Why Talk Racism Without Attribution?

People dis­cuss racism in the abstract as if its a new strain of dead­ly virus for which there is no anti­dote. In an effort not to offend sen­si­bil­i­ties we tip­toe around this insid­i­ous and dead­ly scourge with­out dis­cussing the most impor­tant aspect of racism which is the crit­i­cal issue of attribution.

Look, I get the idea of not alien­at­ing allies in any war, but the idea that white lib­er­als who are final­ly on the side of whats right by final­ly stand­ing up for human dig­ni­ty and decen­cy would be offend­ed if we call out white racism is absurd.
Those who would be offend­ed by our direct attri­bu­tion of racism to the right­ful per­pe­tra­tors were nev­er our allies in the first place.

It is far bet­ter to go into bat­tle with a small army of true believ­ers than a large crowd of wishy-washy mam­by-pam­bys who are not com­mit­ted to the cause.
Black peo­ple con­tin­ue to pay a tremen­dous price in blood and trea­sure to this coun­try despite hav­ing slaved and died for over four hun­dred years with­out hav­ing received a sin­gle pen­ny of compensation.

The ago­niz­ing mur­ders and muti­la­tions, rapes and assaults on black bod­ies by white slavers can­not be ignored or for­got­ten. But it did not end there, The chain-gangs, Jim Crow, the prison Industrial com­plex and the unchecked mur­der­ous police assaults on peo­ple of col­or remain and con­tin­ue day by day.
Despite these more well-doc­u­ment­ed instances of incom­pre­hen­si­ble bar­barism whites have vis­it­ed on blacks, there are the much more nuanced exam­ples of men­tal retar­da­tion which are not so well know.

These inci­dences, for exam­ple, include a black Chicago man who was shot and injured in the ear­ly 1960’s on a hunt­ing trip. His friends took him from hos­pi­tal to hos­pi­tal to save his life at every hos­pi­tal they were turned away.
Turned away, because of the col­or of his skin, he bled out and died.

We have to rec­on­cile these instances of egre­gious inhu­man­i­ty with a Florida jury which award­ed four cents to the fam­i­ly of a black man mur­dered by police in his own garage behind a clos­ing garage door. The cal­cu­lat­ed dis­re­spect inher­ent in that ver­dict can­not be ignored and must be viewed ful­ly for what it is.
Gregory Vaughn Hill Jr was killed by police who showed up to his house because he was alleged­ly play­ing his music too loud.
Hill who was in his garage hav­ing a drink in the ear­ly after­noon attempt­ed to close his garage door, not before the respond­ing cops fired mul­ti­ple rounds into his body killing him.

We all knew they were not going to be held account­able, that’s a giv­en. The mind-numb­ing dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing this killing has as its focal point the idea that cops ought not to be called for triv­ial issues as a noise com­plaint in the mid­dle of the after­noon, rather than that police offi­cer who are sup­posed to be guardians of our safe­ty, should not be the ones exe­cut­ing us.
Racism will con­tin­ue until those who ben­e­fit from it are held account­able for it. Those who ben­e­fit from it will not change it, so as Martin Luther King assert­ed, blacks should nev­er be lulled into the accep­tance of grad­ual change, (King called it the tran­quil drug of gradualism).
If this can­cer is going to be fixed it must be iden­ti­fied, con­front­ed, iso­lat­ed and cauterized.