I resent the pressure now placed on black people to make a public show of condemning this act of violence against the police. Many of my friends obliged with pithy statements, with assertions that #AllLivesMatter, and even by posting blue ribbon memes to their pages. I will be doing no such thing. I reject the implicit argument that if I don’t publicly express outrage over two dead police officers that I must agree with them having been killed. I do not agree with the actions of a mentally ill killer. I wish Officers Liu and Ramos were home with their families this holiday season. There is a disingenuousness to the argument that those who disagree with the ways that the police serve black and brown communities are complicit in these killings. Nothing could be further from the truth. We do not blame the white community when young white men shoot up movie theaters, schools and public events. We do not argue that because those on the right have stridently resisted passing stricter gun control laws that they must have wanted the children at Newtown to be slaughtered. Yet, when Brinsley murdered these officers, too many white people took it as a sign of things to come, a signal that a band of black vigilantes would emerge from the darkness to slaughter “innocent” white people. One of the hallmarks of white privilege is the presumption of individuality given to each white person, so that their acts are never taken as indicative of a group. Yet, as soon as one mentally unstable black person rants about killing police as an act of revenge and acts on it, suddenly the entire black community is viewed as dangerous. We don’t talk about Ismaaiyl Brinsley in the way that we have discussed any number of white mass murderers over the years. salon/2014/12/24/americas_fear_of_black_rage_why_tragic_nypd_shootings_are_so_misunderstood/
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 21:57:33 +0000