Racism is a Relation Between White People
SEPTEMBER 4, 2020
by STEVE MARTINOT
In the midst of a pandemic, most people simply wish for a vaccine, a shot in the arm to make the threat of disease go away. These days, people adopt a similar attitude toward that other pandemic of racism and police brutality, the one that doesn’t go away. Many people are wishing there was a vaccine for that as well.
Rayshard Brooks got shot in the back because he fell asleep in a drive-thru line and the cops who woke him wanted to handcuff him. Breoona Taylor got shot by assault rifles getting out of bed to see who had just broken down her door; it was cops serving a faulty warrant. George Floyd, handcuffed and compliant, gets his neck squashed into the pavement. All were cowardly acts of killing. In each, a black person acted as any self-respecting human would.
A thousand black and brown citizens are murdered by agents of their government every year. We see them in videos on Youtube. It is the demonstrations that have wracked cities across the country demanding justice that are trying to be the vaccine.
It is with irony that many now remember the moment, four years ago, when Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the national anthem because of police killing black people. He was intentionally misinterpreted by detractors, though he stated clearly why he did it. How can you honor the anthem of a government that kills its own people? He was punished by blacklist for raising that issue. After watching Floyd die under direct police malice, some people wondered whether Floyd might be alive today if Kaepernick had been heard, and enough of us had taken his gesture against lethal racism to heart. In 2016, all he wanted was that people talk about what was happening, talk about race and whiteness, and how to stop the killing.
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2020/09/04/racism-is-a-relation-between-white-people/
= new reply since forum marked as read
