Racism now trending
Photo credit: Jessica Johnson
On Jan. 5, a video of four teenagers who bound, gagged and tortured a disabled white teenager went viral, affectionately picking up the hashtag “BLMKidnapping.”
The four teenagers were arrested for the video and their motivation for the attack was clearly from the anti-Trump and anti-white slurs shouted during the assault. The teenager was attacked for being white and supporting President-elect Donald Trump.
Society across the board was swift to condemn this attack, as expected. Condemning an attack of this nature is probably the easiest part of the situation. Now, this begs the question, what would have happened if the roles were reversed?
This is probably a question you’ve seen all over your Facebook or Twitter feeds from your “white and potentially racist” friends. I’m here to tell you that it’s a completely legitimate one.
I will be the first to tell you that this crime had nothing to do with Black Lives Matter. But, I’m not going to be intellectually dishonest about the kind of influence the movement has had over the treatment of white people in society over the past few years.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people tweet about how much “white people suck.” So, when I see Yusra Khogali, one of the co-founders of Black Lives Matter in Toronto, tweet about how she needs “Allah to give her the strength to not cuss/kill these men and white folks,” I get a little bothered.
Khogali’s comments only create more strife between two clashing parties. As people continually categorize Black Lives Matter as an organization that condones hate crimes and violence against white people, others point the finger toward actions perpetrated against people for racial or political beliefs.
Symone Sanders, the former spokeswoman for the Bernie Sanders campaign, talked openly about white people being unfit to lead the Democratic party but was safe from the type of criticism that Khogali faced. As long as big media corporations continually provide a platform for these kinds of people, you’re going to get anti-white racism normalized.
If it were white people making the same ridiculous statements, we would never hear the end of it and rightly so. These kinds of statements are what leads to more racism in the United States, but it’s being overlooked when aimed at white people.
People tend to justify their racism by changing the definition of the word racism. It isn’t about how a dominant party oppresses those under them. That definition of racism merely stems from the sociological theory that may be applied to society. Now, it’s used as some sort of pathetic defense mechanism to justify racism.
Race relations are tense as it is. With this kind of bigotry being normalized, things are only going to get worse. Racism isn’t something we need to define, it’s a clear cut idea of prejudice against any group. And white people aren’t excluded.
Roberto Fonseca can be reached at [email protected] or @TheOrion_News on Twitter.
Richard Hertz // May 12, 2017 at 10:05 pm
Finally, an honest non p/c editorial by an individual who has the guts and some independent thought. Great job Roberto on not following the sheep. Keep it up.
Mark Kraft // Feb 13, 2017 at 10:11 am
It should be noted that another media source referred to this person as ““one of the co-founders” of Black Lives Matters. That was the extreme alt-right site Breitbart.
I think people need an answer as to where you sourced your information for this article. If you are leaning on Breitbart for the facts you base your articles on, I hope your journalism professors correct you — and teach you — accordingly.
Until you start to source your op-ed pieces on real news sources, and actually do due diligence and factcheck your own stories, then maybe you should hang it up, because nothing is more odious than to (mis)use your position to pass on lies to the public.
Mark Kraft // Feb 13, 2017 at 10:04 am
Roberto showed a complete lack of factchecking skills here… one of the basic requirements for journalism. Calling Yusra Khogali “one of the co-founders” of Black Lives Matter is a definite padding of their resume.
As Wikipedia points out:
“The originators of the (#BlackLivesNow) hashtag and call to action, Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi, expanded their project into a national network of over 30 local chapters between 2014 and 2016. The overall Black Lives Matter movement, however, is a decentralized network and has no formal hierarchy.”
So, basically BLN had, theoretically, three co-founders, and first became a national, decentralized network of local chapters, starting based on police violence in the U.S… and this was before becoming international, and having local chapters in cities like Toronto.
And even then, cherrypicking this person, who made a relatively unseen tweet with only five likes, saying something angry about white people in a particular context where she could be referring to White Lives Matters counter-protesters, white supremacists, or the like, and saying “Khogali’s comments only create more strife between two clashing parties”, completely overlooks the larger issue here of systemic racism against black people, that gets black people killed all the time, white bro-dudes dedicated to protecting that status quo by talking about their own oppression, active white supremacist movements, or, say, white supremacists shooting crowds of Black Lives Matters supporters in cold blood. That’s a real thing, you know. Black Lives Matters protesters have bled innocent blood for speaking out for their basic rights.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-black-lives-matter-protesters-shooting-verdict-20170201-story.html
So yes, there is a simmering anger and outrage against white people, that also leads black people to irrational anger and sometimes even violence… it is understandable that black people would express that anger, and how close they oftentimes feel to putting those angry feelings into action. It is understandable that anger exists, and I say this as a white person… but you would apparently deny them the right to even openly express that frustration over the systemic discrimination.
I am not here to defend everything said by a local chapter co-founder of BLM. A lot of it I find too heated… but when people are put in the heat of things, they do tend to get overheated. I am sure they have many better spokespeople for their movement. But when you hyperfocus on “hate crimes and violence against white people”, without pointing out the basic statistics that hate crimes against black people are massively more frequent, or how the death penalty has repeatedly been called racist by judges in this country, due to the racial bias of how it is applied, for example, you just show how narrowminded, petty, and incapable of grasping the larger issue of equal rights here you appear to be.
The simple fact is, white conservative outrage doesn’t even need facts and statistics to back up their claims of discrimination… they have resorted to making things up on a routine basis. And they certainly don’t acknowledge the much bigger and more common scope of systemic racism against black people.
All I say is, put your hurt feelings aside for a second, and look at the bigger issue here of social injustice… because I can assure you that your complaints and hurt feelings as expressed in this article absolutely pale in comparison to that larger issue.
Orion Supporter // Jan 26, 2017 at 9:46 am
You just wrote a column on the Women’s March claiming that racism is no longer a problem in America. Make up your mind