Remains of Black Children Killed in horrific 1985 Police Brutality Incident Used in Coursera Course

[Tavernade]

The Coursera description is truly something.

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I could be misinformed but 'usually' forensic anthropology is for unknown bodies or people looking for how someone was murdered. We know how they were murdered and exactly who was in the house. It's not like a case where there's a Jane/John Doe found in the woods.

 

[mael]

I learned about this yesterday night here and I still can't wrap my head around the ghoulishness and outright evil on display.
Is there anything that can be done about it?

From this short rundown of the whole thing

It seems like it was your run of the mill cult except that they were black people involved so of course they couldn't be left to their own device and they had to be killed or maimed.

 

[Powdered Egg]

That bomb destroyed a whole Black neighborhood. I doubt they were properly compensated.

 

[ShadowSoldier89]

every time the MOVE bombing comes up its so telling how this act of government sponsored racist terrorism was scrubbed so quickly from the books, with how many people are just learning of it.

I live in Pennsylvania and didn't learn of it until my 20s

 

[Dyle]

The Coursera description is truly something.

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There's nothing particularly strange about that description, personhood in forensic anthropology refers to establishing a name to human remains with certainty, so personhood is lost in situations where remains cannot be positively identified, whether it's due to incomplete remains or multiple victims which could be confused with one another.

 

[Violater]

You guys really didn't know about the MOVE bombing? Among my circle, it is pretty common knowledge. Then again, my circle are all socialists, so they probably know much more about America's true face than most people.

EDIT: For anyone who wants to know what I'm talking about, you should read this. It is a very good resource on the crimes of the USA. Many of these incidents are not taught in schools.

essays/us_atrocities.md at master · dessalines/essays

A few essays on communism. Contribute to dessalines/essays development by creating an account on GitHub.

github.com

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After sitting through a school board meeting just this week to hear some parents complain that their children were being taught about racism and police brutality I can see why it's not being taught in schools.
People were railing against literal history and comparing it to child abuse.
I almost shit my pants when one parent said "White privilege doesn't exist"

 

[ChubbyHuggs]

Wait, I'm confused. How do they know those are the remains?

 

[Cheesebu]

I watched a documentary on this that was infuriating. When one child wandered out of the blaze a cop literally said something like "hold on, I don't trust it." and finally one of the cops was like fuck this guy, I'm going to pick up that child.

They were already terrified because even as it burned cops were still blind firing into the building.

 

[krazen]

Wait, I'm confused. How do they know those are the remains?

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Medical examiner at the time gave it to an outside academic forensic expert to make sure his findings were correct, its from the scene of the murder. The problem was that paper trail dies there and those remains were never returned and were forgotten about.

While the institutions involved claimed they didn't have it when asked, apparently it was well known in that dept that they had em; to the point someone finished the work around five years ago and had an online class based on those findings without trying to return the remains.

 

[Trejo]

Holy fuck this is beyond horrifying. Makes sense for me to not know about this but how can americans not know about this either? It'd be like no one in Mexico knowing about the Tlatelolco massacre.

 

[Deleted member 17092]

Anyone apologize for this yet?

 

[DBT85]

This very story was mentioned by a character the Rookie TV show in the last week. It was supposed to have been her grandma's house.

 

[Deleted member 17092]

Reading up more on MOVE pretty interesting. Like they burned/bombed an entire city block over one house. Insanity.

Literally just let it burn.

Living in Minneapolis I'm still pissed about the FD response to the Chauvin fires.

They coordinated with the PD, saying they would not go and put out fires.

There needs to be a damn investigation into all of that and I haven't seen it.

They have white supremacists pegged even as being involved but I haven't seen any arrests or press conferences.

 

[RichardHawk]

I got lucky in high school to have an English teacher that taught us about MOVE (he also gave a few of us copies of black panther writings). It's fucked this isn't taught to kids or anyone really.

 

[fluffydelusions]

This very story was mentioned by a character the Rookie TV show in the last week. It was supposed to have been her grandma's house.

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Was about to post this

 

[Chief Malik]

Nothing white people do surprises me.

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Yup, NOTHING.

 

[demondance]

this entire thread is a huge ball of what the fuck as someone who had not heard of the MOVE bombing

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i remember the way it used to be a punchline how paranoid black people often are about the police, the government. They were always right about everything. The history more than backs them up.

"The CIA helped flood the black community with crack to fund illegal weapons buys" is fucking true! The MOVE bombing happened! But people, often white people, reflexively treat you like an idiot for acknowledging these things.

 

[Keasar]

Fuck the police.
Fuck capitalism.

 

[Turnbuckle]

What the fuck?!
I've never heard of anything about any of this.
I've got some reading to do.

I can't believe it, but I can believe it.
Fucking terrible

 

[RedEye]

they literally had their bones in cardboard fucking boxes I'm so sick of being black in this country man

 

[dabig2]

KNew it was MOVE from the date. I would be more surprised if they treated the remains with the proper respect.

i remember the way it used to be a punchline how paranoid black people often are about the police, the government. They were always right about everything. The history more than backs them up.

"The CIA helped flood the black community with crack to fund illegal weapons buys" is fucking true! The MOVE bombing happened! But people, often shire people, reflexively treat you like an idiot for acknowledging these things.

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Right?

I wish we all delved a bit more into the civil rights era a lot more and talked about the arc of "progression" here when it comes to virtually every facet of our current society.

Malcolm X and MLK had plenty to talk about 60 years ago when it came to the system and how it oppresses all of us, particularly on black people.

They lived, educated, inspired, and then died all before:
- a Drug War
- a racist Vietnam draft in a racist war
- police militarization taking off
- the rise of the prison industrial complex
- the complete eradication of worker unions
- the complete abandonment of universal healthcare
- <fill in stupid Amerikkka shit here like how the black-white wealth gap is as large today as it was when they were alive>

And we're just supposed to take on the chin and just trust white people to eventually figure out their bullshit? Trust the process? No thanks, America.

 

[MetagrossMaster]

Also don't forget about the Tuskegee Experiment. Or, as it was officially named the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male". Basically they secretly infected over 200 black men with syphilis and the observed them for over 40 years. These people were not treated at all, despite the fact that penicillin was already known as a treatment for syphilis. By the end of the study, only 74 men were still alive. Not only that, but 40 of their wives had become infected, and syphilis was passed on to 19 of their children.

 

[demondance]

Also don't forget about the Tuskegee Experiment. Or, as it was officially named the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male". Basically they secretly infected over 200 black men with syphilis and the observed them for over 40 years. These people were not treated at all, despite the fact that penicillin was already known as a treatment for syphilis. By the end of the study, only 74 men were still alive. Not only that, but 40 of their wives had become infected, and syphilis was passed on to 19 of their children.

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No better than anything Mengele got up to. Yet so many well-meaning people are so propagandized, you can tell them this directly and they will refuse to acknowledge what it really means for black people in this country. Why it's still relevant today. In fact, they will shut you down and put active effort into smearing you for even mentioning it.

if we are going to move forward we have to acknowledge what this country truly is at its rotten core. People are waving around the bones of the child victims of our society, on stream, without a second thought as to what that means. Our "progress" fails to have material results for almost anybody who doesn't have the wealth to bypass some (not all) of the racism intrinsic to our way of life.

 

[meph]

UC Berkeley has a similar problem with holding on to bones from Native American Ohlone. 8,000 people (more from before that have slowly been repatriated). In a basement. From excavated burial mounds.

 

[GoldenEye 007]

Also don't forget about the Tuskegee Experiment. Or, as it was officially named the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male". Basically they secretly infected over 200 black men with syphilis and the observed them for over 40 years. These people were not treated at all, despite the fact that penicillin was already known as a treatment for syphilis. By the end of the study, only 74 men were still alive. Not only that, but 40 of their wives had become infected, and syphilis was passed on to 19 of their children.

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Wasn't shut down until the early 1970s.

 

[krazen]

When I posted this up, it was from a local pbs affiliated news rag and was just flying around academic twitter mostly about the ethical issues which is why I wanted to get more eyeballs on the story.

THANKFULLY it looks like bigger orgs are picking it up and heads will roll.

Bones of Black children killed in police bombing used in Ivy League anthropology course

Remains of those killed in 1985 Move bombing in Philadelphia serve as ‘case study’ in Princeton-backed course

www.theguardian.com

 

[Mammoth Jones]

When I posted this up, it was from a local pbs affiliated news rag and was just flying around academic twitter mostly about the ethical issues which is why I wanted to get more eyeballs on the story.

THANKFULLY it looks like bigger orgs are picking it up and heads will roll.

Bones of Black children killed in police bombing used in Ivy League anthropology course

Remains of those killed in 1985 Move bombing in Philadelphia serve as ‘case study’ in Princeton-backed course

www.theguardian.com

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2021 and we still need media attention for fuckers to be forced to do right by the bones of our babies. Just disgusting.

Le sigh.... no one gives a shit until they are pressured to...

Any decent human being would have just returned those remains.

 

[dabig2]

Probably deserves its own thread, but this one is still relevant so giving it a bump.

Today, Philly is holding its first remembrance of the terrorism it inflicted on its black citizens.

Philadelphia holds day of remembrance for 1985 Move bombing that left 11 dead

Occasion overshadowed by disclosure that bones of children who died held for almost four decades by University of Pennsylvania

www.theguardian.com

Philadelphia on Thursday marks the city's first official day of remembrance for the 1985 bombing of a Black liberation group in which 11 people, including five children, were killed and an entire African American neighborhood burned to ashes.

The commemoration of the city's aerial bombing of the Move organization is being billed as a day of "reflection, observation and recommitment to the principle that all people are created equal". It follows last year's formal apology by Philadelphia city council for having committed one of the worst atrocities in America's long history of racial violence.

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buuuuuuuuuuut

The occasion has been overshadowed, however, by the discovery last month that the bones of two of the five children who died in the inferno have been held for almost four decades in the anthropology collection of the University of Pennsylvania. The children are believed to be Tree Africa, who was 14 when she was killed, and Delisha Africa, 12.

The girls' parents were unaware that their children's remains had been kept by the university as anthropological artifacts rather than buried. The bones were used as a "case study" in an online forensic anthropology course posted last month by a Penn professor working in conjunction with Princeton University.

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While it's good to see this terrorism acknowledged, it basically redefines "too little, too late".