I’m all for the protestors and this moron should have just not used those words, esp given his past context of posting.
However:
Reginald Denny.
Don’t know the name, google the video or accept this summary: During the LA riots Mr Denny was a truck driver who stopped at an intersection due to the activity of some men on the street. He got dragged out and beaten with a brick in the head.
He was at the wheel of a semi tractor, pedestrians wouldn’t have even slowed him down had he not stopped specifically to avoid injuring the men who tried to murder him in the street.
Yeah, so? ONE WHITE GUY gets attacked 25 years ago, there’ve been thousands of protests then, and white people are STILL supposed to be afraid it could happen to them?
As I wrote above, bringing him up is a manifestation of paranoid white racism, a fear of black people from white people who don’t let the much higher likelihood of getting killed in a random car accident stop them from driving. Please think about where the urge to bring up Reginald Denny is coming from before you bring him up again.
Oh please, maybe racists use him as an example but that does not make all use of him as an example racist. That’s not sound reasoning.
He’s just a convenient example because there isn’t any real ambiguity about why he was attacked and there is dramatic video and by no means is he the only case of a person being attacked by people angry over racial tensions or just for being white in the wrong place.
Black folks as a group have been the recipients of institutional and societal racism for the better part of a millennium. Fact.
If you are in a riot with a racial component and you’re not the dominantly represented race, but instead appear to be a member of the race that agitated the folks doing the rioting, yeah, you’re in a bit more danger. Also Fact.
To deny a group their individual inhumanity is to deny the group their collective humanity.
Even if we buy the Reginald Denny example, the “run them down” response is an argument that it is okay for a white person, if under threat by some black people, to indiscriminately kill any black people nearby.
Even within its own bullshit framing, it’s still an argument that is racist as all fuck. “Some of this group are threatening me; therefore, the lives of all of this group are expendable”.
When I was in Prague last I chatted with two chaps who were almost certainly muggers or pick pockets at 2am. I also got tailed by another guy for fifteen minutes or so, and two women physically grabbed me.
I like to think of myself as an approachable, good natured person.
“What’s happening now?”
“I’m mugging you!”
“You’re hugging me? Oh cool, bring it on in.”
“No, mugging. Mugging”
“OhISee, let me get my camera.”
“What!?”
“You said you wanted to mug for a shot. Imma gonna post this on the instergram”
“No, give me your wallet!!”
“You have to say the magic word.”
“Alright, please give me your wallet.”
“That wasn’t the magic word. It was Gromit. Get it? Wallet and Gromit? … Hey, where are you going?”
How sad, to think that you walk around all the time like that, thinking black people are mad at you just for being white. Are you paranoid in other ways as well?
At any gathering, specifically informal gatherings or illicit gatherings there will be people specifically looking to exercise asocial violence and to camouflage their activities.
I’ve been in three civil actions that turned violent. In two of those cases the violence originated from people who looked like they were with us but were trying to use our peaceful disruptive activity to screen them.
Just so we’re clear: I am not saying don’t be a white ally, go to the march with friends, bring signs, shield the innocent from police tactics.
What I am saying: Don’t get out of your car in a riot, esp if the people rioting do not look like you and esp if you look anything like the people that pissed them off in the first place. Just avoid that shit. If you were not there when it was peaceful you sure as fuck don’t want to show up after is isn’t.
And what you’re saying is it’s racist to follow the advice on the last paragraph.
The paranoid jab…I haven’t called you stupidly naive yet but you did that. So fuck you, permanently ignored.
Race notwithstanding, I always thought Denny was a dumbass for stopping in the first place.
I don’t advocate arbitrary violence against anyone, but in that particular situation, I’d have had my hand on the horn and kept my foot on the gas. That’s just self preservation.
All that being said, the personal attacks were uncalled for; and race itself really has very little to do with surviving mob mentality in general.
I’m wary of pretty much anyone who isn’t me or mine; regardless to color.
Although these days, most cops are at the top of that list…
Somewhere in the country there really may have been a guy who lured children in his van. This event or even the few, statistically irrelevant, other similar events don’t justify the vilification of millions of:
fathers/grandfthers/uncles visiting the playground with a younger family member
parents who try to teach their children some self-reliance by letting them play outside alone
men/women photographing things in the public when a child is present
you get the gist
This is similarly true for racial minorities, muslims and US Americans abroad.
I have a mugger reppelling lucky rabbits foot, and I’ve never been mugged. But my friends don’t have one and some of them have been mugged. So my lucky rabbit’s foot must work. Right?
Gavin de Becker pointed out in his book The Gift of Fear, that criminals, regardless of race, use our social conventions against us. Not avoiding possibily dangerous situations because you don’t want to look racist can push you into bad decisions.
The guy I smiled and said hello to was the one who mugged my friend. I actually learned this “technique” in a self-defense class in college. Eye contact is the key - not necessarily the smile and the invitation to walk. The idea is to make eye contact and thus avoid a conflict.
