When Forgiveness, Flags, and Gun Control Isn’t Enough Because White Nationalists Try To Bleach Rainbows By Using Black Blood To Soak Stolen Land
Be forgiving.
Remove the Confederate flag.
The best way to control guns is to have more registration, to know who owns firearms, and add more restrictions to who can own one.
After the #CharlestonShooting, these have become the three most popular and/or discussed actions, according to corporate media and elected officials. Actions; the verbs; the most popular suggestions of what should be done: forgive, change flags, regulate guns.
What strikes me is just how ineffectual each of these suggested actions are when we consider that this nation faces an insurgent, armed group willing to commit domestic terrorism. You cannot help but to then believe that such feeble solutions can only become popular because they are intended to protect a social group that is viewed unsympathetically and believed to be undeserving. In a nation-state that proposed itself to be a political community based on ideas of equality and protection, and made justice a priority of government, recommending forgiveness, changing flags, and controlling guns rings as an unjust response to what happened to the #Charleston9.
I’m not talking about what the courts and legal system will do to bring about “justice.” I am focusing on the unjust responses from this society’s most popular thought leaders and elected officials. I am appalled at their poor response to Black suffering due to violence. But unfortunately, this is part of a historically pattern of delayed or incomplete responses to Black pain.
Wilmington N.C. Nov 13, 1898
Wm McKinley: — President of the United States of America,
Hon- Sir,
I a Negro woman of this City appeal to you from the depths of my heart, to do something in the Negro’s behalf. The outside world only knows one side of the trouble here, there is no paper to tell the truth about the Negro here, or in this or any other Southern state. The Negro in this town had no arms, (except pistols perhaps in some instances) with which to defend themselves from the attack of lawless whites. On the 10th Thursday morning between eight and nine o clock, when our Negro men had gone to their places of work, the white men led by Col. A. M. Waddell, Jno. D. Bellamy, & S. H. Fishblate marched from the Light Infantry armory on Market st. to Seventh down seventh to Love & Charity Hall (which was owned by a society of Negroes and where the Negro daily press was.) and set it afire & burnt it up And firing Guns Winchesters. They also had a Hotchkiss gun & two Colt rapid fire guns. We the negro expected nothing of the kind as they (the whites) had frightened them from the polls by saying they would be there with their shot guns. So the few that did vote did so quietly. And we thought after giving up to them and they carried the state it was settled. But they or Jno. D. Bellamy told them [illegible words] in addition to the guns they already had they could keep back federal interference. And he could have the Soldiers at Ft. Caswell to take up arms against the United States. After destroying the building they went over in Brooklyn another Negro settlement mostly, and began searching every one and if you did not submit, [you] would be shot down on the spot. They searched all the Negro Churches. And to day (Sunday) we dare not go to our places of worship. They found no guns or amunition in any of the places, for there was none. And to satisfy their Blood thirsty appetites would kill unoffending Negro men to or on their way from dinner. Some of our most worthy [illegible] Negro Men have been made to leave the City…
I call on you the head of the American Nation to help these humble subjects. We are loyal we go when duty calls us. And are we to die like rats in a trap? With no place to seek redress or to go with our Greiveances?
Can we call on any other Nation for help? Why do you forsake the Negro? Who is not to blame for being here. This Grand and Noble Nation who flies to the help of suffering humanity of another Nation? And leave the Secessionists and born Rioters to slay us. Oh, that we had never seen the light of the world. When our parents belonged to them, why, the Negro was all right. Now, when they work and accumalate [sic] property they are all wrong.
If you studied the history of African-descended people in this country, then you see that they have suffered violence in many forms. Lynching did not require guns. Bombing churches did not require guns. Burning down homes and businesses did not require guns. Look at the racial violence towards Blacks, in the form of mass murders, from the earlier 20th century: Colfax, LA (1873); Wilmington, NC (1898); Atlanta, GA (1906); East St. Louis, IL (1917); Elaine, AK (1919); Tulsa, OK (1921).
Guns was only one weapon, along with physical assault, arson, cannons, lynching, et al.
One can only use their imagination to think about what a committed, well-trained, White nationalist could do to commit violence and bring harm to Blacks in the 21st century: bioterrorism, drones, sophisticated bombs, and on…and on.
It is not just that Dylann Roof believed that Whiteness was superior to everything else. Roof also believed in an White Supremacist Nation-State. He was an unapologetic, uncompromising White nationalist. He wanted a political community and a social structure that was entirely White. Dylann Roof was willing to achieve this by any means necessary.
There does not seem to be any hysteria or worry about more White nationalists, inspired by what happened in Charleston, committing domestic terrorism towards Blacks. Where is the “War on White Nationalism”? Why is there no outcry to “get tough on White supremacy?”
But more than the incompetent responses, my biggest problem with the public conversation in popular culture and mass media in the aftermath of Charleston is that we have depoliticized the tragedy. In order to do so, there has been a rush to “psychologize” White violence that was intentionally done to a specific group.
When James Holmes, Adam Lanza, the Unabomber, etc. commit a heinous act of gun violence, when they murder the unarmed and innocent, corporate media and many in society become psychologists & psychiatrists. With no academic or professional training in health or medicine, without any evidence, without full information, with only speculation, we rush to attribute mental health explanations. (And we trivialize the serious mental health issues we have in this society due to various “isms”, systems, & structures.)
When Mike Brown, or Trayvon Martin, or Eric Garner, or Ramarley Graham, lose their lives, corporate media and society rush to become prosecutors and criminologists. In spite of video evidence and logic, we rush to criminalize and pathologize these Black men.
The work of racism is to create advantage in every sphere of life, particularly in the market, in the governing body, and in the social structure. Racism’s social engineering can never completely overpower human’s capacity for ingenuity, innovation, and persistence. But it absolutely creates the artificial systems and mediates the social relationships we utilize on a everyday basis.
Racism is a total project. It stratifies social advantage, by configuring who is placed in positions of disadvantage and enumerating what exactly will be the disadvantages. This impacts the present society, but it is deeply historical. The settler colony is premised on White supremacy. White supremacy has been sanctioned and protected by the state. The state operationalizes White supremacy through laws and policy.
White supremacy endures not just in everyday racism, symbolic/structural racism, “racism without racists”, “dog-whistle politics”, etc. It isn’t operating solely in police brutality, which is claimed to be “accidental” or “in self defense”, towards Black bodies like Renisha McBride, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley Jones etc. It continues, as it historically has, through violence and terror. Its tools are automatic firearms, bombs, chokeholds, biker gangs, taser guns, and nightsticks.
The power of history is that as an idea or belief, and its associated practices, iconography, or symbolism, endure over long periods of time, it becomes a culture. History plays a substantial role in creating culture; this is central to the process of social reproduction. White supremacy is an ideology that has endured, but the culture of White Nationalism is embedded in the population.
People argue that last point, but the news of Roof being educated through the Council of Conservative Citizens and its president, Earl Holt III, making political contributions to Republican electoral campaigns only reenforces White Nationalism’s prevalence. It also demonstrates White supremacist’s determination to use the political sphere, to enact total social control of the nation-state.
And your thought leaders, your media pundits, your elected officials, have not proposed any actions to contest this. Or rather, lets consider it as a question: is what has been most popularly suggested, going to address the harm and oppression caused by White Nationalism?
Moving forward, what should be the focus of our conversation?
- #SayHerName
Six of the nine victims were Black women. Their life histories are amazing, reflecting their role as the backbone, the leaders of fellowship and in community. They held the roles and positions that make institutions work, that make community and family their best. The silencing and de-emphasizing of their story and work, only furthers the sins of patriarchy.
2. We have to take “the right to self defense” seriously.
The problem of violence is that it historically, and logically, sets off a chain of violent acts that seem endless. Nonviolence, as a philosophy, is about not initiating violence and refraining from using violence to incite. Self-defense exists on a different plane. It is about survival. Armed self-defense does not exclusively mean “using violence to kill.” Armed self-defense is a practice based on one’s desire to live, to be protected, and to exist, in the face of efforts designed to kill and remove.
If #BlackLivesMatter then your life is the best thing you have. Protecting it must be on the agenda.
3. We have to end our dependency on others. The private sector and the state repeatedly show us:
a. They wont protect us — we only have harm put onto our bodies.
b. We are not believed — when we say racism is prevalent, we are told it isn’t.
c. We exist only to make economies for others — prisons, charter schools, non-profits and NGOs, consultants, etc. Every “industrial complex” that can be attributed to the above named, focuses on the historical exploitation of Black lives and Black labor. In this country, we represent the pathway to someone else obtaining capital and building wealth.
The last point is a global issue: tourism in the Caribbean & Latin America, the exploitation of Haiti’s political economy, foreign commodity firms interference throughout the Middle East and Africa, foreign pharmaceutical companies seizures throughout South America and the Middle East. I’ll stop there because this illustration speaks volumes:
d. Raise the voices around cooperative economics, community wealth, community controlled institutions. Examples exist: look at Jackson, Mississippi. Examples are being built: look closely at what Ras Baraka is doing in Newark. We need more. We need to scale up. We need more participation.
4. Make community controlled-institutions a real thing.
There is a legitimate and significant movement to have local communities create their own mechanisms for public safety, and to manage and administrate their own systems for dealing with crime, nuisances, and punishment. One way to accomplish this is by becoming the public safety officers and administration — good people, who know the community, who are committed to the social development and character of its members, using holistic approaches to safety, cooperation, and justice.
Another way to accomplish this is to gain political control of your community. Imagine for a moment, if every single city council member, municipal administrator, and the mayor was one of the protestors from the #FergusonUprising. What if this was the political bloc who controlled law making, law enforcement, policy creation, and governance?
Seizing the local needs to be adopted as a strategy. We have to build political capital. Electoral politics does not mean unethical compromise, capitulation to elitism, and selling out. The power of political representation is seen in the extremes elites and ideologues will go to in order to influence and control the political structure — restricting voter registration, miscounting ballots, PACS, Citizens United, etc. The racial justice movement must get back to being more serious about political control and political capital.
5. Scream #BlackLivesMatter over, and over, and over. Do things to make Black freedom and personhood a priority. Get active in all way: sing, write, protest, volunteer, talk to people, paint, enter a classroom, write a letter. Social action is a comprehensive thing. So is social change.
