#19. Snitching

Cooperating with police has long been an act Black people find unnecessary and in some cases, reprehensible. Doing so creates a disconnect between the Black person who finds common ground with the officer of the law and thus, they turn their back completely on the Black community at large, long suspicious of cops ulterior motives.

Life in Black communities across the nation can be difficult, as the constant struggle "to get rich or die trying" plagues those who find the notion of Acting White a pathway to riches. These idea are constantly at war with one another and never the twain shall meet.

Cities with a preponderance of Black people provide one constant regardless of the latitude or longitude: crime.

Crime is a gateway to riches in the Black community, but also represents a door to either the penitentiary or the morgue. Drug sales represent a thriving Black Market - no pun intended - that help fund gang activity, but beset a community already ravaged with hardship and heartache further, creating a vicious cycle of death and governmental promise to help eradicate the problems of the economic depressed areas.

The United States Government has worked hard over the past 50 years to help Black people in their communities succeed by spending quadrillions of dollars (factor in opportunity costs) to uplift the Black race in America.

These efforts have largely failed, providing one of the worst Return on Investments (ROIs) in the history of investments, but have yielded a net growth of corruption in majority Black cities and a complete hollowing of the infrastructure that made these metropolises (Detroit, Baltimore, New Orleans) so attractive in the first place.

Black children fed a steady diet of ESPN believe that financial rewards await them in the NBA or NFL and if those hoop dreams fade, a career in rap will yield money, women and prestige that surpasses even those of sports stars.

And when they make it big, an entourage of childhood friends and family will be "made men" and living the life of luxury provided by the one kid from the 'hood staying true to his roots.

But few Black people taste the success that is surprisingly fleeting for many Black sports or rap stars, and having eschewed education as a form of Acting White, the only way to make a living revolves around a life of crime.

It would be misguided to quote crime statistics now, for a glance at the nightly news cast reminds even the most faithful Disingenuous White Liberal of why they send their children to private schools.

Yet one thing is certain in Black communities as many crimes go unpunished thanks to one of the unwritten rules that governs Black Run America (BRA): never, ever turn your back on a brother or sister.

Black people view anyone who fails the paper bag test or whose skin appears darker than a glass of 2 percent of milk as a member of their tribe, a permanently disadvantaged group that is discriminated against by outside agitators bent on destroying their communities through clever ruses and guile.

No matter how heinous or insidious a crime is done within the Black community by a Black person, none dare dissent from the rule of never turning your back on a brother. To do so would have you branded with a letter far worse than one Hester Prynne was force to wear in The Scarlett Letter.

Black people must never be branded with an "S", a dreaded word that is on-par with an Uncle Tom or a Clarence Thomas. Deviating from the script of perpetual victim-hood and admitting that Black-on-Black crime is a hindrance to community development and trust would jeopardize the whole enterprise of Black Run America.

One must always work for the betterment of Black people and if that means turning your back on wanton criminality and violence, then so be it. Better to allow the endurance of evil then to admit that white people aren't the cause of Black peoples lot in life.

The "S" word is the true "whose name must not be spoken" and the fear of being labeled one in the Black community is greater than that of Voldemort in the Harry Potter stories.

Black-on-Black crime doesn't happen. Rapes, murder, petty thievery, larceny, drug deals and violence are all creations of "The Man's" mind intent on keeping Black people in their rightful place.

Snitching is that "S" word that Black people fear to utter in any speech, for the repercussions of being branded one are rarely survived. You see, Black people don't like snitches and have placed an imaginary bounty on any head of the Black person who dares go against their one and sides with the police and the corrupt United States judicial system that dares go after Wal-Mart PA announcers who demand the involuntary expulsion of all Black people from the store.

Those who snitch are no better than the police who patrol the Black community hoping to engage in a Rodney King incident of their own.

In fact, a campaign was started to Stop Snitchin' and to protect Black criminals:

Stop Snitchin' refers to a controversial 2004 campaign launched in Baltimore, United States to persuade criminal informants to stop "snitching," or informing, to law enforcement. Some public officials and others^[who?] say that it is a campaign used by criminals to frighten people with information from reporting their activities to the police.^{[citation needed]} "Stop Snitchin" is the name of a specific Baltimore-based home-made DVD that threatened violence against would-be informants, and the name or theme of several hip hop recordings.

While the slogan "Stop Snitchin' had existed since at least 1999, when it was used by Boston-based rapper Tangg da Juice,^[1] the Stop Snitchin' campaign first gained national attention in late 2004 in Baltimore, Maryland, when a DVD released by Rodney Bethea ^[2] titled "Stop Snitching!" began to circulate. In some footage, a number of men claiming to be drug dealers address the camera, and threaten violence against anyone who reports what they know about their crimes to the authorities. This threat is directed especially towards those who inform on others to get a lighter sentence for their own crimes. Notably, NBA star Carmelo Anthony, a former Baltimore resident and now a part of the Denver Nuggets basketball team, appeared in the video.^[3] In subsequent interviews, Anthony claimed that his appearance in the video was a joke,^[4] the product of his neighborhood friends making a home movie. Anthony claims that the film's message should not be taken seriously.^[5] The publicity of Stop Snitchin' identified several drug informants and corrupt police officers in the Baltimore area such as former BPD officers William King and Antonio Murray who were sentenced to 315 and 139 years in prison, respectively, following an investigation caused by the DVD which identified the officers as drug dealers.

The important book Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice painstakingly documents the reality of the stigma that has been placed on Black people who dare snitch. The are pariahs, shunned by the Black community and in some cases end up beaten or worse, dead.

Witness a rape? Better not snitch, or else your family will pay! A drug deal gone wrong that takes a turn toward violence and ultimately homicide? Best be keeping those lips sealed, boy!

At a subsidiary of The Black Planet Universe (Blackplanet.com), a writer questions the validity of snitching:

The main misperception about the controversially popular “Stop Snitching” ideology that is now considered a staple of the Black community is that it’s ubiquitous. Black people are, in no way and under no circumstances, ever supposed to volunteer, aid, assist or even acknowledge law enforcement efforts in our communities.

Of course, the origin of the “Stop Snitching” ethos made a lot more sense. The term was originally coined to govern the conduct of coexisting criminals, sort of a Black take on the Mafia’s omertá-or code of silence.

In other words, if you and I were together in a criminal enterprise and I got busted, I was not supposed to snitch on you. I was supposed to do my time like a man or a “standup guy” and trust that you’d be on the outside handling my affairs in return for my silence.

Michael Vick could have used such friends. So could TI.

Eventually however, both the expression “Stop Snitching” and the mentality behind it extended to the point where it more or less suggested that if something, even something criminal, didn’t have a directly adverse affect on you then you should mind your business and stay out of it.

Now “Stop Snitching” has ballooned to the point where we’ve had to cringingly watch our dear friend, rapper Cam’ron, explain to Anderson Cooper on 60 minutes that even if he lived next door to a serial killer, he’d move away before he’d tell the police.

Needless to say, “Stop Snitching” has gone way too far.

We no longer live in Africa, folks, where our elders police our communities. If a gang of us were to get together now to beat up or kill some pedophile or serial killer, we’d all go to jail!

SBPDL lives by one motto: Those who do evil to others must be punished. Black people live by an entirely different ethos: those who do evil to others within their community must be protected from snitching.

Stuff Black People Don't Like includes snitching, one of the highest offenses against Black solidarity that can be occur (up there with Acting White), as the Black people must maintain strength through the unity of their community.

It is said snitches get stitches. In the Black community, snitches get worse judgment handed down whose verdict they can't supplicate: they are a traitor and performing an act of treason to their Blackness.

Black life expectancy is low and Black levels of incarceration are high. Black people commit more crime, thus the reason for the high level of incarceration and low levels of life expectancy. There is a correlation between the two.

What do you think would happen if snitching was tolerated? A lot more Black people in jail and a life expectancy rate much, much lower.