White America’s Waco Insanity: The Shocking Realities It Ignores About Racism & Violence The Response To The Twin Peaks Shootout Says Everything You Need To Know About How White Privilege Really Works BRITTNEY COOPER

White peo­ple, even well-mean­ing and thought­ful ones, have the priv­i­lege of look­ing at dead­ly acts of mass vio­lence of this sort as iso­lat­ed local inci­dents, par­tic­u­lar to one com­mu­ni­ty. They do not look at such inci­dents as indica­tive of any­thing hav­ing to do with race or racism. But every­thing from the dif­fer­ence in law enforce­ment response to media response tells us what we need to know about how white priv­i­lege allows acts of vio­lence by white peo­ple to be judged by entire­ly dif­fer­ent stan­dards than those of any oth­er group. If a Black motor­cy­cle gang had engaged in a shootout in a park­ing lot, any hon­est white per­son will admit that the con­ver­sa­tion would have sound­ed incred­i­bly different.

Frequently in con­ver­sa­tions that I have observed or par­tic­i­pat­ed in with white peo­ple about race, the claim is levied that it is Black peo­ple “who make every­thing about race.” But this inci­dent in Waco gives lie to that claim. It turns out that when white priv­i­lege is in clear oper­a­tion, white peo­ple are invest­ed in mak­ing sure that we don’t see race in oper­a­tion. Charles Mills, a philoso­pher of race, has a term which I think applies here: epis­te­mol­o­gy of white igno­rance. By this means, he means that white peo­ple have cre­at­ed a whole way of know­ing the world that both demands and allows that they remain obliv­i­ous to the oper­a­tions of white suprema­cy, that white peo­ple remain “intent on deny­ing what is before them.” Thus even though three gangs have now attacked each oth­er in broad day­light and killed or injured 27 peo­ple, there is no nag­ging, gnaw­ing sense of fear, no social anx­i­ety about what the world is com­ing to, no anger at the thugs who made it unsafe for American fam­i­lies to go about their reg­u­lar dai­ly activ­i­ties with­out fear of being clipped by a stray bul­let, no pos­tur­ing from law enforce­ment about the neces­si­ty of using mil­i­tary weapons to put down the law­less band of crim­i­nals that turned a park­ing lot into a war zone in broad day­light. More than that, there is no sense of white shame, no hang­ing of the head over the mem­bers of their race that have been out in the world rep­re­sent­ing every­thing that is wrong with America.

That kind of intra-racial shame is reserved pri­mar­i­ly for Black people.

Most white cit­i­zens will insist that this was just an iso­lat­ed inci­dent, even though the gangs were already under sur­veil­lance for con­sis­tent par­tic­i­pa­tion in crim­i­nal activ­i­ty. And this stud­ied igno­rance, this sense in which peo­ple could look at this set of inci­dents and sim­ply refuse to see all the ways in which white priv­i­lege is at play — name­ly that no worse than arrest befell any the men who showed up hours lat­er with weapons, look­ing for a fight — returns me to the words of Malcolm X. For many Americans, this is just good olé American fun, sort of like play­ing Cowboys-and-Indians in real life. As Malcolm remind­ed us, “whites idol­ize fight­ers.” So while I’m sure many Americans are appalled at the sense­less loss of life, there is also the sense that this is just “those wild Texans” doing the kind of thing they do.

White Americans might also deny the attempt to “lump them in” with this unsa­vory ele­ment. But the point is that being seen as an indi­vid­ual is a priv­i­lege. Not hav­ing to inter­ro­gate the ways in which white vio­lence is always viewed as excep­tion­al rather than reg­u­lar and quo­tid­i­an is white priv­i­lege. White peo­ple can dis­tance them­selves from their vio­lent racial coun­ter­parts because there is no sense that what these “bik­ers” did down in Texas is relat­ed to any­thing racial. White Americans rou­tine­ly ask Black Americans to chas­tise the “low­er” ele­ments of our race, while refus­ing to do the same in instances like this. Yes, white peo­ple will denounce these crimes, but they won’t shake a fin­ger at these bik­ers for mak­ing the race look bad. It won’t even occur to them why Black peo­ple would view such inci­dents as racialized.

Such analy­ses are patent­ly unac­cept­able. And they are pos­si­ble because white bod­ies, even those engaged in hor­ren­dous­ly vio­lent and reck­less acts, are not viewed as “crim­i­nal.” Yes, some police offi­cers referred to the acts of these killers in Waco as crim­i­nal acts and them as crim­i­nals, but in pop­u­lar dis­course, these men have not beencrim­i­nal­ized. Criminalization is a process that exists sep­a­rate and apart from the acts one has com­mit­ted. It’s why street pro­tes­tors in Baltimore are referred to as vio­lent thugs for burn­ing build­ings, but mur­der­ers in Waco get called “bik­ers.” And if thug is the new n‑word (and I’m not sure that’s pre­cise), then “bik­er” is the new “honky” or “crack­er,” which is to say that while the term is used deri­sive­ly and can com­mu­ni­cate dis­taste, it does not have the dev­as­tat­ing social effects or demand the same lev­el of state engage­ment to sup­press such “bik­er-ish” activ­i­ty as we demand to sup­press the activ­i­ties of alleged “thugs” and “crim­i­nals.”

How we talk about and under­stand the prob­lem of vio­lence is actu­al­ly crit­i­cal to our abil­i­ty to make any progress on solv­ing the prob­lem of racism in this coun­try. We have turned the word “crim­i­nal” into a social cat­e­go­ry that acts a site of cul­tur­al refuse, where we can toss all of our anger, hatred, and resent­ment, on a group of peo­ple, dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly peo­ple of col­or, for abhor­rent acts that they com­mit against us and the state. We get to view them as less than human and treat them as such, while act­ing as though our indig­na­tion is pure, right­eous, and with­out hypocrisy. None of this is true.

With white cit­i­zens, offi­cers feel it is their duty to pro­tect the unsafe and de-esca­late the sit­u­a­tion. With Black cit­i­zens, offi­cers, act­ing out of their own fear, esca­late con­flicts, antag­o­nize cit­i­zens, and move swift­ly to the use of tanks, tear gas, and bil­ly clubs to sub­due, even law­ful and peace­ful protests. What Malcolm X point­ed to, and what we would do well to recap­ture on this week, as we, if we are brave enough, choose to remem­ber his life, is that there is some­thing fun­da­men­tal­ly dis­hon­est about a soci­ety that rev­els in the vio­lence of one group while demand­ing non-vio­lent com­pli­ance from anoth­er. That kind of think­ing is unjust, unfair, and unpro­duc­tive. And for those of us who are not white, white igno­rance on these mat­ters is not bliss.