Reality is reality regardless of perspective.
News stories emerge almost daily in the US about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black. Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique.
Last week in California, three black people - a Jamaican, a Canadian of Nigerian descent, and a London native - were confronted by seven police cars as they checked out of their Airbnb because a white American thought they were robbing the house.
Though they were not American, they were still subjected to racist American stereotypes - and being confronted with tense, potentially life-threatening altercations with police without ever committing a crime.
I've travelled a fair amount around the world, but America's racist status quo remains unique and alarmingly oppressive. American racism is entirely complexion-based and monolithic. One's nationality is immaterial.
Years ago during one of my trips to France, a woman at La Poste refused to sell me stamps because she thought I was African.
When she learned that I was American, she apologised and sold me the stamps. The racism I experienced in France is totally unacceptable, but it provided an escape not afforded last week to these three visitors to America.
In France, nationality usurped race, and while that can have its own problems, it was still very different from the racism back home.
When I was in London, I lived in Bethnal Green during the 2011 riots, which started after London police officers killed Mark Duggan, a black man.
As teenage vandals looted and set my neighbourhood ablaze, I remember casually walking down the street during the chaos and having a London police officer politely ask me to return to my flat. There was no tense exchange, I was not arrested, and I never feared for my life.
During the week of the riots, Londoners openly discussed how black people might receive different treatment from law enforcement, but conversations focused on analysing policing techniques, discussing ways to keep teenagers off of the streets during the summer when they do not have school, and catching looters via CCTV.
In the American discourse, a supposedly inherent danger or criminality of black bodies would have been used to justify the police's killing of Duggan and present the riots as an inevitable by-product of a "culture of crime". The killing of Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson followed this all-too-familiar American script.
Racism towards black people in America has largely nothing to do with immigration or nationality. There is no home country for African-Americans to connect to. Instead it is essentially a status quo of domestic alienation, dehumanisation, criminalisation, and terror. European racism is bad, but it was still more welcoming than America's.
America's systemic racism starts with slavery and the various slave codes - state or federal laws created that codified the inhumane practice of chattel slavery into law. The American South was a "slave society", not merely a society with slaves. However, following the abolition of slavery, laws similar to the slave codes continued to oppress black people.
Following the Civil War, these "black codes" had the explicit purpose of depriving newly freed black Americans of the rights they had won. Black codes varied from state to state, but their legal foundation centred on vagrancy laws that allowed for an African American to be arrested if he was unemployed or homeless. They applied to countless blacks because housing and employment opportunities for freed blacks in the South were almost non-existent after the war.
Supporters of Virginia's Vagrancy Act of 1866, one of these measures, stated that it would reinstitute "slavery in all but its name".
White Southerners would report blacks for vagrancy, and law enforcement would arrest them and sentence African-Americans to up three months of forced labour on public or private lands.
The federal government fought against black codes during Reconstruction by electing former abolitionists and freed blacks to public office, and creating laws and adding amendments to the US Constitution to protect the rights of black Americans.
But following the collapse of Reconstruction in 1877, Southern states brought them back. Black codes became the bedrock of state constitutions. Poll taxes and literacy exams to prevent African Americans from voting soon became the norm. Jim Crow and racial segregation, which governed the South until the 1960s, are outgrowths of those laws.
As black families fled the South in the 20th Century during the Great Migration, black codes followed them to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York and elsewhere. Black Americans - who were domestic refugees fleeing state-funded terrorism - allegedly brought crime, unemployment, vagrancy, and drugs. Police departments across America responded with more black codes and aggressive policing of black communities.
Yale student speaks out: 'White people use police as a weapon'
Man threatens to report Spanish-speakers
Why Starbucks faces toilet trouble
Black life has always been criminalised and dehumanised in America. During Barack Obama's presidency, Michael Brown, Eric Garner and countless other unarmed African-Americans were killed by police, but with a black president many Americans felt progress was attainable. Social media raised awareness of these injustices and helped create the Black Lives Matter movement.
Under President Donald Trump, we have the same type of violence that America has always had, but now we have, at best, an indifferent federal government, and at worst a racist president. Due to this change, more white Americans are emboldened to re-employ black codes.
Under Obama, social media championed our desire for progress, and today it documents our obvious regression.
Last week in New York City, a black lawyer and her 19-year-old daughter were handcuffed and detained by police after being falsely accused of shoplifting. During the same week, the police were called by a white student at Yale University because a black Yale student was sleeping in the common area in their dormitory. In late April, an African-American family had the police called on them by a white woman for having a cookout in a public park.
Following the arrest of two black men for sitting in a Starbucks, and the increased awareness of similar injustices, the world can more clearly see the racist applications of the law that black people constantly face in America. Their arrest was black codes in 2018, but without the three months of forced labour.
Trump's presidency has exacerbated the problem and social media has raised awareness, but employing black codes and masquerading oppression against black people as democratic justice and fair law enforcement has sadly always been America's status quo.
In view of the constant and unremitting racism posted by far right extremists I think this is the best place for this opinion piece byBarrett Holmes Pitner.
News stories emerge almost daily in the US about police being called over black Americans doing nothing more than being black.
Writer Barrett Holmes Pitner explains why he thinks American racism is unique.
In the American discourse, a supposedly inherent danger or criminality of black bodies would have been used to justify the police's killing of Duggan and present the riots as an inevitable by-product of a "culture of crime". The killing of Michael Brown and the riots in Ferguson followed this all-too-familiar American script.
Protecting yourself when a black person tries to kill you or your pet is hardly racism.
Actually, accusing a black man of trying to kill her or her pet...despite the evidence that he obviously didn't try to kill her or her pet...just because he is black (and making specific mention of that, like it means something)...would be racism.
The threat is purely one of perspective, and minor at that:
- Your evidence of the 'threat' (that of the mans own writing) ignores the written explanation that was provided immediately following (that he carries treats to show owners the problem with them keeping the pet off leash).
In this, you are being selective in your choice of what words from the black mans own writing you will accept. You are highlighting what suits your agenda (from his writings), and ignoring the part that doesn't suit your agenda (from his writings). Why is that?
- you discount that he is the one that started recording (indicating free conscience). Why is that?
- The moment he started recording it was obvious the 'threat' was non-existent. But you disregard this when saying he was threatening the pets life. Why is that?
- you ignore his tone used in the video, to focus solely on a vague 'threat', disregarding the surrounding tone, and disregarding the surrounding explanation, and disregarding the surrounding behaviour. Why is that?
- you discount the womans poor behaviour. Why is that?
- You discount her apology as being forced (though you have no evidence of this). Why is that?
- you discount her words "I'm going to tell them" (which is never necessary when someone has done something against you.
It's usually used when you are going to make up a story).
- you discount the guys very obvious conscience free 'go ahead' when she tells him what she is going to tell the police. Why is that?
- you discount her continued repetition of 'Black african american male' (spoken like it meant something). Why is that?
Ie. Why have you engaged in the above behaviour??
You might explain away individual parts to yourself. As a whole, it takes a great deal of very blinkered perspective to see this as anything other than a racist incident.
She might have felt afraid initially at the vague 'threat'. However any normal person would very quickly realise that all the guy wanted, was the dog leashed. At that point, her threatening to make up stories (I'm going to tell them you threatened my life), then continually repeating 'black african american male' - is racist. Pure and simple.
He told her that she wasn't going to like what he was about to do and then tried to lure her pet away from her.
None of these explanations were apparent to her when she made the 911 call. All she knew is that some strange guy told her that she wasn't going to like what he was about to do and then subsequently tried to lure her pet away from her.
Which of course could be viewed as threatening, as I said. However you have gone beyond this and stated that he threatened to kill her/her dog. You reinforce this once again, saying I would not regard an attempt to kill one of my cats as minor.
This we agree on. It was silly of the guy to word his response in such a way before offering her dog a treat. I say silly - not criminal (being poorly worded is supported by the surrounding evidence).
What that vague 'threat' actually meant, would be seen in the follow up actions. If someone said what he said, then offered my dog a treat, I too would pull my dog back and tell him to f**k off. However, at the point he:
- starts filming,
- continuing to talk in a reasonable tone
- not moving towards me in any threatening way
... I would start asking questions as to why he is doing that.
- And if I were silly enough to say "I'm going to call police and tell them..."
- and he said "Go right ahead".
...At this point I'd be wondering what his go was, because his behaviour is no longer consistent with any threat, so had he meant any threat?
I wouldn't be escalating the situation even further, calling police, and continually highlighting 'he's a black african american man." with a vague 'he's threatened me'.
My issue with your writing, is how you interpret that to be threatening to kill her and her dog, and discount anything that says otherwise. She might have been frightened for a bit. And that fright would be justified to a degree. That fright after he offered her dog a treat, should have alleviated quickly given the subsequent calm, non-threatening, rational, conscience free behaviours of the man, but it continued to morph into a racist rant by the girl.
This is the common sense version of events.
So why do you feel the need to interpret things in a way that so strongly denounces the black man (to the point you are suggesting he should have been shot)
and supporting the white girls racist rant?
Both did things wrong.
No sane perspective includes 'he threatened her life' (whereas for a very short while, she may have believed he threatened the life of her dog).
No sane perspectives includes he should be shot.
At the point where she started calling police and going on a racist rant - it was very obvious that no threat existed.
Supporting her racism on the basis of it's factual, while ignoring why she said it so many times, is poor (I very much doubt 911 forgot it after the first time she mentioned it)
You re entirely inventing scenarios and motives out of whole cloth, on the basis of no evidence,
and trying to twist the facts to support your wholly bogus narrative, which they don't.
You always do it. You're doing it here.
You're doing what you always do, trying to recast a situation where the white person is clearly in the wrong
so that somehow you can make the black person who is clearly in the right out as somehow the villain of the piece.
You're doing that here. He wasn't attacking her.
He had no intention of harming the dog. All he wanted was the dog on the leash as the park rules required. She didn't like the rules and invented a story and tried to sell it to the cops so she could endanger an innocent man's life and liberty.
She just totally lost it. In this digital age, if you do that, your okwn actions are likely to come back and ahunt you and incrimninate you. That happened to her. Now she has to live with her actions that everyone can see and judge her on. And that judgment is deservedly harsh. Hard to argue with video, tho oralloy tries his best to make us not see what we clearly see.
It's hard to know though. I really don't feel like being lynched by progressives.
Perhaps that jogger in Georgia should have deescalated too. If he had not attacked Travis McMichael, he'd be alive today.
There is nothing racist about calling 911 when a black man says you aren't going to like what he is about to do and then tries to lure your pet away from you.
I already told you: Because I have a strong sense of ethics and morality, and the atrocity that you are committing shocks my conscience.
That is a factual account, and telling the truth is perfectly reasonable.
the legal department of NYC, which has seen the same video you have, and knows far more of the law than you do, is investigating her,
not him, for the fraudulent call.
You once again, as you always do, try to spin it so the black guy is always the one at fault and the white person is the innocent victim. that's what you're doing here
and no one is buying it.
that's why you're repeatedly charged with racism.
He was not attacking her or her dog or threatening to.
Spin is not fact.
And if it waddles like a duck and quacks like a duck…..
What he did doesn't even come close to constituting a lynching,
so why describe it that way.
Here's the thing:
- McMichaels actually threaten the jogger's life with guns,
and you blame the jogger for defending himself (saying it's his fault he got shot because he tried to defend his life)
- White girl hears a vague threat from a black man, so she misunderstands what he's doing when he offers her dog a treat, and you say she should have pulled a gun.
In your world, black people can't 'win' - they defend themselves and they are to blame for getting shot;
they say something a bit wrong and they are to blame for getting shot.
It's not a realistic world.
It's a racist world.
If there were proportionality, or two sides of the coin considered - you might have something. But you don't seem to comprehend proportionality, and only see one side of the coin. And that side you defend regardless of any other possible perspective.
Nor did I say there was. You will need to read more carefully if you think that is what I said.
And what atrocity would that be?
You have no factual account that he threatened her life. What you have is words that you want to interpret as 'threatening a life'...but this ignores that it can be interpreted in multiple ways, and it also ignores the surrounding circumstances, and it ignores that his words became a lot clearer when he started recording, was behaving well, and talking in a very reasonable voice (this of course, relates to her call). Yours is an interpretation of events. And a one sided one at that.
