Buying Your Freedom

Too often we tell our children that their bodies are the most precious things they have and that they shouldn't just give them to anyone, but that advice is wrong. The most precious things we have are our integrity, values and character (ie, our soul), and once we sell those things we can never truly get them back.

Yet too many people wilingly trade their soul to gain things like status, popularity and wealth. In the process, they wind up selling off—little by little—the essence of who they are, eventually becoming people they don't even recognize.

Maximum:

You can buy your freedom or sell your soul, but you"ll sell for brass and pay with gold.

Suspects, First and Citizens, Second.

Whether or not people want to admit it, there is a DOUBLE-STANDARD with regard to how law enforcement officers (LEOs) generally treat "perceived" threats when the person is white versus black. From Oscar Grant to Tamir Rice to my old acquaintance Casper Banjo, a disabled septuagenarian who was gunned down in 2008 by a police rifleman who claimed he was pointing a "replica gun", black men and women—from adolescence through their senior years—are initially viewed by LEOs as threats and not citizens. On the contrary, white people, regardless of the situation or circumstance, are first treated like citizens—with all the associated rights, including the presumption of innocence—and only labeled suspects when it is either obvious or necessary to do so.