David Cormack
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Being For The Benefit of Mr White
🕑 Added 2020-06-01 01:11:17 +0000 UTCThe United States is burning. This seems to represent a touchpoint of race and class warfare. Triggered by yet another senseless murder of a black man - George Floyd - by police, following hot on the heels of a no-knock raid in Kentucky that saw Breonna Taylor murdered by police and her boyfriend arrested for shooting back at what he assumed were people breaking into his house.
He's since been freed without charge but Breonna remains dead.
The protests against police brutality were met by police brutality, as journalists, protesters, people in cars who happened to be in the area, and even folks on their own property videoing, all came under fire from rubber bullets and pepper spray. In New York a patrol car drove through a crowd of protesters - reminiscent of the murder of Heather Heyer by a white supremacist in Charlottesville at the "Unite the Right" rally in 2017.
As you'd expect the "President" has poured gasoline onto this explosion of rage, retweeting people who said the riots were done by the "radical-left" and calling them domestic terrorists. He was a lot more forgiving of the white fuckwits who stormed capitol buildings with guns on full display when they were asked to go into lockdown for the pandemic.
All of this has made me think about what it's like in New Zealand. And I'm not for a second naive enough to think that police brutality and racism doesn't occur here - it's why the ArmsDownNZ movement is so important. We cannot allow our police to be militarised like they have in the United States.
But it's also made me stop and think of the ways I've benefited from white supremacy. If you're white, you've benefited from white supremacy. You may not be a white supremacist but be it through colonisation or slavery, or subconscious racism you, as a white person, have benefited from white supremacy. And it's an uncomfortable thought. That I, someone who I like, have benefited from something I considered so evil. I'm not a KKK member. I'm not a nazi.
No but I am white, and I have benefited from structural racism and the oppresison of ethnic minorities since well before I was born and right through my existence too.
This is not a "kill all white people" message. This is a "be aware of how you've benefited" message. And think about how you can help other people benefit without having to tread on minorities.
You might donate to a Black Lives Matter organisation or equivalent, you might speak out when you hear or see racism occuring, you might write to your political leaders - or even take up politics yourself - but something like racism, like white supremacy, must be fought constantly. Because it's not a one-off racist event, or an ethnic slur used, racism is a constant. We are born into racism and we will die in racism. But between those two events we can fight racism.
Comments
Maxine Manaena
Thank you!
Fenton Russell
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