Featured The Dominant White Response to Baltimore Shows Why Black Residents are Justified

The Dominant White Response to Baltimore Shows Why Black Residents are Justified in their Anger

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It's in the defense of that property - those CVS stores owned by faceless individuals and those police cars being bashed in - that we've seen the strongest response from the dominant element of society. Social media is a good indication, but certainly not the only one. There, on sites like Facebook and Twitter, folks have spoken up about Freddie Gray for the first time. They've not come to the defense of the oppressed. Rather, they've spoken up in condemnation of those "animals," "thugs," and "criminals" who are "destroying their own city."

It's some combination of historical illiteracy and racial animus that drives the response. The prevailing white view has been tragically non-curious from an intellectual perspective. Rather than asking what might cause a people to risk life and limb in an effort to smash to bits their own neighborhoods, we've responded with a stupid, incredulous look on our faces. "Look at them," we've said. "Burning down their own city." We understand that we would never do something like that - not even when our favorite hockey team failed to win Lord Stanley's Cup. But we fail to ask that critical next question - if these people, who are in so many ways like us, would do something that we wouldn't think of doing, what must the conditions be like to drive that behavior?

To put all of the blame on the lack of historical literacy of white folks in America would be letting too many off the hook. Even if they don't know about the history of red-lining, the effects of the drug war, and how Jim Crow has shape-shifted into the modern criminal justice apparatus, many of these people would be unmoved if their eyes would open. Simply put, for them, it's racial animus that drives the boat.

But white Americans, many by their own choosing, are painfully unaware of the historical context in which a mostly-black protest in Baltimore might take place. What are these people so mad about? we ask, as if the answers are too complicated to be discerned from one extended reading of anything by Ta-Nehisi Coates or Greg Howard.

As a white man, I'm in little position to pass judgment on the behavior of people so beaten down that they have little hope. I'm certainly not in a position to offer the tired white liberal tripe, asking black folks in places like Baltimore to sit quietly and trust the system, waiting for me and those like me to rescue them through legitimate democratic means. While rioting, looting, and lighting stuff on fire is certainly not a productive way to achieve equality and real civil rights, I won't lie to these people and tell them that by doing so, they're undermining progress that might have been made through legitimate protesting.

That's because I understand the unfortunate reality that powers this kind of destructive protesting. That is - these people are aware in a way I can never be aware, that whether they choose to jump on cars, sing Civil Rights hymns, hold signs, or stage peaceful letter writing campaigns to their local congressperson, the situation is going to stay mostly the same.

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http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/...-Black-Residents-are-Justified-in-their-Anger

 

100% correct CTB.:thumbsup:

 

Perhaps we should tell that to the Native Americans as we give them back their land that the white man took. And white privilege does seem to blind folks into thinking that Blacks are lazy while Whites are hardworking. But that's one of those stereotypes that white people like to tell themselves. Classic case of the white superiority complex.

Right because everyone knows that all the white people in America earned what they have.

Where are the drugs coming from? White communities are violent and drug infested too. Might as well accept the facts.

Classy.

But your attempt to insult me doesn't change the truth.

 

Yes, history shows that the white privileged aren't concerned about much other than themselves. Explains their fascination with the current GOP.

 

Odd.
Whites killed the Native Americans.
Whites rioted in Boston Harbor.
Whites murdered, lynched, beat and brutalized Blacks during slavery and Jim Crow and continue to do so today.
Whites burned down black communities because they were doing better than the white ones.
Whites were in charge of the race riots in Chicago, Atlanta, East ST. Louis, Tulsa and Rosewood.

Gosh it doesn't take much digging to see who has really been violent in American History. I understand that the whitewashing of textbooks may not have revealed some stuff to you. But the truth is out of the bottle. And it ain't pretty.

WOnder how the fascination of young white kids with these things are explained as they are the reason why those things are popular and profitable.

 

White people were the first to riot in this country and have rioted far more than anyone else. What were they trying to achieve with their riots?

 

So? Changes nothing.