[Peace-discuss] My letter in today's N-G

[David Green]

The Nov. 29 News-Gazette editorial titled "Chicago shooting looksindefensible" concluded as follows: "At its root, however, is anunfortunate self-destructive kid who was shot and killed when he should havebeen neutralized and helped."I would replace this with: At its root, however, is the cold-blooded,execution-style murder of a black child by a white police officer, while otherofficers watched.It's difficult in our society to even imagine a situation in which theraces are reversed; we should ask why.The editors exclude history and sociology from the discussion.However, for 400 years, blackness has been identified with criminality. Thenotion of policing has been inseparable from the control of blacks, of thewealth produced by black labor (male and female), of black bodies (male andfemale), and of segregated black spaces.This history proceeds through slavery, post-Civil War convict labor("slavery by another name"), Jim Crow and northern "defacto" segregation, and mass incarceration (the "new Jim Crow").While blackness has been defined in the dominant culture in terms ofpotential for criminality, whiteness has been defined in terms of assumedinnocence. Immigrant white ethnics aspired to this status and by 1945 largelyachieved it.Since then, urban and suburban racial narratives and working-classconsciousness have evolved on that basis.The violent realities of poverty are used by whites to justify policevictimization of blacks.But as whites become increasingly dispossessed, stereotypical resentmentsmay increasingly give way to informed, compassionate analysis; and toconstructive, multi-racial political movements.
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