vitalwholeness

No, this is not the story of Kyle Rittenhouse, who was just acquitted of all charges of crossing state lines and gunning down black men at a protest in Wisconsin last year. The predominantly white jury found him innocent on all counts.

This is rather the story of Emmett Till, a fourteen year old black youth who was lynched by two white men in Mississippi in 1955. The all-white jury found the two white assailants not guilty on all counts. They walked free. If this sounds strangely familiar, that’s because it is. This is a repeating American story. In short, white people may shoot, lynch and murder black people without accountability. Black people are killed, convicted, sentenced and executed with regularity, especially if they have offended a white person. White juries and judges have been complicit in a pact of white protecting white from the founding of our country. The illusion that justifies such outcomes is the myth of impartiality, which is just that, an illusion. After the rituals of the legal process have bee completed, forgone conclusions assume their disingenuous places, decorated by the symbols of justice.

There is not liberty and justice for all, regardless of how often we have recited those very words in the Pledge of Allegiance. There is liberty for some, and no justice for all. Rather, white power structures insure outcomes satisfactory for a white majority. With a few exceptions.

Emmett Till was neither the first example of this nor would he be the last. His case was not rare. For altogether different reasons Kyle Rittenhouse was also neither the first nor the last and also not rare.

But now, with Rittenhouse’s not guilty verdict, contemporary iterations of earlier white-hooded vigilantes will be emboldened, planting their burning crosses with impunity, brandishing arms, shooting down anyone they define as the enemy of the white race or a threat to their person, all the while hiding behind the Second Amendment.

We have just entered a sinister zone. Or perhaps never left one.