Over the last several months the weaponziation of ytness has become more and more common. White women have taken to calling 911 for Black people for infractions ranging from waiting while Black to mowing and bbq-ing while Black. The 'why' of this is fairly obvious, the 'what to do about it' less so.
The why, as I said, is pretty obvious: the monsters in the House of White supremacy have tacitly and explicitly given permission to the masses to be as nasty as they wanna be. All the talk for the last eight years, about taking their country back was the preamble to this: being able to set in motion the death of any n*gger that gets in their way; the right to call the police to do that work while they watch; and the gleeful enjoyment of the outcome of the call. (The similarities here to lynching cannot be missed.) When caught out or exposed to public disapprobation, tearful non-apology apologies are deployed as a tool to manage public perception and economic impact of having been exposed. Apologies are wholly performative; changed behavior is not part of the calculation. That's not on the schedule. (see above video. Starbucks manager insists she was right to call cops.)
Having been given permission to behave in this way, yt folk (all too often women (sisters of the 53%?)) are out here acting like Carolyn Donham Bryant, telling lies and taking lives. What we have here is twenty-first century lynchings, or some pretty good attempts at same.
As I wrote in my piece on the en word (here), there are clearly folk out here who want "to be on the front lines [of a lynching] to see the burning flesh but [who] want plausible deniability when it comes to the actual [act]." They want to experience the thrill of brutality without the responsibility or accountability. The fact that more Black people haven't ended up dead as a result of these police calls is entirely accidental. I for one am under no illusions about what (Pep)permit Patty and BBQ Becky were up to. Neither have they I imagine. The whole Black Lives Matter movement is too public, too present and its cause too clear to anyone with a pair of working ears, for anyone to continue to pretend they don't know what the worst possible outcome of these interactions between unsuspecting Black folk and the police might be.
As I wrote in my piece on the en word (here), there are clearly folk out here who want "to be on the front lines [of a lynching] to see the burning flesh but [who] want plausible deniability when it comes to the actual [act]." They want to experience the thrill of brutality without the responsibility or accountability. The fact that more Black people haven't ended up dead as a result of these police calls is entirely accidental. I for one am under no illusions about what (Pep)permit Patty and BBQ Becky were up to. Neither have they I imagine. The whole Black Lives Matter movement is too public, too present and its cause too clear to anyone with a pair of working ears, for anyone to continue to pretend they don't know what the worst possible outcome of these interactions between unsuspecting Black folk and the police might be.
Anyone calling the police for a 12 year old cutting the lawn, is - at worst - seeking his death, at best seeking his traumatization at the hands of the police. There are no other options. We know what happened to Tamir Rice and to John Crawford III, so don't tell me you didn't know that violence was possible or that that wasn't your intent. What else could you have intended when you called the police for an eight year old girl selling water without a permit, when your ass has been selling marijuana without a f*cking permit? What was your intent? And to claim that you didn't know the girl was Black? Witch what? If you gon lie to cover your hindbits at least have the decency to lie with some panache.
Perhaps the things we most need to acknowledge here are that (i) the 53% has access to 911 and they're willing to weaponize their privilege; (ii) it ain't only the 53% that's weaponizing their White wimmin in distress cred; which leads me to (iii) anti-Blackness is a real thing and it sometimes causes death.
It would be dangerous to pretend that the only women making these calls are the members of the 53%. I think it's pretty clear that that ain't the totality of it. (Pep)permit Patty sells MJ. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's pretty unlikely that she's a conservative and yet, there she was, calling the popo on an 8 year old trying to make a buck selling cold water to folks going to a game. BBQ Becky likewise is a California environmental scientist. Conservative? Methinks not. No indeed. These gals have something else entirely going on.
In his Letter from Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr. writes, "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
What we have here with these wimminz is shallow understanding & lukewarm acceptance. Even women like Permit Patty who will tell you at the very first possible opportunity that they voted for Obama twice and that they love Michelle and the girls, are merely lukewarmly accepting of our equality and their understanding of oppression (and who the oppressors are) is thimble shallow.
Of course these women accept Barack and Michelle! Truth be told, it's real easy to accept them. They're 'clean'. They talk nice. They went to the 'best' schools. Barack and Michelle are what they'd love all Black people to be.........or not. If we were all like that, they'd find other reasons to reject us. That's just a matter of fact because at root the problem is anti-Blackness.
The Obamas are acceptable to Becky because they don't live in her neighborhood. They're not competing with Candi for a mortgage or a job. The Obama girls aren't coming to Chad and Tiffany's schools and Mary Ellen won't have to serve on the neighborhood watch or PTA with them. Nah, the problem isn't Barack and Michelle's Blackness, they can handle that....kinda, it's Shauntelle and Tyrone's; it's mine and Tamir's. (This is not to say that there aren't people in Barack and Michelle's swanky neighborhood who are unhappy that they're there, but that's a whole other essay.)
What Dr. King referred to as shallow understanding and lukewarm acceptance are in fact something else entirely. They are neither understanding nor acceptance, they are the pretense of those things.
Our most recent 9-1-1 callers, Permit Patty and BBQ Becky, are probably card-carrying liberals. They probably also pride themselves on being social justice allies. These are likely wise women, aware of and fluent in the nuanced language of the social justice movement. And yet, they call the popo at the drop of a hat for Black people for being Black in public. Why? Because understanding and acceptance are largely still academic/intellectual pursuits. Many people, particularly I must say, MLK's white moderates, have understood social justice intellectually but have not even come close to an emotional understanding of same. They have made few, if any, steps towards identifying where or when they might be the individual in whom change still needs to occur.
For these moderates, the racist is the other guy; the one with the 88 tattoo, never the NWL (nice White lady) who demands someone else's ramekins; or the NWL who jumps into a discussion refusing first to read the thread before coming to the aid of a White male who is getting his behind handed to him. For them, the racist is always the Briana Brochu character but never the character who called the police on John Crawford III for holding an air rifle in a store that sold air rifles.
For moderates, the understanding of what it is to be racist is pretty clear cut: it's using the en word. Sometimes, it's waving a confederate flag, though only sometimes cuz yunno, heritage not hate and all.
If there's one thing I know for sure it's this: many a so-called progressive is going to call the cops on Black men, women and children in the months and perhaps years ahead. And no, our whistling Vivaldi isn't going to stop non-Baracks and non-Michelles from having run ins with the police. There is no proving our humanity before the police arrive, guns drawn. It's better that we not to waste any time being surprised by that. We should simply remind our White moderate allies instead that the true test of their I'm-not-a-racist bona fides comes when they are confronted by strangers. How they treat the POC they already know tells us nothing. It is how they treat the ones they don't. that tells us everything. They need to start paying attention to the latter and stop patting themselves on the back about the former.
Permit Patty, BBQ Becky, and Pool Patrol Paula clearly have a good deal of work to do. Other moderates might want to check themselves as well.
Perhaps the things we most need to acknowledge here are that (i) the 53% has access to 911 and they're willing to weaponize their privilege; (ii) it ain't only the 53% that's weaponizing their White wimmin in distress cred; which leads me to (iii) anti-Blackness is a real thing and it sometimes causes death.
It would be dangerous to pretend that the only women making these calls are the members of the 53%. I think it's pretty clear that that ain't the totality of it. (Pep)permit Patty sells MJ. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that it's pretty unlikely that she's a conservative and yet, there she was, calling the popo on an 8 year old trying to make a buck selling cold water to folks going to a game. BBQ Becky likewise is a California environmental scientist. Conservative? Methinks not. No indeed. These gals have something else entirely going on.
In his Letter from Birmingham Jail Martin Luther King Jr. writes, "Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection."
What we have here with these wimminz is shallow understanding & lukewarm acceptance. Even women like Permit Patty who will tell you at the very first possible opportunity that they voted for Obama twice and that they love Michelle and the girls, are merely lukewarmly accepting of our equality and their understanding of oppression (and who the oppressors are) is thimble shallow.
Of course these women accept Barack and Michelle! Truth be told, it's real easy to accept them. They're 'clean'. They talk nice. They went to the 'best' schools. Barack and Michelle are what they'd love all Black people to be.........or not. If we were all like that, they'd find other reasons to reject us. That's just a matter of fact because at root the problem is anti-Blackness.
The Obamas are acceptable to Becky because they don't live in her neighborhood. They're not competing with Candi for a mortgage or a job. The Obama girls aren't coming to Chad and Tiffany's schools and Mary Ellen won't have to serve on the neighborhood watch or PTA with them. Nah, the problem isn't Barack and Michelle's Blackness, they can handle that....kinda, it's Shauntelle and Tyrone's; it's mine and Tamir's. (This is not to say that there aren't people in Barack and Michelle's swanky neighborhood who are unhappy that they're there, but that's a whole other essay.)
What Dr. King referred to as shallow understanding and lukewarm acceptance are in fact something else entirely. They are neither understanding nor acceptance, they are the pretense of those things.
Our most recent 9-1-1 callers, Permit Patty and BBQ Becky, are probably card-carrying liberals. They probably also pride themselves on being social justice allies. These are likely wise women, aware of and fluent in the nuanced language of the social justice movement. And yet, they call the popo at the drop of a hat for Black people for being Black in public. Why? Because understanding and acceptance are largely still academic/intellectual pursuits. Many people, particularly I must say, MLK's white moderates, have understood social justice intellectually but have not even come close to an emotional understanding of same. They have made few, if any, steps towards identifying where or when they might be the individual in whom change still needs to occur.
For these moderates, the racist is the other guy; the one with the 88 tattoo, never the NWL (nice White lady) who demands someone else's ramekins; or the NWL who jumps into a discussion refusing first to read the thread before coming to the aid of a White male who is getting his behind handed to him. For them, the racist is always the Briana Brochu character but never the character who called the police on John Crawford III for holding an air rifle in a store that sold air rifles.
For moderates, the understanding of what it is to be racist is pretty clear cut: it's using the en word. Sometimes, it's waving a confederate flag, though only sometimes cuz yunno, heritage not hate and all.
If there's one thing I know for sure it's this: many a so-called progressive is going to call the cops on Black men, women and children in the months and perhaps years ahead. And no, our whistling Vivaldi isn't going to stop non-Baracks and non-Michelles from having run ins with the police. There is no proving our humanity before the police arrive, guns drawn. It's better that we not to waste any time being surprised by that. We should simply remind our White moderate allies instead that the true test of their I'm-not-a-racist bona fides comes when they are confronted by strangers. How they treat the POC they already know tells us nothing. It is how they treat the ones they don't. that tells us everything. They need to start paying attention to the latter and stop patting themselves on the back about the former.
Permit Patty, BBQ Becky, and Pool Patrol Paula clearly have a good deal of work to do. Other moderates might want to check themselves as well.
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