Geese and Ganders

A few initial thoughts about that horrific situation in Chicago in which four people kidnapped and tortured a white man with disabilities and filmed it.

1. Ableism is alive and well. We always feel it’s okay to harm disabled people. I feel terrible for that man. Yo, what they did to that poor man is fucked up. Almost as fucked up as that football team that gang raped that black disabled boy with a hanger and the ring leader plead guilty to a lesser charge and so will get off without serving any time.

2. White supremacists have been trying to tie this brutal attack to the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement as a means to label BLM a terrorist organization and convince the world that BLM means danger for white people because it radicalizes black people. What those white people, and any other, need to know is that BLM doesn’t radicalize black people; white supremacy does. How long did you think black people would remain docile under a system built on our dehumanization? How long did you think you could show those videos of unarmed black people — black children — being murdered on camera by police, and police getting off scot-free, before those videos cause an effect? As long as white supremacy exists, and as long as you pretend that it doesn’t in order to keep it intact, you are in danger. If you think the way to eliminate that danger is to destroy black people, you’re wrong; 500 years of trying (and failing) to destroy us should have already made that crystal clear to you. The *only* way to eliminate the danger is to eliminate white supremacy. Period. Point blank.

3. White supremacists are very upset that the black police chief investigating the crime is referring to the kidnappers/torturers as “kids who made mistakes/bad judgment.” But isn’t that police chief just using the exact same language that law enforcement and courts use when describing white youth who commit heinous crimes?

4. Because we live in a white supremacist society, we can all be assured that these people who kidnapped that white disabled man will pay for what they did in a way that white offenders in identical situations likely don’t/won’t. That is, after all, the entire point of white supremacy: to make even poor white folks think they have something over black people (See point #1).

5. Isn’t this kidnapping/torture situation just a complete nightmare? Can you imagine the pain that man must have endured? Devastating, right? Now multiply that by 500 years, hundreds of millions of people, laws and mores that co-sign it, and everyone and their father denying it all, and you *might* have some small inkling of what black people have endured on the daily in this country, in the face of denials, dodges, excuses, disregard, and gaslighting from white supremacists.

6. Some people think this whole situation was staged as a part of some conspiracy to discredit black liberation movements. I don’t have any evidence of that other than the situation does seem to line up almost perfectly, in terms of language and stereotype, with other hoaxes where white people blamed something on black people. Nevertheless, I believe that the way to end violence is to end violence. And white supremacist patriarchy — and people’s desire to wield it — is the source of all violence in this country, maybe even in the world. End that and all violence will end.

7. I refuse to be like white supremacists who find glee and orgasm in a black person’s pain or can’t, themselves, empathize with black people simply because they’re black. Unlike them, I’m an actual human being. So:

May the victim in this situation find healing and peace.