Read. This. The invisibility of black rage, black pain and black humanity are all elements of the same problem. That problem is a framework problem. Because Darren Wilson did not use any racial slur to refer to Michael Brown, our current racial frameworks are inadequate for helping your average all-American white people think through the contours of this encounter. That problem has plagued us since the beginning of this case; it dogged us throughout the Zimmerman trial; and it is helped along by the deep emotional dishonesty that characterizes race relations in the country...That inability to see black people as human, as vulnerable, as children, as people worthy of protecting is an epistemology problem, a framework problem, a problem about how our experiences shape what we are and are not able to know. The limitations of our frameworks are helped along by willful ignorance and withholding of empathy. So I continue to refuse to debate this issue with white people in my social circles because I recognize that the frameworks from which most of them work are frameworks that inherently foreclose recognition of black humanity and vulnerability. Those frameworks wield race-neutral notions of “reason” and “evidence” as a sword against unreasonable, heinous and racist acts. Until white people are ready to relieve themselves of an all-consuming belief in a colorblind legal system, ready to recognize the violence at the core of the ideology of whiteness (which is, I hope you hear me saying, different from calling all white people violent), ready to adopt a new framework, we can’t talk. We can’t talk because y’all can’t hear me.
Posted on: Thu, 04 Dec 2014 07:47:39 +0000
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