Penny is Free!!! There Never Should Have Been a Trial.

By Phyllis Chesler

I am working on a new book and facing a challenging deadline but c’mon folks: This is a huge victory for the people of NYC. Yes, Neely’s family have threatened civil lawsuits; left-wing lawyers want to appeal this verdict; Black Lives Matter cultists might do what?? Accuse District Attorney’s Bragg’s office of racism? That would be interesting, given that Bragg is, as I wrote, a Race Man, interested in racial justice, not in true justice.

What exactly can white folk do to make up for the fact that slavery, shamefully, once existed here—as it did on every known continent—and still does? Yes, anti-black discrimination continued on our shores even after the Emancipation Proclamation but none of us were alive in the centuriees between 1619 and 1865; none of us were alive except a dwindling few who were born in the 1930s. Maybe a handful in the 1920s.

It has been argued that economic “reparations” will solve this moral agony. I wonder if even that will do it since racism may still exist. It has also been argued that the wealth of the Caucasian West is solely based on imperialism and colonialism that impoverished Africa and Asia.

Caucasian Europe was not the only continent that engaged in the slave trade. No one factors in the pervasiveness of slavery among Muslims, including Muslims of color, including Africans of color, which still continues in certain Middle Eastern countries. The fact is that Muslim leaders have engaged not only in anti-black and anti-white racism, but in imperialism, colonialism, conversion via the sword, white slavery, female slavery, and real gender and religious apartheid.

Please understand: Afghanistan was once a Buddist and pagan country. Iran was once filled with Zoroastrians and Bah’hai.

Ah, this sad and sorry world is filled with some good people, far too many bystanders, and some pretty evil dudes. Evil women too of course.

Just last night, I streamed a very feel good movie for my granddaughters, a film I’d seen before. “Hidden Figures” which is about the African American women who worked at the NASA space project, one of whom was an all-out genius. It depicted the early 1960s in Hampton, Virginia which was, in terms of racism, pretty disgusting—but it also depicted ambitious, brave, and very talented Black women who perservered against all odds and were successful. Peacefully so.

I dunno. Am I a racist for loving them—but for not loving the delusional, psychotic, homeless black men, like Neely, who are mentally ill—and for whom there may not be any treatement? Recently, an article in the New York Times’s magazine argues that schizophrenia and psychosis among black people (which they claim is twice the rate as among white folk), may also be caused by cultural stressors like racism. Depression, anxiety, insomina, suicidal ideation, PTSD—yes; schizophrenia, I am not sure. We can argue that poverty and racist doctors have led to black people, especially me, not wanting to seek treatment—for that may be true. But that alone does not and cannot cause psychosis.

What do you all think?

First published in Phyllis’ Newsletter