octopus_ink
Thanks, but the unfortunate problem I see among many of my white peers is that’s a deep valley. You don’t get to the other side of “they must have had a reason” without exposing yourself to multiple instances where they clearly had no such reason.
And it’s not exactly something you can force on people. A couple people I know have started paying a bit more attention when cop videos float across their tiktok feed based on comments I’ve made, and they are coming around too, but folks need to want to see to the other side of that valley, and it’s a very comfortable valley to live in - and more importantly you’ve always got a fresh batch of people moving into the valley.
“Oh, I can’t support those cruel acts, but the sad reality is they probably didn’t happen for no reason either” is the refrain of the embarrassed white moderate.
I’m ashamed to admit that specifically with regard to police brutality, I was in the “they must have had a reason” camp (without looking any further into it) for many more years than I had any excuse to be. Rodney King put a crack in that, but I was still pretty young then, and surrounded by my own privilege. It was many years later before I realized that sort of shit and worse was happening constantly.
“Sometimes it’d be concerning for your car like someone could take it or something,” White said.
Wow, that couldn’t be a better sentence to highlight the layers of meaning in that comment.
My expectation was that it was evidence of a disagreement with my comments sourced with something other than a swipe at my general intellect or capability, but I see my standards were too high. I never made a statement that the Russian perspective should never be listened to, my statements were very specific to this event.
So I’ve just gone and done some reading based on this comment to try to understand how it is a rebuttal to anything I’ve said, and although there were some details I wasn’t aware of, I’m still not seeing it. You can reply now to re-emphasize my stupidity whenever you are ready.