America Taught Kyle Rittenhouse Well

In the wake of the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, there’s plenty enough frustration and anger to spread around.

First, at Rittenhouse, for traveling across state lines and patrolling the streets of Kenosha with an assault rifle to “defend property,” not his own, against potential looters following the police shooting of Jacob Blake.

Then, to police in Kenosha that night, more intent on making sure Rittenhouse stayed well-hydrated than limiting the presence of weapons on the street or asking him to leave the law enforcement to them and go home.

Then, to the trial Judge, who prohibited the prosecution from referring to those Rittenhouse shot as victims while allowing them to be called rioters or looters by the defense.

This, despite the fact the two men Rittenhouse killed and the one he injured, were never proven to have been rioting or looting.

Not to mention, even if one is shot in self-defense, one is still a victim of the shooting. The perpetrator of the deed may have acted lawfully, and the victim may have been justifiably killed. But that doesn’t change the categories to which both, in turn, belong.

Although not allowing Rittenhouse’s victims to be called such likely didn’t change the jury’s deliberation, allowing references to looting and rioting by protesters certainly could have.

White male vigilantism is an American tradition

But of all the blame we might seek to assign for the trial’s outcome, and the tragedy that brought it about in the first place, most of it rests with an entity not formally in the Kenosha courtroom at all.

It is an entity never put on trial, no matter its culpability for great harm.

It is the nation itself, or more to the point, the culture within which Kyle Rittenhouse, the jury, and really all of us have been raised and nurtured.

That culture is what taught Kyle Rittenhouse the value and virtue of vigilantism.

That culture is what led him to believe not only that he had a right but an obligation to take up arms against those he deemed a dangerous “other.”

And when that other is perceived as challenging the racial hierarchies of the nation, America has made it all too clear to white men that they are to be de facto deputized, turned into the defenders of tradition, the restorers of order.

It has long been this way.

There is an extensive history of vigilantes taking up arms to control those deemed a threat to the national order, especially persons of color.

This tradition extends from bounties placed on Indigenous scalps to lynch mobs and anti-Black race rioters across the country to present-day militias and right-wing activists.

We know, for instance, that slave patrols were an early iteration of extra-judicial law enforcement, for which white men were deputized to stop, question, search and detain anyone suspected of being runaway chattel.

Participation in such patrols was not only expected; in many cases, it was required of all able-bodied white men.

…in all cases, those white men who felt empowered to use force against those they saw as threatening social change, did so because they had well-internalized the lessons of their country

Service in these vigilante formations was not only a way to control Black bodies and labor but, just as importantly, served to perpetuate what W.E.B. DuBois would later refer to as the “psychological wage” of whiteness. By that, he meant the sense among lower-income whites that despite their lack of real power, at least they retained superior status relative to somebody.

The fear of Black uprising was especially pertinent to the solidification of white male vigilantism, particularly in the wake of rebellions like Stono (1739), the planned Gabriel rebellion (1800), or Nat Turner’s uprising in Virginia in 1831.

As Carol Anderson notes in her book The Second — about the history and development of the Second Amendment and gun ownership — suppressing Black rebellion was among the principal purposes for the notion of the “well-regulated militia.”

Even more examples of white vigilantism, especially in the face of Black protest, are provided in this Twitter thread by writer Michael Harriot, author of the new book Black AF History:

And this tradition of white male vigilantism was not merely a Southern phenomenon, nor was it only meant to control Black folks.

So too has it been aimed at immigrants of color — especially Mexican or Chinese, historically — intensified in moments of profound social change, in which the boundaries of Americanism and belonging are being hotly contested.

When thousands of Mexicans migrated to California at the outset of the Gold Rush, a combination of discriminatory taxation and outright violent intimidation drove out most within a year of their arrival.

In Los Angeles, racial pogroms were launched by white vigilantes, in which 37 persons, mostly Mexican men, were lynched.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, white California workers joined “anti-coolie clubs,” which took aim, violently, at Chinese labor, whom they perceived as taking jobs from white men. Rarely did these vigilantes ever face real punishment for their violent attacks on folks of color.

We have been told, from old western movies to Dirty Harry that white male violence deployed against the bad guys is a prerogative forever retained by persons like ourselves

By the 1920s, vigilantism was widespread in the Midwest and North, as Black folks migrated in search of jobs, fleeing the oppressive conditions of the Jim Crow South and the limited economic opportunities that existed for them there. Lynch mobs and white-on-black race riots were entirely common throughout the first half of the 20th century.

And in all cases, those white men who felt empowered to use force against those they saw as threatening social change did so because they had well-internalized the lessons of their country.

First, that white men are, by definition, the keepers of the national order.

Second, that non-whites are, by definition, a threat to that national order.

And third, that in defense of the existing hierarchy, any level of violence is justified.

And not only against Black and brown usurpers of that hierarchy; so too, any white folks who might join in furtherance of that usurpation.

Thus, the killing of James Reeb and Viola Liuzzo and Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner and Jonathan Daniels, and William Moore during the civil rights era.

Or Heather Heyer in Charlottesville in 2017.

Or the two men Kyle Rittenhouse killed in Kenosha and the third whom he tried to kill.

At every turn, white men have been led to believe that guns are ours to possess at will and to use as we see fit in defense of ourselves, our property, or our way of life, broadly defined.

From old western movies to Dirty Harry, we have been told that violence deployed against the bad guys is a prerogative forever retained by persons like us.

The underlying logic of white male vigilantism is that although we have created a vast law enforcement apparatus to guard against predation and protect us from the dreaded other, it might not be enough.

One can never be too careful, after all.

And so we arm up, with guns, baseball bats, or braided ropes in search of a tall tree, all to reinforce the dynamics of power and position for which police were created but for which we fear they may not suffice.

When white men in Philadelphia’s Fishtown neighborhood — historically a white, working-class enclave — grabbed baseball bats and stood outside a local police precinct during last year’s racial justice demonstrations to “back up” the cops, they were performing a longstanding ritual.

As were the police when they allowed the threatening assemblage to remain, even after a local curfew, and when they refused to intervene even after the men assaulted three people right in front of them.

Last year, according to the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, there were nearly 200 appearances by militia-type vigilantes and far-right extremists at racial justice protests. This trend had begun several years earlier in Ferguson, Missouri, after the killing of Michael Brown, and has only gathered steam since.

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While most did not result in violence between these forces and protesters, the potential was always there. In each case, the threat of violence was transmitted like a phone on vibrate — quietly but clearly.

And now, in Kenosha, that subtlety has been removed.

The ringer has been turned up — all the way up.

It signals an incoming call as loud and unmistakable as the past whence it emanates.

It is a call coming in from long distance, not geographic but historic.

A call that reminds us that in the eyes of too many, this is still a white man’s country.

And anyone who forgets that or challenges those who live by that mantra — even other white men like those Kyle Rittenhouse shot last year — is worthy of death.

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This post was previously published on GEN.

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