Enough, America. Enough.

Black Americans have been brutalized for too long. It has to stop. Now.

https://thebanter.substack.com/p/enough-america-enough



I was asked by a black friend recently how I felt when he posted challenging commentary on white violence against black people on his Facebook feed. It was an interesting question that I hadn’t considered, so I thought carefully before I responded. As a Brit with Jewish ancestry living in America, I told him that white American culture is not something I understand very well, so when Black Americans refer to “White People” it doesn’t feel as if they are talking about me. I am familiar with racism and understand just how brutal White European violence can be. My family were persecuted in Eastern Europe in the latter part of the 19th century, and faced virulent antisemitism in the UK.

My grandfather fought fascists in the streets in London leading up to World War II. My father was targeted for being Jewish at school in the 1960’s (sometimes violently). My family has received numerous warnings from Jewish groups over the years warning us of increased antisemitic violence in the UK, and I’ve also experienced my own share of anti-semitism over the years. My direct relatives thankfully avoided the Holocaust, but the memory of it is deeply etched in the psyche of every Jew alive. Growing up with this cultural memory has made me instinctively distrustful of White European culture, and I’ve always felt more comfortable around minorities.

And yet.

My skin color in this country affords me many luxuries in this country that African Americans are not. So while I can empathize with racism against black people, I do not, and cannot, understand it in the same way. I can go jogging in my neighborhood without getting shot. I can walk in my local park and not have the police called on me for asking someone to leash their dog. I will almost certainly survive any interaction I have with the police. I can walk into stores and not be thought of as a thief. I can get a bank loan and move to a neighborhood of my choosing. I will not be racially stereotyped in everyday settings. I won’t have to worry about my son going out with his friends, or whether he’ll even come back. I live in a country owned and operated by white people, and because I am white I get pretty much all of the perks.

This is what is called ‘White Privilege’, and to deny it — particularly in the face of what we have seen over the past few days — is an act of insanity. Of course this privilege has been going on since the inception of the country, but rarely has it made itself more apparent than the back to back footage of Ahmaud Arbery’s public lynching in Georgia, a white woman calling the cops on Christian Cooper while birdwatching in Central Park, and the slow, tortuous murder of Floyd George by a white policeman in broad daylight in Minneapolis. White people are not subjected to these extraordinary acts of depravity and abuse on a daily basis because they live in a society that values their lives. Thus the reality black Americans face is often incomprehensible to them. Something has changed though in recent days, and America seems to have reached a tipping point. There is no longer any excuse for white Americans to claim they don’t see what is happening, because they have just seen it. In the space of just a few days, white America has witnessed the most appalling abuses of black Americans imaginable all over their television sets and social media feeds. And they cannot look away.

Ahmaud Arbery was chased and lynched by two white men for the sole reason that he was black. Arbery’s attackers believed his skin color made him fair game, and that their skin color would allow them to escape justice. Amy Cooper believed her life was more valuable than Christian Cooper’s because she was white and he was black. When she called the police and told them there was “an African American man threatening my life” she assumed that the police would believe her, the distressed and vulnerable white woman, and arrest Christian Cooper, the aggressive, powerful black man. But white America got to see what Christian Cooper experienced because he filmed it for his own protection: White Privilege in all its grotesque, shameful glory.

Derek Chauvin believed he could kneel on George Floyd’s neck for almost 10 minutes because Floyd’s life was of little value. He watched coldly as others filmed him, listened to Floyd begging for his life, and ignored other’s pleas to stop killing him. In White America, Chauvin banked on there being no consequences for his actions. Now White America has seen what the slow, merciless murder of a 46 year old black man looks like. The protests of the past few days are a sign that Americans of all color have finally had enough. The barbarity and inhumanity African Americans have been, and are being subjected to is too much. The violence done in the name of “law and order”, the dehumanization and destruction of black bodies, the shooting of black children, the racist tropes, the segregation — it has to end. There are no more excuses for any of us to look away, and this past week has to mark a turning point in black and white relations in America. There is no turning back, and millions of Americans are finally standing up for justice.

Enough, America. Enough.