Pat Caraher
Aug 22, 2017 · 2 min read

The Sandra Bland incident is particularly haunting. Black, white, or otherwise, it’s hard not to imagine her despair… years of hard work, beating the odds stacked against all black women, thinking that it was all about to be flushed down the toilet over a charge rooted in the polarization that afflicts America. And to suggest that Tamir Rice wasn’t shot due to preconceived notions of color is pure folly.

I don’t see how Needforname got the idea that Ms. Ukoha was painting all white people with the same brush. Nor that whites are some sort of Messiah solving the world’s problems, being the author of so many of the ills of the last 500 years.

If you dig deeper, most forms of prejudice can be traced to the capitalist desire for economic subjugation of people who can be conveniently identified as “other”, and the fear of people rising up from under that yoke. Hell, the word race was pretty much invented to justify the looting of Africa. The superiority complex of slave owners has morphed into irrational fears of being supplanted or overrun, an idea which is both actively and passively condoned by the powers that be. Keeping the black (wo)man incarcerated and fighting amongst themselves is good for business, of which white privilege is a significant part. Throwing rocks at each other just plays into the hands of those who profit from the mutual subjugation of the common man, regardless of color… it serves as a distraction from the larger issue. I believe white rage against the “other” is as much a kneejerk emotional reaction to the excesses of capitalism, as it is any inherent desire to discriminate. It’s no coincidence that the vast majority of white power advocates are poor, uneducated, and marginalized by society for one reason or another. People on both sides need to lower their defenses a bit, elevate each other with love and mutual respect, and aim their discontent at the real oppressors, if we as a species are to break the vicious cycle that has plagued much of out recorded history.

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