Black-on-Black Racism Is a Part of the System: The Tyre Nichols Tragedy
Let’s start here: You don’t have to be white to perpetrate a racist attack or offense against other citizens of color. You don’t even have to be angry. All you have to be is complicit.
Yesterday, five Black Memphis police officers were fired and charged with murder and other crimes in the killing of Mr. Tyre Nichols after pulling him over in a traffic stop. An online article was then published at the National Review about the launch of a Department of Justice probe investigating the violation of Mr. Nichols’ civil rights that was tagged with the head-scratcher, “If you can’t figure out how five black officers might have killed a young black man out of racial animus toward young black men, welcome to the club.”
I can help here. Racism is NOT characterized by your personal hatred of people of color, or even your hostility toward a particular individual. Racism is a system that perpetuates brutality and injury whether or not your rage has been legitimately provoked, whether or not you belong to the same ethnicity or community of those who are being harmed, and whether or not you have personal stake at all in lifting up another person or knocking them down on the day you encounter them.
There is a sinister character played by Samuel L. Jackson in the 2012 film Django…
