.jpg/dims/resize/740/optimize) |
On Aug. 9, 2014, a police officer killed Michael Brown, 18, an African American, in Ferguson, Missouri. Last week, the world got what it expected: no one will be held accountable.
A white, American male posted of a friend of mine's Facebook page, "bitter much," after she expressed anger at Michael Brown's murder, and the cruel, virulently racist comments people left on news sites, e.g.: "The thug got what he deserved", "the feral animal," "he committed strong-arm robbery," "his parents should have done a better job."
I am not particularly surprised at the epic level of racist vitriol spewed online. Female journalists, and female journalists of color, get a bevy of belligerence so misogynist and yes, evil, it would make Emperor Palpatine blush. I have gotten my fair share of e-mail, trolls, and strangeness related to my work at The Korea Times and elsewhere. I even have a few online stalkers. My parents would be proud.
I rarely insert myself into Facebook discussions, but his "bitter much" commentary crystallizes one problems with race in American society.
Too often, (some) of our privileged, Caucasian counterparts lack the basic understanding of why African-Americans have such angst about the myriad instances of police brutality and deaths of black people (specifically, but not exclusively, black men).
Indeed, in the 20th century, not long ago, white police officers sanctioned and/or participated in pre-meditated murders, often in the form of lynching, castration, and torture, of black men and boys, along with the more common and casual brutality of being black in America. These were the good, bad old days of Jim Crow America, Inc.
The American government redlined black homeowners with superior credit into inferior (and often illegal) mortgages, while their white counterparts enjoyed all the benefits of government-subsidized home ownership and business capital investment programs.
The American government facilitated the deliberate syphilis infection (and gruesome deaths thereof) of black men and their partners, to study the effects on human subjects. It also facilitated the forced/coerced permanent sterilization of those deemed undesirable: always the poor, colored, and/or mentally disabled.
Even as I write this, I find it hard to believe, yet all of it is true and well documented.
That black people were paying taxes, ostensibly being forced to pay for their own destruction, adds another layer of cruelty to an already Orwellian, dystopian system within the American empire. All these examples took place in the 20th century, and the eugenics-style sterilization of which I speak did not officially end until the mid-1970s.
Succinctly, blacks were being terrorized, and the state was sponsoring such terrorism ― a state that was and is supposedly meant to serve and protect its citizens.
Distrust and anxiety of and about the state among blacks is well-informed and historically based. To say "bitter much" about anyone's, but particularly a black person's, disgust and anger at a continuous stream of murders, maimings and miscarriages of justice in our system long, long after the Civil and Voting Rights Acts, and the oceans of blood, sweat, tears, and misery that went into said endeavors, is breathtaking, sad, and unacceptable.
"Bitter much" sounds like what it is: derisive and dismissive of this: colored bodies, especially black colored bodies, are still heaped upon with shame, scorn, disgust, distrust, and a dehumanizing aura saying, "You are suspect and unworthy."
Consider: on April 12, 2014, armed, white Americans confronted federal agents in Nevada. They did so to protest against the government's cattle seizure of Cliven Bundy's livestock. Bundy, a racist farmer, had not paid federal grazing fees for more than 20 years. The protesters even planned to use their wives as shields. Many protesters commented online, and in person, that they were planning a bloody revolution. The vast majority of these "protesters" are members of ultra-right wing, anti-government militias especially popular in the Midwest.
Yet, in this incident, not a shot was fired. Why is it, then, that unarmed black men, not bent on dissolving the American government, get repeatedly murdered in our streets by law enforcement officers? How is it that delusional gun-rights fanatics, knee-deep in conspiracy theories and paranoia about an American government plotting to enslave them, can lock loaded, high-powered weapons on to armed federal agents to protect a deadbeat farmer's attempts to defraud the government of fees he is legally bound to pay, and not be shot themselves?
Everyone would be wise to consider both the tone and texture of what they think and say about this issue, and more broadly, the state of colored people in the U.S.
White folks cannot empathize with how most blacks feel about situations like this, just like I cannot empathize with childbirth, but we can all endeavor to sympathize with aggrieved parties in a respectful fashion.
Deauwand Myers holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. He can be reached at deauwand@hotmail.com.
![[INTERVIEW] Leandro Erlich's questioning of our perception of reality carries new meaning in pandemic](https://img.koreatimes.co.kr/upload/thumbnailV2/4e0bfee487254348a54493b1502067fa.jpg/dims/resize/178/optimize)
