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Rittenhouse and the Race Card
The social media fights always get me down. I rarely venture from Edutwitter out into what some educators call "gen pop", but when I do, it's a cruel world. 'Kyle Rittenhouse is White so why is this about race', right?
The overrepresentation of people of color in our jails and the harsher punitive measures taken are glaring indictments of our 'liberty and justice for all'. Seeing Rittenhouse go free, it was impossible not to think that, had it been a Black man killing two White men at a Proud Boys rally--even if there was some altercation, he'd be jailed, assuming he'd survived in the first place. Even a cursory scanning of the US Sentencing Commission's findings will give you context on just why this was 'about race'.
Can you imagine a Black group storming the capital without being gunned down? Most Black people could not.
Can you imagine a Black person shooting 9 people at a White bible study being taken alive? We can't. Twelve year-old Tamir Rice couldn't even play with a toy gun in the park so how could we imagine anything else?
If you find yourself always excusing the officers or blaming the loudmouthed person who "would never have gotten shot if they had complied", my ask is that you consider, whether or not your go to response is to deny any possibility that race or bias could be in play. If it is, I'm asking you to consider having an honest conversation with someone who has had to give their prepubescent son the talk. And then, just consider for a moment, that there might--just might--be something to what we say when we say that something is "about race".
I'll leave you with these words from Elvis Presley's Walk A Mile in My Shoes (Written by Joe South): You never stood in that man's shoes or saw things through his eyes or stood and watched with helpless hands while the heart inside you dies. So help your brother along the way, no matter where he starts for the same God that made you, made him too, these men with broken hearts
For more reading:
Context on disparities in the justice system, courtesy of LSE.
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By Hedreich Nichols
5
22 ratings
The social media fights always get me down. I rarely venture from Edutwitter out into what some educators call "gen pop", but when I do, it's a cruel world. 'Kyle Rittenhouse is White so why is this about race', right?
The overrepresentation of people of color in our jails and the harsher punitive measures taken are glaring indictments of our 'liberty and justice for all'. Seeing Rittenhouse go free, it was impossible not to think that, had it been a Black man killing two White men at a Proud Boys rally--even if there was some altercation, he'd be jailed, assuming he'd survived in the first place. Even a cursory scanning of the US Sentencing Commission's findings will give you context on just why this was 'about race'.
Can you imagine a Black group storming the capital without being gunned down? Most Black people could not.
Can you imagine a Black person shooting 9 people at a White bible study being taken alive? We can't. Twelve year-old Tamir Rice couldn't even play with a toy gun in the park so how could we imagine anything else?
If you find yourself always excusing the officers or blaming the loudmouthed person who "would never have gotten shot if they had complied", my ask is that you consider, whether or not your go to response is to deny any possibility that race or bias could be in play. If it is, I'm asking you to consider having an honest conversation with someone who has had to give their prepubescent son the talk. And then, just consider for a moment, that there might--just might--be something to what we say when we say that something is "about race".
I'll leave you with these words from Elvis Presley's Walk A Mile in My Shoes (Written by Joe South): You never stood in that man's shoes or saw things through his eyes or stood and watched with helpless hands while the heart inside you dies. So help your brother along the way, no matter where he starts for the same God that made you, made him too, these men with broken hearts
For more reading:
Context on disparities in the justice system, courtesy of LSE.