1/ Putting aside that most violence at the protests has been done by whites (& cops really), white folks have always been more bothered by violence in response to racism than the violence OF racism. A thought experiment can prove the point. It's a question I've asked many times..
2/ Ask yourself, white folks, what's your initial reaction when I say the following entirely inarguable thing:
Black folks held in bondage under enslavement had the ABSOLUTE moral right to kill their 'masters' in their sleep to get free.
Black folks held in bondage under enslavement had the ABSOLUTE moral right to kill their 'masters' in their sleep to get free.
3/ Does that bother you even a little? Do you hesitate even a second to agree? Or perhaps even disagree? Ok, now try it this way:
The women held by Ariel Castro for years had the absolute moral right to kill him in his sleep to get free. So too Elizabeth Smart with her captors..
The women held by Ariel Castro for years had the absolute moral right to kill him in his sleep to get free. So too Elizabeth Smart with her captors..
4/ I doubt anyone would argue with me about those two cases. But why is it different? Both involved people held against their will. The dead in each case would have been kidnappers. And no, the fact that the enslaver didn't usually do the kidnapping doesn't matter...
5/ If Ariel Castro, or Smart's kidnappers had sold the women in question to a third party, the third party would have been just as guilty as the ones who actually took them forcibly. And NO one would question the right of those women to do whatever was needed to get free...
6/ But I have asked white people about the right of slaves to have killed their captors, hundreds of times and almost always get equivocation, or hesitation--a flinch, an averted gaze, a hemming and hawing that suggests at some level we cannot admit full black humanity...
7/ ...nor acknowledge the depth of racist pain. We cannot or will not assign to black peoples the same moral right to be free, entirely and completely free, that we would give to anyone else. No wonder we can't abide them talking back to cops from time to time...
8/ If you are even remotely hesitant to endorse the morality of the comment I made in the thought experiment, ask why? What does that say about our conditioning? I'll admit the first time someone asked me this question many years ago I flinched too...just a momentary hesitation..
9/ ...before ultimately agreeing with it. That hesitation spoke volumes though. Even having to think about it, where we wouldn't in the case of Ariel Castro or Smart's kidnappers, or Jaycee Dugard, says a lot...none of it good
Bottom line: whatever one thinks of Django Unchained as a film, the movie's climactic revenge sequence is inarguably a statement of absolute moral clarity vis a vis the system of enslavement
