As I drove down Main Street past the ‘Black Lives Matter’ demonstration last Saturday in front of the court house in Logan, Utah, I couldn’t help but notice that many of the signs being held and slogans being chanted seemed to be feeding into the divisive mainstream narrative that tries to make this about race when the real issue at hand is police brutality at the hands of a totalitarian police state - government crimes being committed against peaceful Americans of all colors and creeds. This despite the obvious reality and underlying problem being a tyrannical and overbearing, out of control government with little to no accountability, being challenged by millions of Americans who are fed up with the rampant violence carried out by the government’s enforcement arm, the police.
Unfortunately, it would appear many people have been led astray by the mainstream indoctrination, buying into the nonsensical narrative being fed to them by the TV, whatever confused and ever-changing theme that happens to be. “Black lives matter” seemed to be the sign of the day, but oddly there was not a single black person among the small crowd chanting this slogan. Nothing like a crowd of white people mindlessly chanting “black lives matter,” as if this is some brand new revelation the world hasn’t already known and widely accepted for decades. If you’re only just now realizing that black lives matter, then there’s a much bigger problem here than I would have imagined, and I’m sorry to say that problem lies with you... I don’t know about you, but I’ve personally known and accepted that black lives matter since as early as I can remember, and most people I’ve been around are also aware of this truth, so I’m not sure who exactly those signs are meant to be directed at.
“End white silence” was written on several other signs, and was also chanted repeatedly, as if whites have until now been entirely silent regarding police brutality, which is clearly not the case. Some of the most vocal YouTube critics of police abuse are white, and I know for a fact that every single time footage of brutal police misconduct or unjustified killing of an unarmed black man goes viral, or becomes widely publicized, there are always millions of white Americans angered at the injustice, just as they also are when such victims happen to be white or Mexican.
I like to think there are just as many black folk who also get enraged when they see this unjustified police brutality carried out against their white brothers, but the way the media reports the issue and the way a lot of protesters talk, you’d never know that white people are ever harassed, beat down and executed by police on a regular basis, just like blacks. And do they realize this violence and victimization is carried out by both white and black police officers alike?
Black cops harass, brutalize, and jail black citizens as well, though probably not as often as white cops, but this fact is clearly ignored for the sake of making the obvious issue of police violence into a narrative about race and racism. More white people are killed by police in this country each year than blacks, but you won’t hear that on your evening news or mentioned by many of the angry protesters who seem oblivious to this reality. More blacks are imprisoned than whites, sure, and I am not denying that there are still most certainly some remnants of institutionalized racism in America, but the underlying problem is not white silence, the problem is violence and oppression, and yes indeed often carried out against black people.
But it is not only white cops killing black citizens, it is violent black men killing their own as well. And do black men never kill whites? It goes both ways; the problem is violence in and of itself, not the skin color of the perpetrator or the victim. Look at gang violence, look at inner city violence, and even look at the riot violence and looting that has taken place over the course of the past two weeks. Black women have had black brothers point guns in their faces and threaten them during these protests, and black store owners looted, so it is apparently not only racist white people who still need to learn that black lives matter, but also some of the same black people themselves, who are rioting and looting under this banner that ‘black lives matter.’ Clearly for some, this little ‘revolt’ has nothing to do with standing up for their own, or against police brutality, but rather about taking advantage of opportunities to rob, plunder and steal; whether from blacks or whites is apparently entirely inconsequential.
I’m sure many of the protesters holding such blm and other such signs have good hearts, and are sickened just like most of us are to see such brutality carried out against peaceful, unarmed civilians as against George Floyd. But the television indoctrination seems to have blinded people from reality. Violence carried out by blacks against private property and property owners regardless of race is no different from violence carried out against blacks or Americans of any color by white cops. It is all violence being carried out for the most part against innocent victims, and the victim doesn’t care what color of skin the perpetrator of that violence has, he cares about stopping the violence.
When black looters are beating store owners half to death, the problem isn’t the police; and when a white cop is beating down a white man or woman, which believe it or not happens quite frequently, the issue is not institutionalized racism, it is institutionalized violence.
Probably the most absurd sign I saw being waved was “Silence is Violence,” because there is no way in which this statement is true. Silence is not violence; violence is a government boot on your face, a police baton hitting your side, a taser repeatedly fired into you, a loaded gun pointed at your face, your store being burnt to the ground. Silence might be cowardly but it is not violence, nor does it support the violence or perpetuate it.
What does support and perpetuate the violence is your tax dollars funding those men in blue who kill black and white men alike, who extort us all; your taxes that fund an empire which is daily dropping bombs in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Africa; which is supplying the bombs dropped on Yemeni villages month after month; which is supplying the Israeli occupation with millions in cash and weapons used to wreak havoc on its neighbors; which is being used to train and arm radical Jihadi terrorists to the tune of millions of dollars worth of weapons of death and destruction over the past seven years. All of that is the violence being funded not by my silence but by your taxes, and this truth is not being mentioned by the television or any of those following the lead of the TV programming.
Three to four months of the year your entire salary pays for the very violence you claim is a product of my silence, just because I’m white and not waving a stupid sign telling people something I surely hope most of us have known since childhood - that black lives matter. Of course black lives matter, is that news to you? Did you just realize this? Did it only just now occur to you that you live in a country which once enslaved the black man, and remnants of that institutionalized racism remain? Where were your stupid signs a month ago, and the month before that, and last year, and the year before that?
Because for decades 90% of the US prison population has been made up of nonviolent offenders, with a disproportionate number of them being poor black men; that was the reality long before you started waving your stupid signs, long before the ‘black lives matter’ movement was born. And guess what? The white presidential candidate Ron Paul was pointing this out, along with calling out the racist roots of the ‘war on drugs’ and shining light on so much truth regarding racial disparity in this country all the way back in 2008, heck he was pointing it out all the way back in 1988 when he ran for president as a libertarian! And who didn’t do anything to change this reality, despite having the power? Colin Powell, Condoleezza Rice, Barack Obama, to name just a few.
But yeah, go ahead and wave those signs, and pretend “white silence” is the problem, and blame the violence of violent men working for a corrupt violent system on my ‘silence’ because I and a bunch of fellow concerned citizens haven’t taken to the streets alongside you to chant the same mindless slogans as yourself, presumably chanted for no reason besides that’s what one of the system’s mainstream media mouthpieces told you to do; and while you’re at it, go ahead and keep on funding that same violent system with three to four months of your yearly salary, pretending you aren’t a part of the problem you claim to be protesting.
If you really care about ending the police violence, only direct action will do. Nonviolent resistance doesn’t mean standing in the street waving a sign, it means getting in between a killer cop and his victim instead of just standing there and filming. It means getting in the face of a pig beating down your brother and telling him you won’t stand for that, instead of just standing there filming or walking right on by. It means refusal to fund the corrupt system with your taxes instead of begging the inherently corrupt and oppressive system to end its systematic corruption and oppression.
When filming the police is no longer a deterrent to police abuse, brutality, and killings, you know two things: The police are definitely no longer a force for good, and it’s time to stop filming and jump in. Don’t just stand there when you see your brother being harassed by the men in blue, do something about it! Don’t just complain about it on social media and protest it on the street, stop funding it with your taxes that amount to 25-40% of your working life!
And if you are going to take to the streets waving signs, at least wave signs that have real meaning, like ‘Defund the Police’ - the only sign worth waving in my book that I’ve seen at any of the small local protests around here. But please, for the love of God, stop blaming their violence on my silence just because I was born white, and maybe instead just simply stop funding the violence. It seems to me that would achieve a whole lot more good than continuing to chant “black lives matter.”