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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsFerguson isn’t about black rage against cops. It’s white rage against progress.
By Carol Anderson August 29 at 2:47 PM
Carol Anderson is an associate professor of African American studies and history at Emory University and a public voices fellow with the Op-Ed Project. She is the author of Bourgeois Radicals: The NAACP and the Struggle for Colonial Liberation, 1941-1960.
When we look back on what happened in Ferguson, Mo., during the summer of 2014, it will be easy to think of it as yet one more episode of black rage ignited by yet another police killing of an unarmed African American male. But that has it precisely backward. What weve actually seen is the latest outbreak of white rage. Sure, it is cloaked in the niceties of law and order, but it is rage nonetheless.
Protests and looting naturally capture attention. But the real rage smolders in meetings where officials redraw precincts to dilute African American voting strength or seek to slash the government payrolls that have long served as sources of black employment. It goes virtually unnoticed, however, because white rage doesnt have to take to the streets and face rubber bullets to be heard. Instead, white rage carries an aura of respectability and has access to the courts, police, legislatures and governors, who cast its efforts as noble, though they are actually driven by the most ignoble motivations.
White rage recurs in American history. It exploded after the Civil War, erupted again to undermine the Supreme Courts Brown v. Board of Education decision and took on its latest incarnation with Barack Obamas ascent to the White House. For every action of African American advancement, theres a reaction, a backlash.
The Norths victory in the Civil War did not bring peace. Instead, emancipation brought white resentment that the good ol days of black subjugation were over. Legislatures throughout the South scrambled to reinscribe white supremacy and restore the aura of legitimacy that the anti-slavery campaign had tarnished. Lawmakers in several states created the Black Codes, which effectively criminalized blackness, sanctioned forced labor and undermined every tenet of democracy. Even the federal authorities promise of 40 acres land seized from traitors who had tried to destroy the United States of America crumbled like dust.
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http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ferguson-wasnt-black-rage-against-copsit-was-white-rage-against-progress/2014/08/29/3055e3f4-2d75-11e4-bb9b-997ae96fad33_story.html?
loyalsister
(13,390 posts)There hasn't been enough recognition and civil discussion of the backlash that we have seen with the election of Pres. Obama.
jwirr
(39,215 posts)love_katz
(2,584 posts)One of my co-workers points out that the South has never stopped fighting the Civil War, even though they lost.
I wish the endless bigots would just...go extinct, somehow.
What needs to happen is for all the form of bigotry to be starved out from our hearts and banished from our minds. Maybe someday the bigots will finally see that injustice really does hurt us all.
AverageJoe90
(10,745 posts)Been that way for a long time now. The good news, is, people are coming together and making a stand. I only hope this continues to multiply forevermore.....
Solomon
(12,319 posts)The police are the ones who "rioted" and racist whites are expressing their rage by giving credence to all manner of utterly absurd justifications and excuses on behalf of the police officer in this case. Even people here on DU.
Now black males are trying to get INTO police cars, get armed with sidewalks, and run at cops who are shooting them.
Discounting black eyewitnesses and giving credence to tales from unknown people who weren't there. That's how racist whites freely express their rage.
They invent these absurd rationales to justify ignoring the facts. The irony is, the more direct facts there are, the more they wail, "but we don't have the facts." The most amazing hairspitting that I have seen is to see them completely discount anything a direct eyewitness is saying that hurts the officer's case, while at the same time giving complete and utter "stake my life on it" credence to anything those same witnesses say that they perceive is detrimental to the victim.
My friends and I talk about how Obama has to know that a lot of people are being hurt as a result of racists being frustrated that he is president. The price we have to pay every time we get a step forward.
Aldo Leopold
(685 posts)drynberg
(1,648 posts)Of course there is also black outrage at yet another unarmed brother is murdered by those who are supposed to "Serve and Protect", except they are often the occupying enemy troops called on to bilk those of color of their meager possessions, not only to earn funds for their own existence but to hold those down before they can think of being "uppity".
Half-Century Man
(5,279 posts)When, if you think about it, the general population of African Americans have responded with restraint and a quiet dignity; for a century and a half.
When an individual is finally overwhelmed by anger or desperation to lash out or seek escape in intoxication the system goes into justification mode. The system cites the individual moment as the norm and ignores the oppressive norm that spawned the moment.
When there is an angry moment of an individual , I do believe it's justified.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)Thanks, DonViejo.
Spitfire of ATJ
(32,723 posts)jtuck004
(15,882 posts)more about working people than their rich banker friends people would be working, not fighting.