A 57-year-old White male went into a Union meeting at the Santa Clara Valley Transportation Authority (in San Jose California), yesterday and committed a mass shooting where he injured multiple people and murdered eight other people - his coworkers.
My heart goes out to each of the victims' families, each one of them. This is tragic.
Not once did I hear yesterday, "what are we going to do about the violence in the White community?" "How are we going to address the continuous violence happening in the White community?" "What do we need to address White-on-White crime/violence?"
From Adam Lanza to James Holmes, to Dylan Roof, Kyle Rittenhouse, to Robert Aaron Long.....and theist goes on....there is literally no focus in this country on the problems plaguing the White community. On the contrary, there is a preoccupation with focusing on "Black people's problems", and this comes from the baked-in, embeddedness of cultural anti-Blackness.
White terrorization is permissible in this country, and it always has been. White terror is the foundation of America. White terroristic behavior, and the nature that enabled White ancestors to steal an entire continent, orchestrate the systematic genocide of various Indigenous peoples. White terrorization enabled and permitted the use the bodies of Africans (people from the Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Ghana, Guinea, Togo, Mali, Cameroon, and many other countries) and African Americans - as human factories that reproduced free labor for the White community to live in comfort, stability, luxury. White terrorization enabled the continued orchestration of governmental, political, economic, and cultural systems that were built upon pedophilia, human sex trafficking, castration, rape, murder, and other forms of vicious brutality.
Some of the most notable examples of White terrorization that are documented within the law, are laws of religion, such as the Maryland Toleration Act of 1649, which read:
“For as much as in a well-governed and Christian Commonwealth, Matters concerning Religion and the Honour of God ought to be in the first place to be taken into serious consideration and endeavored to be settled; Be it therefore Ordained and Enacted by the Right Honourable Caecilius Lord Baron of Baltimore, absolute Lord and Proprietary of this Province, with the Advice and Consent of the Upper and Lower House of this General Assembly, that whatsoever person or persons within this Province and the Islands thereunto belonging, shall henceforth blaspheme GOD, that is curse him; or shall deny our Savior Jesus Christ to be the son of God, or shall deny the Holy Trinity: the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost or the Godhead of any of the said ThreePersons of the Trinity, or the Unity of the Godhead, or shall use or utter any reproachful speeches, words, or language, concerning the Holy Trinity, or any of the said three Persons thereof, shall be punished with death, and confiscation or forfeiture of all his or her Lands and Goods to the Lord Proprietary and his heirs.”
This law provided anyone who did not subscribe to God, as the Father, Son, and Holy Trinity – would be put to death, and that all their assets would be forfeited to the royal governing body.
Another example of White terrorization are laws that permitted and legitimized murdering Black people specifically, free, or enslaved, (as well as Indigenous slaves), and provided total absolution to English, and other White people – as well as anyone that White people commissioned to kill Black people. These laws provided total absolution through acquittal, for murdering Black people. The laws are the Casual Killing Act of 1669, and 1682, which read:
1669: “Whereas the only law in force for the punishment of refractory servants resisting their master, mistress, or overseer cannot be inflicted upon Negroes, nor the obstinacy of many of them be suppressed by other than violent means, be it enacted and declared by this Grand Assembly if any slave resists his master (or other by his master's order correcting him) and by the extremity of the correction should chance to die, that his death shall not be accounted a felony, but the master (or that other person appointed by the master to punish him) be acquitted from molestation, since it cannot be presumed that premeditated malice (which alone makes murder a felony) should induce any man to destroy his own estate.”
AND
1682: And if any slave resist his master, or owner, or other person, by his or her order, correcting such slave, and shall happen to be killed in such correction, it shall not be accounted felony; but the master, owner, and every such other person so giving correction, shall be free and acquit of all punishment and accusation for the same, as if such accident had never happened; And also, if any negro, mulatto, or Indian, bond or free, shall at any time, lift his or her hand, in opposition against any Christian, not being negro, mulatto, or Indian, he or she so offending, shall, for every such offence, proved by the oath of the party, receive on his or her bare back, thirty lashes, well laid on; cognizable by a justice of the peace for that county wherein such offence shall be committed.
Notice, that the 1682 version of the Casual Killing Act, prohibited Negro, Mulatto, or Indian people (i.e., people of color/non-White people), free or enslaved, from lifting a hand against White people, or be subjected to 30-lashes on their bare backs. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 was a law that required ALL White people in the United States to become a racial police force against African Americans. The law read that if White people suspected a Black person was a “runaway”, they could seize them and have them remanded into slavery. White Judges were paid $10 if they made judgements against Black people, and $5, if they freed them.
White terrorization is the foundation of America's cultural value system, birthed out of White colonial and American governmental systems. White terrorization has no empathy. White terrorization has no empathy for White people, Black, Latinx, or any other group of people. White terrorization, both extreme and subtle, has no room for anything other than capitalism, power, and control.
White terrorization remains with us, and as we saw on January 6th, and the narratives that followed a treasonous act committed by groups of predominantly White people, and the raising of over $2 million for Kyle Rittenhouse who murdered two people with gun while walking down the street, the conduct of White terrorization is permissible and allowable. There is support for it amongst the masses of White people who silently agree with it, and those who choose to not speak against it at all.
White terrorization remains with us, and we must do everything we can to keep our families, and communities safe and protected. We must also begin to speak about White violence with the same, if not more urgency, than we speak about violence committed by people of color - especially Black people. What is the difference. Aren't murderous, violent, and/or terroristic acts wrong regardless of demographics?!
We must stop the preoccupation with continuing the pathologies of "Black-on-Black" crime, or "violence in the Black community". Anti-Blackness, the negative cultural orientation maintained about Black people, along with the hyper-scrutiny, focus, and surveilling of Black people - in all aspects, is a sickness, a mental illness. It is a sickness, just as the lack of preoccupation and under-scrutiny, under-preoccupation, and under-examination of long-standing, perpetual White terrorization and violence is a sickness.
This country needs a make-over, a new orientation towards all humanity. Until this happens, our issues will not only persist, but they will also continue worsening.