White Violence Is Not Okay.

(Image: white couple in St. Louis pointing guns at Black Lives Matter protesters, credit CNN.com.)

Another Black man has been shot by police. This time it was 29-year-old father, Jacob Blake, who was shot 7 times in the back by police in Kenosha, WI on Sunday, August 23, 2020. He was reportedly trying to break up a fight between two women, and someone called the police for a domestic dispute. When the police arrived they drew guns on Jacob, who was standing next to his car with his three young children inside. Jacob, presumably knowing that he was doing nothing wrong, attempted to get inside his car, at which point a police officer standing behind him shot him, mere feet away from where his children were watching. Jacob was unarmed and non-threatening — he was shot because he was “not complying” with an arrest that was egregious and unnecessary, since he was doing nothing wrong. What’s mor, he should not have had guns drawn on him in the first place, much less been shot for not complying with an attempted arrest — that is not reason to kill a man. Period. Thankfully, Jacob survived and is now recovering in stable condition in hospital. He is paralyzed from the waist down.

As is to be expected, especially given the current climate of anger at the continued murder and brutality of Black bodies at the hands of police, Kenosha has erupted in protest and rioting. (For my opinions on such acts of resistance please read my June 5th article on Medium here.) Right now I actually want to reflect on what happened in Kenosha last night (Tuesday), which is that armed white men have been seen patrolling the streets and one such armed white man shot at protesters, killing two people and injuring one.

Now, I just want to stop here, for a moment, and acknowledge the deep pain and fear that is running through our country right now. It is terrifying to see city streets filled with angry people; it is terrifying to see stores looted and buildings and cars set ablaze; it is terrifying to watch as the normal, safe country that we have been used to gets disrupted and overturned. And we are all entitled to our very valid feelings in the face of such upheaval. BUT I also want to acknowledge that the “we” to whom I am referring above is specifically white people — because Black, brown, and Indigenous people have been living in a state of fear in this country for decades to centuries. It is only just now that we white people are beginning to experience such fear of a country in turmoil because Black people have said enough is enough and are demanding to be seen and heard, and are resorting to massive civil disobedience and, yes, rioting, because, as MLK Jr once said, “a riot is the language of the unheard.”

And it is important, too, to understand the context in which such rioting takes place, which is that Black bodies were looted from Africa and brought to America where their labor was and has been continually looted from them up to today through slavery (which literally built the wealth of this country), Jim Crow sharecropping, and mass incarceration, all the while their Black bodies have been continually brutalized and murdered. What is a burned building compared to that? What is a burned building compared to any ONE life irrevocably taken, much less the countless Black (and, btw, Indigenous) lives that have been mercilessly taken and destroyed for this country to be what it is today, and what it has been for the last 250 years. (For a couple of quick history lessons, look up the burning of Black Wall Street in Tulsa, OK in 1921, and Rosewood, FL in 1923, and the bombing of MOVE in Philadelphia in 1985 — buildings aren’t so important when they house Black lives, community, and economic security.) Kimberly Jones lays it out in this youtube video filmed after the killing of George Floyd, and when she says that we “are lucky that Black people want justice and not revenge.”

This brings me to the point I really want to make here: time and time again, after a Black person is killed or maimed in the streets (or in their own homes — Breonna Taylor, Botham Jean, Atatiana Jefferson…), we see Black people rising up and protesting, engaging in civil disobedience, and vandalizing property. I want to be clear, because the media is often lazy with this word: that is not “violence.” Protesting is not a form of violence, civil disobedience is not a form of violence, vandalism is not a form of violence, burning cars or buildings is not a form of violence, looting is not a form of violence. Those things are illegal, yes, but they are not violence. Violence is what is done to living beings, to bodies, to psyches. To Kimberly Jones’ point, what Black people by and large are screaming for in their expressions of rage through protest and riot is justice; if they wanted revenge then we might see them come at us with violence. But we don’t. Time and time again. White people on the other hand…

Again, citing context, Black and Indigenous people have been subjected to centuries of violence — yes violence — at the hands of white people and the white controlled state (i.e. through government policies and the police force). And time and time again when Black and Indigenous people have either created spaces of safety and prosperity for themselves or risen up against white supremacy or the white controlled state, they have been brutalized and slaughtered. And now, in 2020, as we witness the uprising of the Movement for Black Lives, aka the Black Lives Matter movement, across the country and the righteous flaring of rage at the continual murder and maiming of those Black lives, white America is getting very uneasy by being made to face not only our history but the reality of Black people demanding equality, demanding an end to white supremacy. And in response to that uneasiness we have seen myriad examples of white people violently attacking Black Lives Matter protesters — from driving cars and trucks into protesters in Charlottesville (2017), Minneapolis, Virginia, and Tulsa, to shooting protesters in Austin, Pennsylvania, Colorado, and now Kenosha, WI. These attackers are labeled vigilantes, but I think that is too generous — they are opportunistic racist murderers.

That is what terrifies me — the gall of these white people who feel so entitled as to take the lives of those protesting racial injustice, in order to protect their own social supremacy and privilege. It terrifies me and it breaks my heart. And I know — or at least I fervently hope — that these incidences of white racist violence are the last gasps of a dying order. But I also know that it is up to us — white folk — to make sure that they are. Because racism is our problem, white people’s problem. We created it, we harbor it, and we must end it. We must deal with our fears and insecurities in better, more mature ways than projecting them onto the bodies of Black people.

Yes, it’s scary to see the American way of life that we have enjoyed and benefited from for so long falling apart — but a) that way of life has always been on the backs and at the expense of Black (and brown, and Indigenous) people, and b) it is not the fault or the responsibility of Black people. Our society is falling not because Black people are rising up, but because we, white people, have created an untenable social order based on racial capitalism, both of which — white supremacy and capitalism — are a house of cards. White supremacy is a figment of racist imagination, dreamed up in the 16th century to justify slavery, and capitalism rests on a foundation of social inequality in which the rich can only get richer if the poor get poorer — they are both bubbles of ephemeral privilege and superiority, and they are popping. Good. The truth is, our society is falling because it needs to, because it must. Black and Indigenous people have known this for a loooong time, and they have suffered the consequences of this social order in the meantime. Now we, white people, are faced with the inevitability of having to surrender our imagined superiority and its attendant social privileges, and we are scared. And some of us are lashing out.

Because we’ve been taught that it’s okay to do so — violence against the bodies and pscyhes of people color has been modeled as acceptable white behavior. This is white supremacy: the belief that it is okay to perpetrate violence against people of color. This is what we are communicating when we turn a blind eye to police brutality, or policies that marginalize Black, brown, and Indigenous people, or racist speech, or even (or perhaps especially) the subtle aggressions of a racist joke or snide “off-color” remark. We are protecting and perpetuating white violence against Black, brown, and Indigenous people as much as when we remain silent in response to such aggressions as when we actively perpetrate or support them. This is what is meant by the slogan “Silence Is Violence.”

White people need to reckon with our history of and propensity towards violence. And we need to hold ourselves and other white people accountable for our aggressions against people of color and in the name and protection of white supremacy. Because this is not okay. Black and Indigenous people being murdered and brutalized by police is not okay. Brown people being held in detention camps is not okay. White supremacist murderers patrolling our streets, whether they wear a badge or not, is not okay. White violence is not okay.

We, white people, are better than this, but in order to be better we have to do better. We have to prove to Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples — we have to prove to ourselves — that we can change. And change always starts at home, with you, with me. It starts with each of us taking a critical inventory of our own racist pasts, our own racist thoughts and assumptions, all those times we snickered at a racist joke, or didn’t but said nothing. And it starts with each of us reckoning with our own capacity for violence, whether subtle or overt, and the fears that we use to justify such impulses towards aggression, and making a commitment, to ourselves first, that we will grow up and stop exporting our own psychological insecurities onto Black, brown, and Indigenous peoples lives and bodies. That is the only way that we can prove to Black, brown, and Indigenous people that we mean it when we say “Black Lives Matter,” or when we stand with people of color in solidarity against white supremacists, white supremacist policies, and white supremacy. Because that is how we end white supremacy, by confronting and changing it in ourselves. And it’s not on people of color to change us, or to believe us that we can change, it’s on us to show them.