardson's death BEFORE they contacted her family and lost his cool when called on it!
I hope they find the person(s) responsible and sadly I fear that it will be an internal investigation of the people who were sworn to protect.
"Destroy the woman, Destroy the people."
Black people have been continually under siege in America since the day our African ancestors set foot on these shores in 1619 and the only difference in the last almost 400 years is our oscillating acceptance of it. There are some who will say that we are in a different time period and the things that our enslaved ancestors went through is not the same life that we lead today-- and in saying that they would be dead wrong!
Our history in this country --really around the world-- due to the horrors of slavery doesn't afford us the same latitude as white people because for centuries our culture and our people have been defined and maligned by them based on white superiority being the ideal. Just think about that for a moment... in order for them to be superior... colonialists went above and beyond to ensure that generation after generation Black people and white people would continue to pass down "white people's truth" of black inferiority to our children! For them to ascend they had to destroy us as a people and they chose the women as their path because if you destroy the woman then you definitely destroy the family.
It is absolutely imperative to our future that Black people stop continuing to make the mistake of seeing ourselves as "the same" as white people in this society!
For as long as I can remember I have always been interested in knowing where my ancestry began. It started with writing my family tree (as I knew it) on a piece of notebook paper--first, middle and last-- first, middle and last -- until everyone was accounted for. It always made me feel good to know that I knew my people but at a certain point (the age of 12) I realized that there had to be more. My family tree always began with my grandmother and ended with the youngest child born.
To go back further I would have to rely on the sources available to me. Off to grandma I went. She was rather forthcoming but only to a certain point. I began by asking her mother's name then her father's name which she answered but when I asked for their parent's names she turned and faced me and asked me why did I want to know that. I proceeded to tell her that I had been writing our family tree over and over again for years and it always began with her and I wanted to go back further. My grandmother politely and lovingly shut me down and told me that all I had was all I needed to know. Confused by her response I probed further by asking, but why? She just repeated that that was all I needed to know.
Being the ever inquisitive child I continued on and went to other relatives trying to find the answers to my questions, all the while I'm thinking that there was some sort of mystery to be solved and I was all about that. During my queries with other older relatives I was able to find out my maternal great great grandfather's name but then that was it-- nothing else for another 15 years-- no one was talking!
After family members started dying more relatives started asking questions and finally those that knew started talking. Suffice it to say my grandmother was not one of them and it still puzzled me as to why she wouldn't want to participate in our history being passed on to each generation. I would later discover that it had more to do with her not wanting to mentally connect to a part of most Black Americans past-- Slavery.
In college I was able to study Black history in depth going beyond the basic Black history month sanitized version that was sometimes taught. Needless to say, the truth about Black American's history in this country was extremely disturbing. Our present isn't going to be any better if we don't wake the hell up!
I have been able to trace my maternal history back five generations but there are holes in that history, as there is with most Black Americans. Because we were considered and listed as property on the United State Census prior to 1870, we have to try and find slave owners' records that might list our ancestor as an individual and not a number. I don't need to tell those who have started this process the degree of difficulty in finding this information.
The research continues (between bouts of anger)...
A coma... that has to be it! Right? It would explain why so many of us are behaving as if there isn't a hell of a lot of wrong going on in the way that this world operates when it comes to race... there is work to do and truths to be told! There are not enough people speaking out on BS (in any and all arenas) and too many are behaving as if it's okay that Black people and communities are failing-- and silence, deference and denial equals complicity.
The frustration and anger that I feel when I see the lukewarm concern about the negative way too many of us view and treat ourselves and each other, and the negative way we are portrayed en masse is overwhelmingly deplorable. I am a Mom (of a beautiful daughter) and I tend to always think about the world living up to EVERYTHING that it should be and in order for that to happen the "status quo" is NOT sufficient.
Regardless of how much we accomplish individually, love it or hate it, we live in a world that places people in "seemingly" identifiable groups based on the color of one's skin. What exacerbates that aspect "of life" in this world is the fact that a person's worth and potential is still attached to the color of their skin and not the 'content of their character'.
America will forever be soiled with the blood of a people that endured kidnapping, familial separation, rapes, beatings, murders and disenfranchisement [due to a government complicit in Slavery, Black codes, Jim Crow and Redlining] until it does right by the generations of people who were wronged. America's character is currently defined by the destruction of a people who built it and received less than what they should have in return.
For the record: I have no problem with people noticing the color of my deep mocha skin but I have every problem with being treated as less than or invisible because of it!
Truth To Be Told
1. We live in a white paternalistic sociopathic society that unfortunately continues to thrive.
2. Education for the children of America in regards to history-- is whitewashed, hollow and riddled with benign truths and horrendous lies. Why has that never been challenged on a national level? An unabridged and limitless education for our children is but one of the many important steps toward righting the wrongs that have been done and continue to be done.
I'm not finished... just getting started!
