Re: Corona Virus: is it the beginning of the end?
I think it's important to draw a line here.
If you take the situation apart, and put each piece into its own separate arena, then what you have is racism in one zone, and property damage in another.
They're both wrong. We can debate how wrong each of them are, but they're both fundamentally hurting someone. Either hurting that person's livelihood under capitalism, or hurting their freedom to live.
The problem is, the real world isn't a series of bubbles or separate zones. It's a hot mess. Everything gets stirred in with everything else. So you cannot disconnect racism from protests in this instance.
I find it interesting that very few people of colour in my life have gotten really upset about the protests. The closest they've come is to say that too much violence and too much damage is counterproductive, and I agree there.
Most of the people getting upset about the protests - not all, but most, in my experience - are white. That is significant. Go ahead, think about that. I'll wait.
But on a different note, who decides how much is too much?
It seems that most right-leaning people have decided that any violence, any damage, any burst of outrage, is too much. And why? Because it's easier to blame someone and to consequently dismiss their issues than it is to stare your own problems in the face and admit that they exist. Because doing that would mean that you have to do something about it. And starting down that road means accepting that most of the systems that prop you up are only doing so because they're directly or indirectly keeping others down. And I dunno about you, but while I'm quite sure there are right-leaning people of colour out there, I bet you the fair majority of them are white.
Noticing a trend here?
When people of colour start reacting strongly about an issue, white people have to get their damn voices in there too.
When people of colour do some damage because they're sick and tired of being oppressed, and they and their allies show some anger, it's white people who once again get to cry foul and howl the loudest.
Let me say this really bluntly, just once, for all the folks in the back who maybe aren't listening. Pick up your ears.
It's not. About. Us.
For once in our fucking history, the anger, the change, the upheaval, is not about white people. It's about setting right a thing that shouldn't ever have been wrong in the first place. Whites have had hundreds of years - yes, literally, hundreds of years - to enforce their will upon people of colour. When sly subversions didn't work, they resorted to violence extremely quickly. Revolts were suppressed. Doctors suggested that not wanting to be a slave was a medical condition and should be punished with forced infantilism and repeated physical abuse and torture. Housing projects were destroyed and people lost their homes. Blacks were relocated to less desirable parts of the neighbourhood. In America alone, did you know that "we the people" did not include people of colour in any way until the end of 1865? That's nearly a hundred years of your country's history where you didn't even acknowledge these people as people. And the white world at large has since spent another hundred and fifty years or so taking every friggin' excuse in the book to drag their heels.
When you protest the rioters, you are dragging your heels.
We know they're doing harm. We know that harm can be problematic. We know all of that. Stop trying to deflect from the larger issue.
Lives matter more than property.
People matter more than their goods.
And if you cannot get it through your heads that this is the way it should be, then you are part of the problem. I consider myself an ally, and I have no trouble whatsoever in calling out bad behaviour when I see it.
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