ATTENTION: This is not an attack on anyone personally, I felt that I needed to address this issue that came up in our seminar and would not be able to live with myself if I did not.
When I was first prepared to write on Baltimore, I was inspired deep in my soul (and on an empty stomach) with a burning force. As the minutes progressed and I tackled one task after another, I found myself preparing oven-baked potatoes and before I knew it my belly was full of food.
It’s amazing how drastically ones view of the world changes before and after eating. I know I’ve read about this somewhere before… Some French writer, quite possibly in the book Variations On A Theme by Aldous Huxley wherein he reviews the diaries of Maine de Biran. Nonetheless, it is still important I tackle the central issue: Baltimore.
In light of our most recent seminar and the dialogue going on over the internet and across the country I would like to address some key points.
The first being, that the general public, as advanced by the media, views themselves as occupying some highly respectable moral ground by shouting booooo to the “violence” and “destruction” that occurred during the rioting in Baltimore. As evidenced by David in our seminar the indoctrination runs so thick that he imagines himself starting “to envision what the best strategies would be to remain safe, and which self-defense measures would be most effective”.
(http://blogs.evergreen.edu/losttimedavidg/journal-entry-6/).
This comment implies that those rioting are some sort of chaotic murderers looking to hurt anyone and everyone. The whole idea, as again has been advanced by the media, is that the rioters don’t represent any goal and are largely young black men looking to cause violence for the sake of violence. To even explore the idea that there is some larger goal, is to admit, that there are other factors at play.
Part of the function of this is to create a closed dialogue which would bring any participant to one conclusion – that the rioters are creating violence for the sake of violence. As evidence, one person in our seminar stated “they are acting like primates”, I don’t feel I need to share the racial implications sitting in the depths of this comment.
Of course, there is no reason to explore this further, because the people who advance these ideas are benefiting from the white privilege and will continue to benefit from things the way they are, IE business as usual… an of alteration of which would cause those who benefit from their privilege to acknowledge their privilege and thus lose some of the things that they hold most dear.
Furthermore, many of those that do acknowledge that there are goals in Baltimore, still condemn the violence, on the grounds violence = bad. This of course, is the dialogue we get in a society that is so extremely tied to it’s material possessions. Their response is that these people should go through traditional methods, including peaceful protests (which by the way DID happen simultaneously during the riots), through voting or IE all of the methods that won’t actually do anything to damage the status quo.
Of course, again, the use of ‘traditional methods’ relies on assumption that young black youth in America have all of the same opportunities as their white counterparts. This is usually the first illusion ascribed to, that needs to be torn down.
Turning to the Human Rights Watch world report of 2014 for The United States we find “Whites, African Americans, and Latinos have comparable rates of drug use but are arrested, prosecuted, and incarcerated for drug offenses at vastly different rates. For example, African Americans are nearly four times more likely to be arrested for marijuana possession than whites, even though their rates of marijuana use are roughly equivalent. While only 13 percent of the US population, African Americans represent 41 percent of state prisoners, and 44 percent of federal prisoners serving time for drug offenses.
Because they are disproportionately likely to have criminal records, members of racial and ethnic minorities are more likely than whites to experience stigma and legal discrimination in employment, housing, education, public benefits, jury service, and the right to vote.” (http://www.hrw.org/world-report/2014/country-chapters/united-states)
As Jamilah Lemieux in Ebony magazine discusses “If the sustained psychological terror of being reared in an economically disenfranchised neighborhood, babysat by a failing school, and abused by aggressive police didn’t leave you with the tools to effectively organize against state sanctioned terrorism in a way that society finds “respectable”—in other words, voting and being polite enough to say, “Please, suh, don’t kill us no mo’!”—then far be it from me to mourn the loss of Nike socks and Remy bundles and exaggerated reports of violence against police that leave out this week’s violence at the hands of police, and of White counter-protesters who attacked and berated people for the past three days on the city’s streets.”
Read more at EBONY http://www.ebony.com/news-views/baltimore-been-burning-503#ixzz3Z19p716s
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BLACK LIVES MATTER. As in fixing the disenfranchisement felt by non-white youth of America is more important than the preservation of material goods of a CVS store, or all that corporate made crap that is fed to us. And that is one of the main objection by individuals, that ‘I agree with their goals, but not the violence’.
Well, when you live in a world where you have no opportunities, you’re continually profiled and harassed by police because of the color of your skin and this is further exacerbated by a rigged economic system… What better way to fight against that system? Read about how these massive inequalities continue to be perpetuated by corporations. –
http://www.alternet.org/visions/chomsky-corporations-and-richest-americans-viscerally-oppose-common-good
http://articles.latimes.com/2010/aug/25/business/la-fi-hiltzik-20100825
In this case, the very system that has disenfranchised the non-white population is the one that faced destruction at the hands of rioters in Baltimore. So of course, the western white privileged world is up in arms shouting out against the violence. Because these riots attack the very system that keeps these people privileged.
Go Baltimore.