A rant, by Melissa Vandiver.
This blog is called “Art and Feelings” and today you’re going to get some feelings.
By local New Orleans black artist, BMike.
One of the things I’ve been trying to grapple with since we’ve entered this COVID crisis is that I can’t shake the feeling that there are people who want me to die (or at least don’t care if I do). But it’s not really me, is it? We are OK financially. We are relatively young, relatively healthy, white, and full of privileges.
The fact that I am experiencing this fear for the first time shows that I am privileged. Growing up white and middle class, I was surrounded by the understanding that a community protects people like me; that they’d mourn my death, seek justice for my tragedy, value my life. I’ve never truly understood what it means to feel that I might die at the hands of the government.
Meanwhile, George Floyd was murdered on camera and one of his killers wasn’t arrested for days; as I write this, the others still walk free. A black CNN reporter was arrested before him. Ahmaud Arbery’s killers, who aren’t police, were only arrested after his murder footage made it to the internet - months after the local law enforcement and justice system decided not to do anything about it.
The fact that we debate whether to punish these murderers is despicable.
While these cases appear particularly egregious because these men were so clearly innocent and non-threatening based on video evidence, the innocence doesn’t matter. They could have been criminals. We view ourselves as a society that doesn’t execute people for petty crimes without a trial; when police can kill people with reckless abandon and are literally shielded from consequences by the law, we are not that society.
It can’t require perfectly executed video documentation for people to take these murders seriously.
I have been a bit paralyzed this past week, creatively.
I am not a calligrapher.
Sometimes, it helps me to draw or paint the thing that is blocking my mind. I attempted a quick portrait of George Floyd, but I couldn’t finish it. I threw it away. Portraiture requires a level of concentration I can’t muster right now. The only thing I could manage was George Floyd’s (and Eric Garner’s) last words: “I can’t breathe.”
So fitting for this moment: 100,000 people have died because COVID has taken away their ability to breathe; so much of that is a result of institutional rot and state-sanctioned hatred - not only a failure to protect our people, but a willingness to leave them to die. The fact that black people are contracting and dying of COVID at such a high rate, and that the government is refusing meaningful action on it, is directly connected to the countless police killings. George Floyd is a victim of the same system; the murder weapon was just a knee, not a virus.
Racism is lethal. It’s not hurt feelings, or not being able to take a joke, or dwelling on the past. It’s killing people. The dismissal of racist jokes and telling people to stop getting their feelings hurt is just giving cover for another more violent racist system to succeed. All of it kills, directly or indirectly.
Amy Cooper in Central Park did not hesitate to reach in her white privilege toolbox and try to wield it in a way that she knew could result in Christian Cooper’s death - all for talking back to her. She was probably a “good” white person until she had to put a black man in his place.
Art from the beginning of my COVID lockdown, also about not breathing.
Now, in Minneapolis and around the nation, we are seeing a public display of unspeakable grief, anger, and fear.
Or possibly, white supremacists destroying communities to start a war. But it’s hard to know right now.
When Colin Kaepernik got fired and cast out of the NFL (and polite society) for peacefully protesting, they sent a message that peaceful protests about race have no place in the national conversation. Peaceful Black Lives Matter protests have been met with violence countless times - and the organization is being surveilled by the same government who declares that white supremacists aren’t a threat. This is violence against black people; it was only a matter of time before it was met with force.
On the other side, you have some rogue white militias violently seizing public property in Oregon and not being met with violence; we have armed white thugs showing up at the Michigan State House, brandishing their weapons and literally shutting down the government - also not met with police violence. How is it not a violent threat, to show up with weapons and make demands like that? How is that not a violent protest? If the police had responded like they have done to the unarmed protesters in Minneapolis, do you think that somehow that would not have become violent?
Riots aren’t even that bad. They are a pretty important tool for social change, actually.
Martin Luther King Jr. is often called forth in these conversations because he has some feelgood quotes calling for “peaceful” action, but he has a lot more quotes that are less comfortable. Contrary to what history class taught us, he was not actually the lone black man who knew that the secret to winning Civil Rights was to be super nice about it.
…I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense our nation’s summers of riots are caused by our nation’s winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.
What does it mean to be “good white people?”
I don’t think we can be awake to what is going on in the world but choose to disengage, or pat ourselves on the back for not perpetuating it directly. We have to be anti-racist. We have the luxury to disengage from this conversation - and it’s tempting, and sometimes we will - but we have to stay engaged. A lot of smarter people than me have written a lot about it.
A book that helped me open my eyes is Lies My Teacher Told Me - a correction in response to the whitewashing of our history education, by James Loewen; more than correct me on some facts, it taught me that I truly have been viewing the world through the lens of whiteness, and I have to correct for that filter whenever I receive information; I have to be aware of the bias and analyze my instincts based on it. I have to question what I know. I have to stop wondering why the same things happen over and over without admitting to myself the harder truth: that they are part of a pattern, and that it will take a tremendous amount of work to fix it.
There are a lot of resources available to try to be a better ally, and to learn to be anti-racist. I can’t say I’m all that great at it but I’m going to try harder. The truth is that racism cannot be ended by its victims; it only ends when we respect the role it has had in our history and make an honest effort to correct the path, without being defensive.
In HBO’s Watchmen, one of the characteristics of this dystopian parallel universe is that the government is very specifically anti-racist; there is a lot of very true black history within the show - stuff that I, a well-educated white woman, had no idea about. Black Americans receive reparations, black history is told honestly, and - similar to our current universe - a lot of white people don’t like it and perpetrate violence as a result.
From Watchmen. A police officer making the symbol for the Cyclops gang, the KKK-driven villains, who are based in reality.
There are not enough black presidents in the world to create an anti-racist and truly just society for black folks, without white people doing the hard work. Do not make black people tell you directly what to do, putting themselves in a position of vulnerability where they have to sell their ideas to you; use the internet and educate yourself. Understand that you have been conditioned in a certain way and you need to seek help to undo that damage; it will only work when your mind is open to receiving that help. Be angry that you are a victim of brainwashing. Be angry that you have been affected by this, so that maybe you can begin to be angry for the true victims.
Look for reading lists, like this one from a friend of a friend. I’ve read a few of these, but not many.
Here’s some things for us white women to not say.
Here is a great Twitter thread by actor Paul F. Tompkins, detailing his journey into realizing he had white privilege, and trying to become a bettter white person. While you should prioritize black people’s opinions rather than a white comedian you like, I am sharing this because his evolution somewhat reflects my own:
Here is a long list of things we should be doing.
And here is some black art, often justice-focused, by New Orleanian artist BMike.
