You Can’t Compare Waco’s Biker Shootout With Baltimore Riots

This one is really bothering me. You need to know up front that a nice chunk of my upbringing was black culture. Black comedy, black food, and black friends. I don't think at the time I ever thought "that guy isn't the same color". It was just a different guy. Heck the first hillbilly I ran into made a greater impression than the first black guy.  Always, I don't guess that matters, I just want to say up front that I coming from a mental place of acceptance. Acceptance doesn't even seem to be the right word, because I just didn't realize being a different color meant anything until much later in life. With that in mind, I don't think you can compare these two incidents on any level.

So now we have some people using this biker shootout as a way to point out the differences between the way black criminals and white criminals are treated.  I don't really think you can do that.  First off, in Waco it was one (or more groups) fighting each other. They weren't fighting authority, they weren't claiming to protest, they weren't trying to destroy property (they were trying to destroy each other).  They weren't stealing or committing acts of vandalism or anything that qualifies as rioting. Much has also been made of the bikers sitting in a quarantine area texting and whatnot. I don't see the problem, if they were being peaceable and just waiting for processing, then I don't see the problem. In Baltimore I saw people throwing rocks, running away, attacking innocent people, looting, burning and destroying things that had nothing to do with the thing they were "protesting".  I will admit, I am only seeing what was shown on t.v., but if you are sitting texting instead of standing with a rock in your hand, you're damn right you'll be treated better.

I've also seen the "reverse-slam" of "what aren't white leaders speaking out?", because that is something often asked of black leaders. Well, I don't think we have a "white Al Sharpton" who travels from race incident to race incident as if he is the personal representative of all black people.

Another big one is the claim that no one is calling these people "thugs". Okay, they are thugs. The definition of "thug" is "a common criminal". It's probably safe to say that guys that shot each other are "thugs".  Guys who stab each other are "thugs". Anyone who went with the intention of committing a criminal act would be a "thug", but just like Baltimore, there were no doubt quite a few people there who never committed a crime and if they weren't randomly destroying stuff and were obeying police instructions, then they deserve to be treated like any other law abiding U.S. Citizen.

There is also a new trend of calling anyone who calls out a racist act a racist for noticing that race was an issue. It's as stupid as the sentence describing it sounds.  You can't compare person on person violence with person on police/on community/on random people violence. They're just not the same.

To wrap up, if the Crips & Bloods fought, you could compare it to the bikers in Waco. If the bikers in Waco had started burning and tearing up random things and attacking cops, then you could have compared it to Baltimore.  Otherwise, let's quit trying to compare these acts of violence and just try to figure out how not to have more in the future.