Star Member StarfishSaver (14,703 posts)
https://www.democraticunderground.com/100215371959
"Ghosted by Allies: Why BIPOC Still Can't Trust White People With Social Justice"
big long article... I'll summarize:
Whitey Bad. Black Power.
Star Member hlthe2b (85,191 posts)
2. I find some hope with the response leading to Chauvin's conviction, the immediate outrage to the
police killings of Daunte Wright, Ma'Khia Bryant, Andrew Brown JR-- with intense pressure for immediate transparency. It may be only a small step in the right direction, but I find it encouraging that at least a vocal minority of people-- across the race and ethnic spectrum-- continue to be engaged and unrelenting. Social justice can not come for anyone with rising fascism infiltrating local government, police, prosecutors, and courts. We have a common enemy and goal. I don't think those who recognize this are turning away. We can't let them.
Let's look at these three for a second:
D Wright: Felony warrant, attempts to escape, assaults an officer, accidently shot by officer who shoulda known better. Cop resigns. Chief resigns. Cop facing charges.
M Bryant: Tries to stab a bitch after assaulting another whilst police on scene. Shot and killed. Fair play in my book.
A Brown JR: died Wednesday after deputies tried to serve a warrant for his arrest on felony drug charges.
What do these have in common if we remove the race bullshit?
Star Member StarfishSaver (14,703 posts)
3. True
But some of the comments in response to other police killings that I'm seeing on DU and elsewhere dampen some of that hope. Too many white people love to say they're allies and abhor racism but only in the abstract - when it comes to real life, they are very quick and consistent in excusing it when it actually occurs.
Star Member Happy Hoosier (2,911 posts)
23. Because only your judgement matters, right?
Star Member wryter2000 (40,861 posts)
7. Sadly there was precious little outrage about Ma'Khia
People at DU are convinced the cop had to shoot her 4 times
Star Member StarfishSaver (14,703 posts)
12. And now they're making up lies about her
And they hide behind the claim that they're grateful the cop shot the Black child to save the Black woman because that proves that "Black Lives Matter." When we know that if the Black woman had been killed by the cop along with or instead of Ma'Khia, they wouldn't see her as a sympathetic figure at all, and definitely not as a victim, but as an unworthy person responsible for her own death.
Star Member hunter (32,811 posts)
34. Somehow white people always imagine themselves as the "good guy" the cops are saving...
... by shooting the "bad guys."
I've been attacked by people holding knives (I've got a big scar on my arm to show for it) but I'm thankful no cops showed up to shoot anyone.
Most police don't have the skills or the temperament that we should trust them with guns.
I've seen the police shoot people I wouldn't have shot.
I always think hard before I call the police for any reason.
Once the guns come out everything is FUBAR.
Star Member StarfishSaver (14,703 posts)
35. Yes
Many white people see cops as part of their "us" who protects them from "them" - making it difficult for them to think of them as anything other than the good guys and making it easy for them to see the people they harass, abuse and kill as bad guys who somehow did something to deserve the treatment they received.
Us, being law abiding citizens vs. them, criminal POSs...
Star Member electric_blue68 (3,102 posts)
60. I heard enough stories in the '70s & '80s of black people being abused...
....or later on in my life killed; adding in so many black people as friends, acquaintances, co-workers, being around black people in NYC - that knowing the violence of The South, knowing there were plenty of Northern racists that a lot of those stories of abuse had to be true.
There were just too many good black folks to be lying about that stuff.
Add in peacefully protesting against The Vietnam War seeing what cops sometimes did (on the news).
Particularly something in the '90s, and protesting against The Iraq War and seeing police treating (mostly white) protestors nastily (by white people's standards) - really made me feel that the cops weren't always on my side either There was stuff too protesting against when The Repugs had theur Presidential Convention in NYC.
.It's been a loooong time since I saw cops as totally good.
Star Member Bettie (11,064 posts)
15. When he had a non-lethal method right there. He made a choice to use a lethal weapon when a taser could have done the same thing without anyone dying.
Zeitghost (56 posts)
33. That is simply not true
Tasers fail to stop all the time, the officer saved that woman from severe injuries if not death.
Progressive Jones (3,762 posts)
38. That's the problem I have in this case. The dead girl absolutely WAS a deadly threat here, but a taser or a billy club would have been a better alternative. Or, maybe 1 or 2 shots, v. the 5 that I heard on the videos I've seen.
Star Member wryter2000 (40,861 posts)
45. And didn't anyone notice
That he easily might have killed the girl he was trying to save? With the two of them so close together and struggling, he could have easily hit the girl in pink or both of them. Four bullets would have been enough to kill both of them.
Did he have a partner with him? IF they'd both jumped into the fight, someone might have been stabbed, but it seems to me there was a far smaller risk of loss of life doing that.
Star Member StarfishSaver (14,703 posts)
64. And if he had killed the wan in pink, people would be bending over backwards
insisting that SHE, TOO was a thug who was responsible for her own death
Star Member Demsrule86 (53,060 posts)
19. It is insulting. The idea which has touted on this forum of late is all white people are racist...
whether they know it or not. And that is simply untrue.
Star Member electric_blue68 (3,102 posts)
58. uh ...
the proper description of what you are calling the OP is bigotted
. Anyone can be biggoted to a other group. In the USA racism is reserved for white people's biggotry towards black people because it has systemic and invidual (coming from the system) aspects
Star Member Bettie (11,064 posts)
22. For a lot of white people
Support is conditional upon the BIPOC always behaving in ways that are 'comfortable' for white people.
I do recall in every one of the police shootings, for example, there were people whose primary objective seemed to be to find a reason why "this one" was OK.
Oh, well, they didn't comply!
Oh, yeah, he complied, but he didn't do it right!
I remember so many people way back with Zimmerman, coming up with justification after justification as to why Zimmerman was entirely in the right and Martin deserved to die.
As a group, we can't be trusted.
That doesn't mean that individuals (many individuals) can't earn trust, but as a group, no, not now.
Hopefully eventually that will change.
Goodheart (3,598 posts)
26. That's simply slanderous
If you're going to ascribe a general characteristic to a group you should at least stick to how the majority within that group would behave, and NO, I didn't see a majority of white people on this board say Trayvon deserved to die, or that the majority of white people here try to make excuses for killing black people.
Speak for yourself.
Star Member Starfish Saver (14,703 posts)
28. And when any person of color criticizes any white person for being racially insensitive or racist certain white folks around here circle the wagons, swarm the thread and accuse us of "calling all white people racist" - and then lecture us on the proper, respectful, appreciative, and appropriate way we should engage with our great white saviors or else risk them walking away from the cause.
Goodheart (3,598 posts)
31. "Our great white saviors"? REALLY?
Your OP certainly DID attack white people in general. You have a history of that, in fact.
I'll put a shit load of money that Starfish Saver is lily whitye...
Star Member tonedevil (2,647 posts)
40. Some Wypipo make that necessary. /nt
betsuni (16,162 posts)
65. After the Trayvon Martin murder I saw so many comments from white people like
"I guess we'll never really know what happened" "There are two sides to every story." Now that we have overwhelming video evidence of these things, don't hear that as often, but still too many assumptions that victims must have done something wrong.
When I visit the States (I'm an obvious foreigner where I live) I'm amazed at how invisible I am. A middle-class middle-aged white woman -- nobody keeps an eye on me in case I cause trouble or shoplift or whatever. I could steal a car in the middle of the day on a busy street and nobody would notice. I think of all the crimes I could get away with. The contrast is inescapable and it is real, indeed.
Star Member Demsrule86 (53,060 posts)
18. I personally am sick of this sort of rhetoric. Don't trust anyone, and do it yourself... and see it
how well it goes. Everyone needs allies and trust is a decision you make or don't. This sort of thing drives allies away from a just and necessary cause-ending institutional racism and the dreadful police violence it causes.
Star Member StarfishSaver (14,703 posts)
30. If something that a stranger posts on a discussion board "drives away" anyone from the cause
of ending institutional racism and police violence, they aren't really an ally and the cause is probably better off without them.
BannonsLiver (12,093 posts)
68. What I'm fascinated with
Is the apparent belief from the OP that they seem to think they know all there is to know about white people, while white people are portrayed as bumbling dullards when it comes to understanding black people.
Perhaps that should not be a surprise given that is the popular narrative in the media and elsewhere. Personally, I feel like there’s always more to learn and I think that largely cuts both ways when different groups are attempting to reach a mutual understanding but maybe that’s too last century.
