‘Reject despair'
Black people have been on the wrong end of white hatred on the net almost since its inception
The writer is editorial consultant at The Express Tribune, news junkie, bibliophile, cat lover and occasional cyclist
Writing a weekly column that is sometimes close to the news curve can be a tricky business, thus the column about the killing of five police officers in Dallas, Texas, got spiked by President Obama’s speech at a memorial service for the dead on Tuesday night. In a moving eulogy he called on those present to ‘reject despair’ and to ‘try to find some meaning amidst our sorrow.’ He was steering a course along two of the fundamental fault lines in American society — gun violence and the bleeding edge where the police and the people they are supposed to protect are in both conflict and confrontation. Particularly if you happen to be black. The President had likely not taken the deep dive into the strata of visceral hatreds that I had in the days since the shooting, though he will doubtless be aware of them.
Black people in parts ( …not all) of America are very angry and it is not difficult to see why. A BBC reporter covering the post-shooting protests put the nub of it clearly — saying that what people were feeling was not so much anger as rage. Rage is a different sort of beast, less tractable, less open to reasoned argument and easily fed by viral imagery of black men being shot and killed by white police. Of human battlewagons being confronted by a serene lone protester in an image for the age, immediately iconic. Of a black man choking to death on the pavement his last words being “I can’t breathe” and the 12-year-old with a toy gun in a park who was shot to death in a confrontation lasting seconds.
In the hours and days following the Dallas shooting I went in search of hatred and rage in America as expressed on the internet. It was a salutary and miserable experience. Black people have been on the wrong end of white hatred on the net almost since its inception. There are organisations promoting racial hatred and encouraging racial violence that have membership schemes, newsletters, discounted goods and a host of links to like-minded entities. They are not difficult to find though the deeper you delve the darker it gets, and when you get to some of the message boards that require password access you can almost sense the menace.
Almost all of the sites I visited had a link somewhere to lists of armed militias, and there are a remarkable number of them spread across the country. They all proclaimed somewhere that their job was to ‘protect our freedoms’ — which mostly seemed to come down to the right to have as many guns as they wanted and carry them where they chose. And have their pictures taken in their canoes. Or on their porches. No women, seemingly. No blacks, either. Most seemed to suffer a kind of universal paranoia — somebody or something but probably Big Government was coming to get them and they would fight to the last bullet to defend their… err… freedoms.
But back to the racism, the hatred sites, had updated frequently since the Dallas incident. Blacks, it was noted on one message board, were ‘getting uppity’ — presumably a reference to the Dallas shooter being black — and needed ‘taking down’. Little difficulty in decoding that one. The black family in the White House were the subject of particular venom, and can expect a lifetime of Secret Service protection against well armed and determined people who want to kill them. Soon. Very soon.
Then there was the call from an old friend, a writer, currently working on her latest novel in yes, Dallas, Texas. Staying in a mate’s house she enquired politely why it was that people needed so many guns (most households having several she said) — and was told that it was to ‘protect ourselves.’ From whom, my friend enquired? ‘From the blacks who are coming to get us.’ And there it is, the circle completed. Reject despair? Sorry Mr President, but dream on. Find meaning among sorrow? Further dreamtime. White police are going to continue to kill black people on the flimsiest of pretexts and yes, enraged black people with the right to keep and bear arms are going to shoot back. Dallas was the beginning of that.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 14th, 2016.
Black people in parts ( …not all) of America are very angry and it is not difficult to see why. A BBC reporter covering the post-shooting protests put the nub of it clearly — saying that what people were feeling was not so much anger as rage. Rage is a different sort of beast, less tractable, less open to reasoned argument and easily fed by viral imagery of black men being shot and killed by white police. Of human battlewagons being confronted by a serene lone protester in an image for the age, immediately iconic. Of a black man choking to death on the pavement his last words being “I can’t breathe” and the 12-year-old with a toy gun in a park who was shot to death in a confrontation lasting seconds.
In the hours and days following the Dallas shooting I went in search of hatred and rage in America as expressed on the internet. It was a salutary and miserable experience. Black people have been on the wrong end of white hatred on the net almost since its inception. There are organisations promoting racial hatred and encouraging racial violence that have membership schemes, newsletters, discounted goods and a host of links to like-minded entities. They are not difficult to find though the deeper you delve the darker it gets, and when you get to some of the message boards that require password access you can almost sense the menace.
Almost all of the sites I visited had a link somewhere to lists of armed militias, and there are a remarkable number of them spread across the country. They all proclaimed somewhere that their job was to ‘protect our freedoms’ — which mostly seemed to come down to the right to have as many guns as they wanted and carry them where they chose. And have their pictures taken in their canoes. Or on their porches. No women, seemingly. No blacks, either. Most seemed to suffer a kind of universal paranoia — somebody or something but probably Big Government was coming to get them and they would fight to the last bullet to defend their… err… freedoms.
But back to the racism, the hatred sites, had updated frequently since the Dallas incident. Blacks, it was noted on one message board, were ‘getting uppity’ — presumably a reference to the Dallas shooter being black — and needed ‘taking down’. Little difficulty in decoding that one. The black family in the White House were the subject of particular venom, and can expect a lifetime of Secret Service protection against well armed and determined people who want to kill them. Soon. Very soon.
Then there was the call from an old friend, a writer, currently working on her latest novel in yes, Dallas, Texas. Staying in a mate’s house she enquired politely why it was that people needed so many guns (most households having several she said) — and was told that it was to ‘protect ourselves.’ From whom, my friend enquired? ‘From the blacks who are coming to get us.’ And there it is, the circle completed. Reject despair? Sorry Mr President, but dream on. Find meaning among sorrow? Further dreamtime. White police are going to continue to kill black people on the flimsiest of pretexts and yes, enraged black people with the right to keep and bear arms are going to shoot back. Dallas was the beginning of that.
Published in The Express Tribune, July 14th, 2016.