renouncing whiteness

Christopher B. Hajib-Niles cniles at wanadoo.fr
Thu Nov 23 01:02:31 PST 2000



>Messsage du 22/11/2000 23:51
>De : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>A : <lbo-talk at lists.panix.com>
>Copie à :
>Objet : Re: renouncing whiteness
>
> At 03:59 PM 11/22/00 -0500, Charles wrote:
> >CB: The Blackness of the man shot 41 times when he showed his wallet in
> Manhattan and the whiteness of the cops who shot him was also debilitating
> to to the murdered man's body.
> >
> >Whiteness/Blackness is not only discourse.
> >
>
>
> Charles, the only colored that mattered there was blue.

Whoa woj! my brothers and grew up as nice, middle-class boys in a west l.a. suburb and by the time we reached our mid-teens, we were constantly harrased by the lapd. it was never fun and sometimes frightening. that kind of low-grade terrorism was never practiced on white kids in the valley or 'poor whites' in other parts of the l.a. basin; and if it was, you surely would have heard about it by now. to this day, when i'm driving down the san diego freeway, i get knots in my stomach when i see the lapd in the rear-view mirror--and i consider myself somewhat recklessly fearless when it comes to cops.

now, there is a small amount of (occasionally unfortunate) tall-telling that goes on with young black folk about their scuffles with the police because surviving those scuffles is a badge of honor, and what the hell, we all love a good story; and i'm not one that assumes that every time a cop stops me or kicks my ass in a demo that it is nec- assarily or explicitely because of my color. in fact, my guess is that MOST white cops have roughly the same racial anxieties as most other white americans but that they more often appear to be racial thugs because they have more opportunities to actualise those anxieties. but when, as in my case, you get stopped and the cop calls you 'black boy' or the cop responds to your request for his badge number with 'oh, i see, you think you are one of those tough n-words' (and then gives it to you without a problem)...well, woj, you make the call.

To further
> illustrate, we had a similar case in MD where a cop shot a student. In
> this case, however, both the cop and the victim were black; what seem to
> happen was that the undercover cop tried to make an arrest, the guy got
> scared and rammed the cop's unmarked car, then the cop got scared and shot
> him.
>
> Clerly it is the thin-blue-line mentality behind those incidents

true. but just because its black folks shooting at each other does not mean race ain't involved. many black cops, like a number of other black folk, have what i call their own internalized whiteness problems that combine with their thin blue line mentality to make for deadly encounters.

that said, i think black police are generally more understanding. in my neighborhood in northeast d.c., i not too infrequently have seen a black cop lecturing local petty dealers about what prison is like, about how white folks are just waiting for them to do something stupid, how they understand the situation but they have to do better, etc. in fact, my neighbor is a black female cop who told me that she refuses to arrest anyone on drug possession charges or for petty thievery unless she can't get away with it.

- the cult
> of police as superheroeas saving society from sundry villains

how do the villains in america get determined? there are many different types of mythic villains on the american landscape, but it seems obvious that young black men are potential villain number one. are you gonna argue that black men, especially in america are not thought of as more likely villains than white men?

(instead of
> being mere civil servants) coupled with poor training.

in a society ruled by capital and silly racial mythologies cops can never be mere social servents and 'better training' will only add to the tendency of things simultaneously getting better and worse in america on the racial front...

chris niles the new abolitionist
> wojtek
>
>



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