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so the thing i find interesting about Yoho attacking AOC is that as I've talked about before--a person of color calling for compassion and logic in reaction to intercommunity violence is met with a literal fuck you from white person.
the idea that there could be a logical reason that violence is happening within communities of color and that if you start dealing with that violence with compassion first (the resources), you might actually *solve* some of that violence is so reprehensible to some white people-
they go out of their way to tell people of color to fuck off. they go out of their way to install paramilitary into communities of color. they go out of their way to increase police spending by billions.
since i've worked in media, the single most common slur i hear about any community of color outside of calling black people the N word, is 'animal.' 'they're animals.' if 'they' act like animals, you have to 'treat them like animals.'
there's a video around here of an older white woman's interaction with a black woman, i can't remember the details-but the white woman had called the police on the black woman who was recording and the white woman kept almost pleading--
why are you mad at me--i'm *just doing to you what you do to yourselves*. this is how 'you people' treat each other, why are you targeting me?
and i think that white woman's questions/statements really point to how and why racism and white supremacy functions in the US.
a story: dumping in detroit was a major environmental concern when i was organizing there. people in suburbs would take their trash and drive into detroit and dump it--just leave it in people's front yards or in abandoned plots, etc.
a local news station did a report on it, and followed some of the people who were dumping and interviewed them. some of them refused to be interviewed. others said exactly what that lady said--i'm just doing what they're doing to themselves. why r u targeting me?
for the longest, when i was doing media organizing in detroit, the 'nickname' people liked to called detroit was 'detoilet.' the narrative was that black people *liked* living in trash. they don't *care* about cleanliness and nice things--*they're like animals.*
and meanwhile--it's literally white people literally bringing their garbage and old tires and dumping them at the first house they can find across the border.
so to go back to that question of james baldwin. why does the US *need* black people and other poc to be 'animals'? why do they need to look at poc and see us as crazy out of control animals?
or to turn around the question--what would happen to the US if poc were understood as *human beings capable of great logic and understanding of their own environment*?
what would have to change in the US if we all took the words of AOC and the hundreds of thousands of organizers across the country and across the generations that she is born of as logical, integrity filled, democratic, patriotic and necessary?
it would change the entire foundation of the US--the entire system.
Grace Lee Boggs used to say that kids in detroit were *opting out* of school rather than 'dropping out.' and in that simple reframing-
Grace Lee Boggs used to say that kids in detroit were *opting out* of school rather than 'dropping out.' and in that simple reframing-
she challenge the narrative that i am talking about here--the idea that black and poc youth are just roving animals that drop out of school to be in roving gangs etc. she pointed to the ways that the school system *failed* those kids--
and insisted that the youth of detroit--their voices, their organizing efforts, and their analysis needed to be at the center of whatever adults did. those youth were driving force behind the lawsuit against state, who said it had no obligation to provide quality education.
white folks need black people and other poc to stay 'animals' cuz it would so fundamentally change the entire fabric of the US, they literally think the US will be destroyed.
