Chauncey DeVegaHistorically Pat McAfee Jersey , the primary role of the police in the United States has been to monitor and control blk and brown people in the interests of protecting a dominant rial hierarchy, one that serves to maintain the material, economic, and psychological advantages of white people en masse. Darren Wilson, the police officer who ot and killed an unard teenager nad Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, is one such white person who has directly profited and benefited from a literal version of "the wages of whiteness." As of today, he has raised almost 170,000 dollars. The instinctive defense of Darren Wilson by the White Right and the Right-wing hate dia is a reflection of a sick and perverse type of white victimology politics that have existed in the United States since slavery. During the Arican slaveocry, whites worried that they would be conquered by blks if the latter won their freedom. In 2008, the election of Obama was t by all manner of virulent rism from the White Right as circulated by the Fox News hate dia. This obsession with white victimhood continues into Obama's second term, where Mo Brooks, the white rially retionary and Republican Congressman from Alabama, publicly plained that there was a "war on white people" in the United States. ------------------------------------------------- "Ferguson" is now a as opposed to a ple; it is a story that individuals can read themselves into depending on their own politics TY Hilton Jersey , values, and life experiences. A person's response to the explosive bination of re, cri, and the law in Ferguson is a litmus test for deeper political values and life experiences. Blk Aricans have historically and in the present been victims of police abuse and disproportionately punied by a rist and classist criminal "justice" system. The killing of Michael Brown is one more death in a necropolis of unard blk people killed by white police, white street vigilantes, and others with like power and orientation. The killing of Michael Brown is not a surprise or a ock to most blk Aricans. We have either personally experienced rially motivated harassnt by police authorities, have a relative or friend who has, or live in a munity where such norms ern our day-to-day lives and limit our full citizenip. Police abuse is part of the collective mory of blk Aricans. Understanding how to navigate that maze and mine field is a necessary skill which is taught to us early in life. Blk parents, and those others who love blk or brown children, have to rob the latter of their childhood innocence by tehing them that their very personhood will be looked at as a threat by the police and other white authority figures. We have to tell our children that they will be "******ized" even if they are unard innocent victims. We will adultify them so that they will not be surprised when the world does so in ways much, much crueler. Responsible parents and ntors of blk children must rob them of their innocence by tehing them about the realities of life in a rist society. We are their "hard masters". These lessons are not an or so type of child abuse. No, they are ts of love, because if you love your child you want them to live, prosper Andrew Luck Jersey , and grow into adulthood. A blk child who does not learn how to intert with the police is more likely to end up killed and dead at the end of a police officer's pistol or rifle. For many white Aricans, the killing of Michael Brown by a white police officer is an anomaly; in their cognitive frawork, there must be so reasonable explanation for why a police officer would kill an unard person. The collective experience of White Arica is one where its mbers are not routinely abused, violated, killed, and harassed by the police. Of course, individual white people may have negative encounters with a given police officer. However, those intertions are not reflections of an institutionally biased set of power relationips where that negative treatnt is legitimated and encouraged as both a normal and expected type of public policy. Historically, the primary role of the police in the United States has been to monitor and control blk and brown people in the interests of protecting a dominant rial hierarchy, one that serves to maintain the material, economic, and psychological advantages of white people en masse. Many white Aricans may not have the knowledge or language to articulate this ft. Others know this ft to be true, but they are unwilling to state it for fear of violating the bargain of Whiteness as a type of historical amnesia, and whose owners and signatories believe that Whiteness is ultimately benign and harmless. Both groups of white folks instinctively defend police abuse and the killing of blk and brown people because of a deeply learned and taught set of assumptions in which African-Aricans are a viewed as a re of inherently dangerous rapists Robert Mathis Jersey , brigands, and murderers. When people say that "Darren Wilson must have had a reason for killing Michael Brown", or that "we ould give police the benefit of the doubt when they oot soone", is as much an embre of lazy thinking and a default surrender to petit authoritarianism, as it is a projection of a type of white rist logic which deems that blk people are "scary"--and "what 'smart' white person would not proceed from such a 'reasonable' assumption and t aordingly" And yes, there are so white folks who dare to tell the truth about white supremy and the realities of white privilege and the color line. In turn, they often fe censure, hostility, and rage from other white people. Whiteness and white privilege are a version of the Mafia's infamous "orta". There are consequences for breaking its trust and pt. The recent events in Ferguson, Missouri are a taphorical nucleus around which a person's and a munity's political attitudes and values revolve. Here, the national controversy surrounding Michael Brown's killing by Darren Wilson channels and arouYou ma
