Not loving America: Tamir Rice and the USA’s violence against itself.
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The saddest ingredient for me about Tamir Rice is this:
When America is attacked by terrorists, America decides to attack and kill those terrorists. This is often a tactical response, a thoughtful and strategic decision postured before the populous as patriotism, strength, morality, and as love for the people. America’s response to violence — with violence — is one of the country’s most carefully designed and dispensed forms of public education, one of its proudest examples of humanity.
And when you are raised in, and molded by, that quintessentially American moment, you may find those instincts of violent retribution streaming through your life and values as effortlessly as sweat through pores.
It should be a secret that part of me wishes Tamir Rice had a real gun instead, and that he shot that cop dead before that cop shot him. I should feel shame within this moment or, at least, the better parts of me wish that I did. Additionally, it should be a secret that I hope that the next black person in danger of being murdered by a cop murders that cop first. But here we are nonetheless, confronted by these thoughts — very real, and no longer a secret.
We kill those who would kill us.
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And it is no longer a secret because either American morality is impotent, currently lacking the ability to move me toward higher ground — or because American morality is invincible, and this is the higher ground it moves me toward: We kill those who would kill us.
I do not love America. And admitting this reality is, quizzically, the most loving act I can perform for America. Not because America should know who lurks as its enemy but because I am as American as those chest-beating, saber-rattling, bellicose moments when we call for the death of our enemies. Because the truth is this: Not loving America is very American.
America’s history is overwhelmingly violent, racist, ignorant, and oppressive toward grand swaths of people who were neither white nor men but were, inconveniently, as American as those who were white or men. And America has never been able to gaze at this past with both eyes open. Perhaps this is because — though one of the world’s younger countries — America’s legend is too grand to scale, too deep to explore, or merely too evil to reconcile. Or perhaps it’s because, sadly, this willful ignorance has successfully disguised itself as America’s savior.
More than once in my life, I’ve known an addict to tell me that her poison was her hero, that keeping herself close to death was how she learned to live with what was killing her. This is how I look at America. A derelict stumbling through a crowd, blinded by the haze of addiction to fantasy — terrorized by past offenses she dare not try to repair and is also doomed to repeat because they’re all she’s ever allowed herself to know. America can’t love herself because she can’t look at herself. And so convinced that she can’t possibly rise above her debauchery, America instead proclaims her vices as virtues.
Instead of confronting the tumors in her nature, she musters all the pomp and circumstance she can and, with chest out and shoulders back, pantomimes justice and ethics by saying that American 12-year-old black boys earn their deaths when they choose to exist as American 12-year-old black boys. Then, as a courtesy, she may add that her choices are noble because she is colorblind — as if colorblindness is something that people of color have ever requested.
(“Oh, please, America, notice even less of our humanity … if you can,” the descendants of slaves might sing.)
No.
Rather, America’s low self-esteem is best illustrated by the bullets it leaves in the bodies of its babies — and the tacit harmony between its citizenry and bloodstained judicial fabric.
If our souls had limbs, the moment we submit to violence as a solution is the moment we lay the proverbial arm and leg next to the cash register as payment. And as things presently stand, the cost, for me at least, is still too high and perhaps this is the rare instant of privilege for the American person of color: Freedom from the illusion of violence as power, courtesy of frequent and tragic interactions with the weakness embedded within American violence.
America’s low self-esteem is best illustrated by the bullets it leaves in the bodies of its babies …
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And thus, the saddest ingredient: If I loved America and its ways, I’d have to seek out the Americans who threaten me and kill them — and then, with the blood washing my hands, pronounce not only my innocence but also my virtue. I don’t merely feel unwelcome and unwanted in America because of the bullets and vitriol that she fires at me. I feel unwelcome and unwanted in America because I refuse to fire back, because I refuse to enable her addiction to an idyllic past — rife with a “patriotic” violence against her own people — which was never hers to claim.
Yet, though I say this, it is still true that sometimes, because of the way America has endeavored to raise me, there have been moments when firing back has felt like the only patriotic option.
Photo Credit: Getty Images
Let me pose one more scenario and provide an explanation. Let’s say you’re a police officer. You see a black man wearing baggy clothes walking along a street late at night. Do you stop him? Let’s say you don’t. You proceed down the street and find out that he had committed an armed robbery an hour later that night. Should you have stopped him? Of course the answer is no. Why because ii was not reasonable to stop him. It would have been reasonable to assume that Roof intended to kill everyone in that Church had you been a police… Read more »
“America’s history is overwhelmingly violent, racist, ignorant, and oppressive toward grand swaths of people who were neither white nor men but were, inconveniently, as American as those who were white or men. And America has never been able to gaze at this past with both eyes open. Perhaps this is because — though one of the world’s younger countries — America’s legend is too grand to scale, too deep to explore, or merely too evil to reconcile.” Couple of thoughts for the author: 1. Can you name 1 country of any significance that has a history WITHOUT similar historic black… Read more »
One more hypothetical question. If I remember correctly Roof killed 9 people. What if you were a police officer on the scene. Roof had just killed 8 people and had his gun pointed at the 9th, who would be his final victim. You might say I’d shout drop your weapon. What if he then shot and killed his final victim? Well you’d say I would have shot him. I get it, but would ask was trying to preserve Roof’s life worth giving up the life of his last victim?
Let’s pose a different hypothetical. Let’s say you’re a cop and you came upon Dylann Roof’s massacre in progress. How much time would you take accessing the situation? How much negotiation would you have attempted? Well you say that you were trying to save lives. Sure, I get that. It’s a noble thing to do. I would have to point out though that Roof did not kill everybody although he could have. Would it have been better to have shot Roof after he killed his last victim, but before he indicated that he wasn’t going to kill the last person… Read more »