How White People Rush to Defend Racism
Five themes on
white people's reactions to the Covington Catholic MAGA kids incident.
racist - assumes white people's responses to the controversy are homogeneous
Before the MAGA Catholic kids pro-life rally incident is forgotten from our white consciousness, there are a few themes worth visiting. What’s worth visiting is not
the actual racist event
the only racist event that occurred involved the black hebrew israelites
or the “out of control” media but the strategies behind what causes so many white people, who claim to be opposed to racism, to dismiss or justify
incidents like these.
Which incidents would those be - the incident in which the native americans were chased down, attacked, struck with thrown objects, spit upon, kicked? Or perhaps the incident in which the peaceful, friendly black hebrew israelites were attacked by the mob of angry white boys?
In general, white people, at least the ones capable of seeing outside our white segregated world, “get” explicit racism—as in why Nazis, black face, jokes with n-words, and making fun of Native Americans are bad.
Nazis were bad because they killed innocent people
black face is hilarious
jokes with n-words can be hilarious, or dumb, or bland, just like any other joke
making fun of native americans is hilarious, if they're doing something worth making fun of, just like any other type of person
But we don’t understand all the ways we unconsciously support, perpetuate, and dismiss all types of racism in this country—from the explicit, to the implicit, to the systemic. We don’t understand how our reactions to racism are influenced daily by the racism that we have unconsciously and unintentionally internalized just by growing up in
a white supremacist society.
I didn't grow up in a white supremacist society :idunno:
And this incident, or at least its aftermath, serves as an important example of what white people need to work on when confronting racism.
The following are five themes pulled from white people’s reactions to this incident.
1. White Victimhood and the Rush to Exonerate
There’s not really a good way to sugar-coat this: there was 100 percent no rush to judgment on the first video.
you're right - there's really no way to sugarcoat a lie
If there’s a voice in your head screaming for the comment section right now, please try to calm it down for now.
The vast majority who were outraged responded appropriately to an extremely racist incident caught on tape.
you're right - it is extremely racist to smile at another person
Any new information, incorrect background details, additional bad actors, or misinterpretations of the situation did not change the racism caught on tape in any way.
iow, the truth doesn't matter as long as the lie has a moral lesson to teach
There was a rush to judgment, but it came with the exoneration of those white MAGA kids and
their racism caught on tape
lie
—in the form of a white victimhood narrative.
Twenty-four hours after the first video came out, the usual white supremacist tactics were deployed,
an examination of the total incident in the hope of better understanding the circumstances - that's a white supremicist tactic? :freak:
dude - you're a retard
and, as often happens, white people of all political backgrounds rushed to the narrative that alleviated the white discomfort of dealing with a messy racist “this could be any of our kids” situation.
pretty sure there were quite a few black people who recognized that the original rush to judgement based on a four minute clip taken out of context was retarded
A new dominant narrative was embraced without question.
you must be thinking of some other controversy - the Catholic diocese, for example only yesterday exonerated the kids
This familiar narrative painted the MAGA kids as the victims,
they were the victims of the retarded social media attack, aided and abetted by the irresponsible msm
forced to act racist toward those Native Americans due to the super-offensive Black Israelites and the audacity of Nathan Phillips singling out Nick Sandmann while walking straight up to his innocent and confused existence—to menacingly drum in his face.
except nobody "acted racist" towards those ridiculous indians
“What would be the appropriate reaction for a teenage boy who has never experienced anything like this?”—was the common white response on Facebook threads nationwide.
as a sixteen year old high school sophmore, i probably would have reacted the same way Sandmann did
as a early twenties college student, i probably would have pushed the idiot indians away from me, forcefully
The easy answer to that question is “move aside.”
why expect better behavior from the sixteen year old kid than you do from the 65 year old "elder?
He could have moved aside like the dozens of other kids directly in front of Nick did before Nathan got anywhere close.
all of those kids were standing on the flat paved area at the base of the steps
Sandmann was standing on the bottom step
Imagine if the race roles were reversed and a white elder tried to peacefully walk through a group of black teenagers mocking him
I'd be very forceful in calling into question his motivation for being there
and one black teenager decided to block his path.
Sandmann didn't block Phillips "path"
Would the “move aside” answer be easier to accept for white people with this color sequence?
nope - you'd have to be a racist to assume it would
Would it be easier to understand that Nick actively blocked Nathan’s path?
he didn't
the video evidence clearly shows that he didn't
people who lied about it are being sued
Would it be easier to understand the hostility involved in the act of blocking Nathan’s path?
if Sandmann had actively blocked Phillip's path? Sure
but he didn't - Phillips wandered over to where Sandmann was standing and walked up to Sandmann - Sandmann never moved - Phillips had room to go to the left, to the right, in fact, to go anywhere except directly through Sandmann
My second, longer answer involves holding up a mirror focused on
the reasons why so many white people accepted, without question, this new narrative.
they're probably the same reasons why so many black people accepted the true narrative - because it was demonstrably true
There are plenty of videos showing dozens of MAGA kids laughing
yes, they were doing that before Phillips and his gay little drum-o-peace wandered into their space
, mocking
assumption
, miming tomahawks,
right - the tomahawk chop is a popular sports gesture/cheer/chant
etc., at the Native Americans.
at them, not at them, at each other - they were high school kids at the end of a long field trip waiting for their bus home, goofing around, having fun
There are plenty of videos that show Nathan didn’t single Nick out
well, no - that's a blatant lie - the videos clearly show Phillips approaching various students who either move on themselves, or who Phillips moves past - it isn't until he reaches Sandmann that he stops
but was walking through the crowd, and Nick chose to block his way.
by standing still on the first step of a staircase, with plenty of room for Phillips to go around him
But as Trump said to his supporters, “What you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening”—none of this evidence mattered during the rush to exoneration.
Your Trump derangement syndrome is duly noted
But even if the narrative were true and Nick was a victim with no choice,
at the mall? he wasn't a victim and he made a good choice - smile at the weirdo with the drum - for all Sandmann knew, Phillips was a homeless mental patient who would ask for spare change when he was finished
it’s still hard to understand how this narrative alone exonerates all those kids mocking Native Americans
they weren't
and all the parents allowing it to happen.
they didn't
It took a few more strategies to help “seal the white deal” on exoneration.
you're a retard
a racist retard
2. Victim Blaming
A common legal defense in court, when a defendant lacks exonerating evidence, is to attack the credibility of the plaintiff. After the first video emerged, Nathan Phillips’s credibility was immediately attacked based on perceived inaccuracies in his military service and personal character flaws in an attempt to prove he wasn’t capable of having a perspective at all, despite literally being in the middle of the incident.
rather, evidence was brought to light which called into question his credibility and motivations
The victim blaming
what was Phillips the victim of? Being smiled at?
and character assassination of Nathan Phillips
rather, character definition
was no different than the victim blaming and character assassination of unarmed black people murdered by police. It was no different than focusing on previous run-ins with the law in the cases of Michael Brown
the thug caught on video robbing a convenience store and assaulting the owner moments before his encounter with the cops?
and Eric Garner
the fellow caught on video resisting arrest?
, the marijuana usage of Sandra Bland and Botham Jean, the resisting arrest claims regarding Sam Dubose and Terence Crutcher, or the broken car windows while ignoring the 20 rounds fired at Stephon Clark for holding a cellphone at night.
sorry dude, you lost any possible credibility with the first two
Focusing on incorrect background details or the transgressions of the victim doesn’t change the fact that there’s a murdered black person, innocent of any crime where the punishment is death without trial. But it does often get the murderer off.
Inaccuracies in Nathan Phillips’s perspective
aka lies about the events
or flaws in his past don’t change the racism caught on tape.
the racism from the BHI guys, yes
But they do help white people dismiss it.
3. Blame Shifting
Shifting the blame to the Black Israelites
rather, fleshing out the story with a factual account of the events
was no different than the blame shifting in the context of racial disparities, biased treatment, and systemic racism people of color receive from white people and white institutions in this nation.
you're insane
Sentiments such as, “if only black people followed police orders better, they wouldn’t be shot so much,”
well, duh
as chris rock put it, "Everyone knows if the police have to come get you, they're bringing an a55 whoopin' with them"
ignore the role that implicit racism plays in police brutality
even when the cop is black?
no matter how a black person acts
act like you need an a55 whooping, you'll probably get an a55 whooping - no matter what color you are
and that not following police orders doesn’t warrant police brutality.
you'd have to be pretty retared not to recognize that not following police orders is a good start on your way to an a55 whooping
“If only people of color made better choices, many of them wouldn’t be stuck in poverty,”
right - choices like finish high school, get and keep a job, wait until marriage to have kids
ignores the realities of living in
a white supremacist world
you're insane
built on 400 years of past and present systemic racism without reparations.
i firmly support giving any former slave reparations
These sentiments are not so different from, “if only those Black Israelites didn’t start crap, those MAGA kids wouldn’t have been forced to be so racist towards the Native Americans.”
you're right - they're not so different - they're both retarded
Statements like these are
retarded
often used to downplay the reality people of color face while exonerating the white people who perpetuate that reality.
4. Attacking the Media
The PR firm Nick Sandmann’s family hired probably knew they could have Nick on TV lying about not doing anything disrespectful or racist towards the Native Americans, despite being caught literally doing these things on video
you're insane
because they probably knew the effectiveness of attacking the media when the media
acts irresponsibly and reports a story without doing the investigational legwork
tries to accurately report on white supremacy. Nick’s PR firm probably knew their attack on journalism and their accusations of the media rushing to judgment would prevent any further fact-checking or responsible journalism.
again, you're insane
This attack is no different than Trump’s strategy of attacking our media, which has kept most media outlets from even mentioning the words “white supremacy,” let alone reporting on it. When Jemele Hill called Trump a white supremacist on her personal twitter account in 2017, instead of having much-needed conversations nationwide about white supremacy and its relationship to the Trump presidency, there was a massive campaign, going all the way up to the White House, calling for her firing. This campaign resulted in ESPN publicly apologizing for Jemele accurately pointing out Trump’s association with white supremacy, one month after Trump called white supremacists at the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, “very fine people.”
It’s so much easier to attack the messenger by finding bias or sketchy details than to deal with the message. I think that’s why the media, with all their flaws, are taking the blame for white people’s inability to understand, let alone deal with, white supremacy.
i skipped the silly nonsense abovebecause it's merely an embarrassing look at your trump derangement insanity
5. Defending Racial Dog Whistles
President Reagan was the first to create MAGA (Make American Great Again) as a racial dog whistle, which is a coded racist phrase or issue that pretends to be race-neutral. Dog-whistle politics took shape at a time when explicit racism, such as Jim Crow segregation and lynching, were becoming less acceptable. After the 1964 Civil Rights Act was passed, many politicians who supported segregation and opposed civil rights for people of color traded their “segregationist” hat for a “conservative” hat and joined the Republican ticket under the new “Southern Strategy,” which coded the old racism of the past with new dog whistles: “states rights,” “law and order,” and “welfare queen.”
These terms may seem race-neutral
and in fact usually are, unless you're insane
but were used to push policies, such as tax breaks for the wealthy and the shredding of social safety nets, that disproportionately hurt people of color. Lee Atwater, a political strategist for Reagan, laid it all out in a 1981 interview.
Trump has a similar strategy in MAGA, yet white people still believe or at least pretend that these racial dog whistles are actually race-neutral. Decades after Reagan, the majority of white people from all political stripes are at best dismissing the MAGA dog whistle and at worst defending it.
Even if you’re one of the millions of white people who have never stepped out of our segregated world long enough to understand the real racial impacts of MAGA policies, and you wear a MAGA hat with no intent to be racist, the impact is still racism and is still felt among people of color. Understanding intent vs. impact is essential when understanding racism. You have the freedom to wear MAGA hats, but you do not have the freedom from the consequences, which include being accurately labeled a racist and receiving the very justifiable anger of non-white people who suffer from racist MAGA policies.
skipped all of the above fpr the same reason - an embarrassing look at your insane hatred of a hat with a slogan
The larger consequences of white supremacy, such as mass incarceration, neoliberalism, discrimination, police brutality, etc., all have their roots in the internalized racism of all white people, allowing us to consciously or unconsciously support, perpetuate, and dismiss the racism we claim to oppose. If we want to create real change, we have to address these roots. Addressing these roots isn’t so much about showing up to protests, donating to civil rights groups, and confronting family members at Thanksgiving (although these things are important and desperately need our continued attention). It’s more about showing up to anti-racism workshops, reading (and financially supporting) anti-racism resources, and confronting your own internalized racism 365 days per year.
just more insane ranting and raving, attempting to justify his hatred of a sixteen year old boy he doesn't know
Personally, I’m not going to lose sleep
hoping those MAGA kids and parents receive their just desserts.
they will - the lawsuits will ensure that
I know they won’t. But I am invested in white people understanding this isn’t an isolated incident but a very common theme in our society that needs to be confronted.
https://goodmenproject.com/social-justice-2/how-white-people-rush-to-defend-racism/
