A NOTE TO MY WHITE FACEBOOK FRIENDS WHO ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT THE LOOTERS AND VIOLENT PROTESTERS: Consider how angry you are just from observing what people you dont know are doing in a place youre not from. Now think about how angry you might be if generation after generation after generation of your family and friends had been treated with disdain and racism--denied the right to live where they want to live (still today, despite redlining being illegal), denied the same educational opportunities that most white people take for granted (still today, as schools are more racially segregated in many places than they were before Brown vs. Board of Ed), denied the ability to walk down the street without the threat of police violence, denied access to an equitable legal and justice system (still today when African Americans represent 15% of overall drug users and the US and 60% of people in prison for drug crimes). Imagine how infuriating it could be for some African Americans to see your posts of disdain toward them when you inexplicably (except through white privilege) were not posting messages of disdain toward white people who were doing the same things at a friggin pumpkin festival or who have done the same things when their universities have won meaningless football games. You dont understand because you havent been the target of racism your entire life. Yes, there will always be a few people who turn protests into opportunities to do whatever they want to do, but thats not mostly whats happening, and the fact that youre acting as if thats the real issue here is a demonstration of why people who are targeted by racial oppression need to raise these issues in more and more serious ways. The fact that youre choosing to point your anger toward them reveals something about you. What do you think that might be? Violence begets violence. Read history. Revolutionary War. Violence begets violence. Civil War. Violence begets violence. The Revolutionary War was a situation in which repressed people used violence to free themselves from repression. It was a violent protest. Violence begets violence. Almost always people in the US who are analyzing these situations through lenses of whiteness omit every bit of history and react only to people who feel so silenced and repressed that they finally, FINALLY are responding with some measure of violence that just barely captures the tip of the iceberg of the violence they and their families have experienced for generations. Unless youve experienced that--unless you know what that feels like--what youre doing through your judgments about violent protesters is piling on the violence. (Do you wonder why nobody calls white people looters when theyre doing the same things that some of the Ferguson protesters are doing? Violence.) Why are so many white people more pissed off about how some people in communities of color are responding than to the issue to which theyre responding? Thats violence. When the hell are any of you going to post a series of rants on Facebook about THE REALITY that on average African Americans, who dont now and never have committed more crimes than white people, live with the constant threat of racism, even today, in the US, where we pretend everyone gets an equal shot? Thats violence. Why arent you pissed off about that?
Posted on: Wed, 26 Nov 2014 20:17:20 +0000
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