Friday, November 28, 2014

Power is not black and white, but police cars are

A too narrow focus on the colors on the surface risks missing the fundamental issue.

Please don’t get me wrong here. It is an empirical fact that African Americans have been pushed toward the lower regions of the power machine—and it’s the folks at the base of the pyramid who truly feel the crushing weight of the many parasitic (and increasingly light-skinned) layers perched their backs. But it is power that put them there and keeps them there because skin color makes for a convenient sorting strategy. Yes it matters that Michael Brown and Tamir Rice were black. But it wasn’t their skin color that killed them.

Fundamentally, it’s not about race. It’s about power. It’s about safeguarding the fairytale narrative of authority. A badge is not merely symbolic. It is a magical talisman that converts the wearer from human being to servomechanism for power, an appliance of control, a conduit for the administration of overwhelming force to promote and preserve the myth that power is legitimate.

Anyone who chooses to wear a badge needs to be fully aware that they are choosing to abandon their humanity to become whores to power, mindless plastic gears at the business end of a massive exploitation machine. And those of us (of all skin colors) who are still human beings who value our humanity will have no reason to treat you as anything other than disposable.

1 comment:

  1. Premise Four: Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims. -Derrick Jensen

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