White people in America will demand that you respect the validity of our triggers. Trigger rights are in the Constitution, right? You would think so given the level of outrage and indignation over minor offenses. This hot flush of entitlement is especially palpable when it comes to matters of race. Most of us would never wear the outer wardrobe of racism, sewn from a fabric of pure hate, and we would definitely not consider ourselves racist in any way. We don’t use the N-word, after all, so that means we are not racist. We put our legs into our justice pants and sling our fairness jacket over our shoulders, but we don’t give much thought to how society might view our undergarments, as we have no intention of displaying them. When People of Color are being outright murdered by an unaccountable authoritarian force that we keep in place, we minimize the scope of the injustice by using cute terms like ‘bad apples’ to make it all seem small and easily manageable. Then we criticize their method of protest. We agree in theory that they have a right to protest, but we want “those people” to do it quietly, without disturbing anything. “This is not the way to protest” we magnanimously tell them when they kneel, or wear T-shirts that say “I Can’t Breathe” or use their celebrity as a platform. We bark out “Shut up and dribble” or “shut up and sing” with the supremacy of a plantation owner. Even those of us supporting this free-speech will still ask “How does destroying property solve anything?” without acknowledging that we considered their ancestors property to use and destroy at will. We pretend that this dynamic was all in the past and has no relation whatsoever to the current situation. The irony that our police forces were originally organized to return ‘property’ (slaves) to the property owner (master) is completely lost on us. We won’t even concede that we have Jim-Crowed our way to owning nearly all other kinds of property since. In that context, “property” is a perfectly appropriate target to protest the brute force of institutionalized racism. White people reject that assertion, and instead pontificate on protest etiquette because we have no aim towards actually solving anything. We know that a token reform just to mollify the uprising is not a solution, but we want to go back to ignoring it all, so we don’t even care when those ‘new regulations’ are completely ineffectual and don’t reform a damn thing. We will recommend the same approach the next time and pat ourselves on the back for taking ‘action’.
American racism must be solved by white people; we created it, we need to own it and crush it into dust. The first step is introspection. When we have an honest, deep-seated emotional reaction to a member of the police being killed – someone we don’t know anything about – and at the same time have a laissez-faire “such a shame” obligatory reaction to yet another person of color being murdered by police, we are unconsciously preserving the mindset of prejudice. If “I wonder what they did wrong” is still our first reaction at this point, we are not paying attention. Capital punishment for misdemeanors should produce a stronger reaction than a shrug. Vigilantes rendering trial-free verdicts for no discernible reason should produce outrage. After everything we have witnessed, we are somehow still quick to blame the victims (“If they hadn’t been blah blah blah …”). Our initial assumption before any facts are known is that the cop is the good guy and the person they killed is the bad guy. That black-and-white reality and its falsehood are ours to own. It is the most immediate and personal form of pre-judging. And if getting called out on this wads our panties, we need to step into the bathroom. It is a nice, private place to untangle our own racism underwear. And guess what? There’s a mirror.