It’s pretty irresponsible to ignore police brutality just because you feel as if black people should stop complaining about racism.
Last week, a grand jury in Ferguson, Missouri, surprised no one by failing to indict Officer Darren Wilson for the Aug. 9 murder of Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager who died on his knees with his hands up after Wilson shot him six times — twice in the head — and left his body in the street for four and a half hours.
This is America, where every 28 hours, a black person is killed by a police officer. According to the mainstream media and many of your parents, friends and Facebook statuses, Michael Brown deserved his fate, the same way that Renisha McBride, Tamir Rice, Trayvon Martin, John Crawford and countless others did. Do. Will, 28 hours from now. Or sooner.
But even if you are unable to recognize that minorities are inordinately targeted and abused by police officers at such an alarming rate, even if you’re somehow able to continue to swallow centuries-long historical narratives that have forced you to make villains out of black people, you are not absolved of responsibility for holding the police accountable for excessive force, any more than bumbling, trigger-happy police officers should be absolved of responsibility for mowing down American citizens in the street.
To argue that you aren’t racist when you say anti-black things or to try to reroute crucial conversations about race just because you feel as if black people have no right to speak about their oppression — that’s just wasting time none of us can get back. You’re wasting digital space that could have been used to post a hilarious Vine or a cute picture of a cat.
Stop making excuses. Not everyone is meant not to be a human garbage receptacle, I guess. Own your place in the junkyard.
What you do when you complain about people complaining about racism instead of the injustices that cause them to speak out is perpetuate that injustice.
Too often I see simpleton Tweets and status updates that cry that police brutality doesn’t just happen to black people, as if this is somehow news that people didn’t know already. No duh, sis. Police brutality happens to everyone, after all; in addition to being racist, many cases of police brutality are sexist, ableist, classist and homophobic, and tend to intersect, but in the worst way possible.
Focusing on dismissing the concerns of the oppressed ignores the fact that police brutality happens in a country that’s supposed to be the bellwether of personal and political freedom but instead, sees its citizens suffer such abuse at the hands of public servants that people in Palestine, Hong Kong and North Korea reach out to express their sympathy for the abused and to condemn their abusers. The USA even got Kim Jong Un feeling some type of way.
Instead of debating how those affected by racism should feel about racism, or doing even more violence against minorities by denying their right to indignation at the fact that police brutality happens to them more often than it does non-minorities, you could just not.
If you can’t take the evils of racism seriously, then at least hold yourself accountable when it comes to police brutality and know that it’s wrong every time it happens, no matter to whom.
Sierra Mannie is a senior Classics major from Ridgeland.
