The
latest antics in the trial of the White men who killed Ahmaud
Arbery
in Brunswick, Georgia, and the murder trial of Kyle
Rittenhouse
in Kenosha, Wisconsin should tell you everything you need to know
about White supremacist violence, and what will be tolerated and
celebrated in America.
If
these two kangaroo trials result in acquittals, it will be par for
the course in a nation which always upheld the right of White men to
murder Black people with impunity and gun down righteous White folks
who stand up against systemic racism and Jim Crow fascism.
Black
people warned you this was coming, and this has been the state of
affairs for years.
In
Jim Crow sham trials, it is unnecessary for the White participants to
pretend there is even a veneer of legitimacy in what is taking place.
After the Rev. Al
Sharpton showed
up at the trial of Greg
McMichael,
Travis
McMichael and
William
“Roddie” Bryan Jr.
- who are on trial for the vigilante-style killing of Black jogger
Ahmaud Arbery - one of the defense attorneys said, “We don’t
want any more Black
pastors
coming in here.”
The
case, which started a jury pool of 48 people, 12 of whom were White,
whittled down to a jury
of 11 Whites and only one Black,
in a county that is 26% Black and 69% White. And the defense had
requested that Arbery
not be called a “victim”
in court proceedings. Because far too often, that’s what
justice looks like in America.
Meanwhile,
in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse, the armed teen and self-proclaimed
militia member accused of gunning down three
White men,
killing two of them, at an antiracism protest against the killing of
Jacob
Blake,
a Black father, in Kenosha. Blake, 29, was left paralyzed after
police shot him in the back four times. Police at the protest
provided the armed Rittenhouse with bottled water and thanked
him
for being there before he committed the alleged murders and fled
across state lines to his home state of Illinois.
Viewers
witnessed the curious acting performance of Rittenhouse on the stand,
as he appeared to cry invisible tears - the tears of White men who
are bullies and perpetrators, who commit heinous acts yet paint
themselves as the victim, and emerge as the heroes and leaders of
White America. This, in a courtroom whose judge - Kenosha County
Circuit Judge Bruce
Schroeder
- came from central casting as Racist White Judge #1.
Acting
more like defense counsel than judge, Schroeder has gone the extra
mile to signal to all of us that there is no way his boy Rittenhouse
is going to prison, from reading
a cookie catalog
on the bench, to telling the jury to praise
a defense witness,
and proclaiming the slain victims cannot be called “victims,”
but could be referred to as “rioters,” “looters”
or “arsonists.”
“This
is a long-held opinion of mine, which very few judges, I guess, share
with me,” said Schroeder, who
said “victim” is a “loaded word” and
even “alleged victim” is too close.
Like
the judge, certain swaths of White America are sympathetic to
Rittenhouse - as they supported generations of Kyle Rittenhouses
before him for 400 years - because they are tired of being called out
on White supremacy. They long for the days when White folks were able
to lynch Black people and ‘n***** lovers’ without
catching any flack for it, and just go home and drink a Pepsi. And in
the rare event they stood trial, an all-White jury found them not
guilty, in which case they kissed their wife or girlfriend, and drank
a Pepsi - or a beer - and that was that. And they would return to
their community as heroes; the best their town had to offer.
In
that regard, Rittenhouse has many role models to follow, such as
George
Zimmerman,
the Afrolatinx, White-adjacent, self-proclaimed neighborhood patrol
watchman who took the life of Trayvon
Martin
in Florida in 2012. Zimmerman was found not guilty and granted
honorary Whiteness, and the conservative White press painted Trayvon
as a thug who got what he deserved. As Malcolm
X
once said, “If you’re not careful, the newspapers will
have you hating the people who are being oppressed, and loving the
people who are doing the oppressing.”
In
his courtroom acting debut, Rittenhouse seemed to borrow directly
from accused serial rapist and Supreme Court Justice Brett
Kavanaugh.
Faced with sexual assault allegations during his Senate confirmation
hearing, Kavanaugh turned himself into the crying
victim,
insisting he drank beer and liked beer a lot - but not enough to
Black out or rape a woman. Now an American hero to the conservative
movement, Kavanaugh is on the court for life, where he and his
colleagues are in judgment over women and their bodily autonomy.
We
are living at a turning point in America, where the battle against
White supremacy could bring us a true multiracial democracy. And if
we fail, we will return to the nineteenth century. According to a
poll, one-third
of Republicans
are ready and willing to use violence to save their country. One
member of Congress, Rep. Paul
Gosar (R-AZ),
tweeted
an anime video depicting him killing
Rep. Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez
(D-NY). Some states have introduced or passed
laws
protecting drivers who run over protesters like Heather
Heyer,
the Black Lives Matter counter-demonstrator killed by a Nazi motorist
at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville.
Further,
the Great
Replacement Theory
- the White supremacist theory that White people are an endangered
species to be replaced by liberals, Democrats and Jews with
immigrants and Black and Brown people - is now mainstream thought in
the GOP. And White supremacist-controlled states rush to enact voter
suppression and racial gerrymandering to further disempower Black
people and exclude them from voting and juries.
Whether
the Confederate States of America, the Wilmington insurrection of
1898, Black Wall Street, the murderers of Emmett
Till,
the MOVE bombing, or the Jan. 6 insurrection, organized White
terrorist violence faces little-to-no consequences in the land of the
free. White vigilantes and racist mobs always get off, and what Black
people have been saying about the racist criminal justice system and
those many
atrocious and racist judges on the bench
like Judge Schroeder is true.
This
is why the Ahmaud Arbery and Kyle Rittenhouse verdicts are important.
America is on trial.
This
commentary was originally published by The
Grio
