Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

Everybody saw this coming.

DeSantis transforms Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Second rate reporter says what?

Take hopelessness and turn it into resilience.

Fuck the extremist election deniers. What’s money for if not for keeping them out of office?

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

The next time the wall street journal editorial board speaks the truth will be the first.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

The party of Reagan has become the party of Putin.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Let us savor the impending downfall of lawless scoundrels who richly deserve the trouble barreling their way.

The worst democrat is better than the best republican.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Black Jesus loves a paper trail.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

You are here: Home / Civil Rights / Guest Post: The Thin Black Duke – An Injustice!

Guest Post: The Thin Black Duke – An Injustice!

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The Thin Black Duke published this smart, thoughtful piece on Medium this week.  I asked him if I could share it here, and he graciously agreed. ~WaterGirl

In White America, Vigilantes ‘R’ Us – An Injustice!

by The Thin Black Duke

image courtesy of wotc.com

Sometimes there is no goddamned bottom to how cruel white people can be, especially when you’re a dead black man in White America:

BRUNSWICK, Ga. (AP) — A judge denied mistrial requests on Monday at the trial of three white men charged with murdering Ahmaud Arbery after defense attorneys claimed jurors were tainted by weeping from the gallery where the slain Black man’s parents sat with the Rev. Jesse Jackson.

Sure, the defense attorneys are doing their job, but their motion for a mistrial was callous, idiotic, and reprehensible. And in spite of their ridiculous courtroom theatrics, black people aren’t going to forget the reason why this murder trial is happening:

Father and son Greg and Travis McMichael armed themselves and pursued the 25-year-old Black man in a pickup truck after spotting him running in their neighborhood on Feb. 23, 2020. Their neighbor William “Roddie” Bryan joined the chase and took cellphone video of Travis McMichael shooting Arbery three times with a shotgun.

Then again, the defense attorneys didn’t care about the black people in the courtroom, not at all. No, the targeted audience was the other white people in the crowd, and the distasteful and unsubtle implication the lawyers were trying to make was how awful it was that black people were openly expressing their grief in front of everybody.

They were speaking in code, a secret and ancient language that only white people in White America can understand, and when you read between the lies and translate the hidden message underneath, this is what’s really being said: How dare you try to make us feel guilty?

Trouble is, white people aren’t always innocent bystanders, and looking the other way most of the time when bad things are happening to black people makes them accomplices. That realization makes them uncomfortable.

Not surprisingly, that discomfort probably explains this:

Support for Black Lives Matter movement is declining, according to new poll

A new poll shows a decline in support among Americans for the Black Lives Matter movement, a year and a half after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis and other high-profile deaths of Black people in encounters with police sparked a global outcry.

Unfortunately, some white people are only comfortable being around with black people when they’re being entertained by them, and when black people aren’t singing or dancing or telling jokes or catching a football, white people get nervous. Especially when black people ain’t smiling.

And in White America, when white people get nervous, black people die.

As comedian and radio host D.L. Hughley commented, “The most dangerous place for a black people to be is in a white man’s imagination. We live in an America right now where we have evolved … but we inherently believe black people are criminal.”

And I’m sorry, but these are facts, not opinions. (What some white people call “paranoia”, black people call “common sense”.)

Tamir Rice was a child playing with a toy gun who was shot to death by a white cop. Breonna Taylor was asleep in her bed when three white cops rushed into Taylor’s apartment and shot her. Stephon Clark was in his grandmother’s backyard holding a mobile phone when he was shot twenty times by white cops.

So many unjustified fatalities, so little accountability.

However, the three cowardly white trash morons who murdered Armaud Arbury are going to jail because even though they’re white men, they made the mistake of shooting a video of the killing and, more importantly, they weren’t wearing police badges.

Still, thinking about black people in White America as target practice is infuriating, and it makes me sick to my stomach. It doesn’t help that expressing grief or outrage at this never-ending brutalization is either ignored or trivialized by too many white people.

It brings to mind a sign I saw at a BLM protest that clearly and powerfully expressed the frustration black people feel about the dilemma we’ve been stuck in for most of our lives:

“We march, y’all mad. We sit down, y’all mad. We speak up, y’all mad. We die, y’all silent.”

Conversely, white men in White America not only have permission to be vulgar, mean-spirited assholes in public, they’re rewarded for it. Worse, you can even get away with murder. The latest odious example is Kyle Rittenhouse, the stupid Pillsbury Doughboy of white male mediocrity and remorseless killer of two unarmed men.

I really hope I’m wrong, but I believe that Rittenhouse is probably going to walk out of the courtroom a free man.

Why? Because this punk is the embodiment of the hatred that White America has for black people, so Rittenhouse’s murderous rampage was inevitable, and the systemic racism deeply embedded in this country made it ridiculous easy for him to get a rifle and act out his violent fantasies.

(Hey, you’re gonna need a AR-15 when a savage horde of predatory jigaboos drive up in their Cadillacs looking for the white wimmen. Ain’t got no time for no nonsense like “background checks”.)

Although the two men that Rittenhouse killed were white, don’t forget that the reason this wannabe Rambo traveled to Kenosha in the first place was to “protect” the city from BLM protestors.

Greg and Travis McMichael and William “Roddie” Bryan are going to jail because every once in a while White America needs sacrificial lambs to pretend that racism doesn’t exist. But if Rittenhouse is acquitted, he’s a role model for all the other copycat vigilantes in White America to admire and emulate, and the United States becomes a more dangerous place to live in, and not just for black people. Everybody.

(Killer cops don’t need anymore help killing black people. Seriously.)

Ironically, Kyle Rittenhouse is the homicidal sociopath that a delusional White America imagines black people to be. Tamir Rice, Breonna Taylor, Stephon Clark and Ahmaud Arbery weren’t criminals. Rittenhouse is.

Reader Interactions

101Comments

  2. 2.

    WaterGirl

    @Woodrow/asim: I had never seen a photo of Ahmaud Arbery, and I wanted to confirm that was a photo of him.

    I googled “Ahmaud Arbery images”.  I could find autopsy images.  I could find images of the crime scene.  I could find everything but images of the man.  Everything but images of the person he was.

    So then I thought, oh, I should have googled photos not images.  So I googled “Ahmaud Arbery photos”.   Same thing.  Everything about the murder, the crime scene, the autopsy, but no photos of the person whose life was taken.

    That speaks volumes.

  6. 6.

    The Thin Black Duke

    @WaterGirl: That’s odd. I had no trouble finding this photo of Arbery. But even back then, I saw Arbery’s high school photo. A handsome young man, blossoming into his prime. Now he’s gone.

  7. 7.

    Starfish

    @WaterGirl: I have seen this photo of Ahmaud Arbery.

    At some point, I read an interview with the person who created https://goodblacknews.org/ about how hard it was to find nice photos of people to go along with their uplifting stories. There would be really positive stories, and the photos would be garbage.

    There was something I saw recently involving candidates running for public office. The two white candidates had their publicity shots. For the black candidates, some unflattering candid shots were used. It was very bizarre. One of the black candidates called them out on it, and they switched his photo to his publicity shot.

    When I tried to search for Ahmaud Arbery, I ran into some very terrible capitalism that I am not sure how to explain.

  8. 8.

    WaterGirl

    @oatler:  Please take this in the nicest possible way, because I mean this as explanation, not as criticism.

    Some things don’t get reported because most of us have jobs and lives and we don’t spend all of our time reading the news.

    No one is paid to put up posts or for anything else we do for Balloon Juice.  It’s an all-volunteer army, so to speak and it’s just part of what each of us does.

    If readers and commenters like you come across things that are newsworthy, you can link to them in a thread.  You are also welcome to email a front pager with a link and a note saying you would love to see that thing front paged.

    People frequently send me information or links to things they think would be of interest on Balloon Juice.

  11. 11.

    Dan B

    Very good piece. I hope the feds get Rittenhouse and the families sue him broke. I haven’t processed my feelings because I feel so raw.

  15. 15.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @oatler:

    A: It’s not the job of the front-pagers here to serve as an aggregator of news. Many of them willingly and generously share news items that they find curious or interesting or pertinent to this group.

    B: To the best of my knowledge, there are absolutely no restrictions on topics Jackals may bring up on this blog (within legal boundaries, of course). If you want to amplify a particular story or event that interests you, you can always call it to our attention in a comment. OH WAIT THAT IS EXACTLY WHAT YOU JUST DID.

  16. 16.

    oatler

    @Starfish:

    Was it Proud Boys fan site when it reported the Jan 6 riots? I’ll go back to lurking, since I’m apparently a nasty troll who needs to start his own blog.

  17. 17.

    West of the Rockies

    I hope the Georgia murderers go away for life sentences, no possibility of parole. May their corpulent bodies bloat and rot as they end their days in misery.

  18. 18.

    WaterGirl

    When I read things like this I always come back to the same thing.  What can we do about it?

    Is it like climate change where we all think about the big things that should be done?   Most of us aren’t like Martin – we don’t think about the little things to help with climate change that we could do every day that would help and build them into our lives.

    It’s all so wrong I hardly know where to start.

    edited

  20. 20.

    SiubhanDuinne

    And now I can revert to commenting on the Thin Black Duke’s excellent essay. It’s a really good piece of writing. I’m a not-so-young white woman and I’ve worked hard for years to identify and eradicate all the subtle and insidious racism that I picked up almost by osmosis. But just as the goldfish doesn’t even know he’s wet, I realise there are always going to be bits of white privilege surrounding me that I’m entirely unaware of. I am grateful to you for helping define what Black and Brown people contend with every.single.day.

  21. 21.

    Starfish

    @oatler: Attempting to overthrow the government has an impact on us all.

    When it comes to reporting on them, are we amplifying them and bringing them more attention, so they can recruit? Are we pointing out that they are generally armed and violent? Are we studying the number of COVID cases that occur at their events? How do we cover their antics without creating a forum for more recruitment?

    Weren’t those “look at all these police protesting the vaccines” in NYC things events that amounted to nothing?

  22. 22.

    Starfish

    @WaterGirl: I think with climate change, people get too complacent with their little things and think it is enough when we need radical change to come from corporate and industry leaders.

    Individuals conserving water is not a lot. Farms conserving water is a lot of water.

  23. 23.

    WaterGirl

    @phdesmond: I edited your comment to put the long URL under the word Link because long URLs break the margins on phones.

    I can’t explain why it didn’t come up when I did the searches I did. I didn’t specifically go to images, but if I type “Adam Schiff photos” into google, I will always get photos of Adam Schiff.

  24. 24.

    burnspbesq

    @oatler:

    You do that.

    Look, that rally is just noise. Mandates are going to stay in place. Unlike the thoroughly politicized, law-ignoring Fifth Circuit, the Federal and State courts in New York will uphold them. All those folks are going to find out the hard way. And unless they are engaged in criminal activity, Proud Boys have the same First Amendment rights as you and me.

    Capisce?

  28. 28.

    WaterGirl

    @Starfish: I wasn’t intending to change the subject to climate change.  I am just trying to figure out what we can do every day to make things a little less awful while we wait for the big changes that require two functioning political parties instead of just the one function party we have now

    edit: as Subaru Diane says, goldfish don’t even know they are wet.

  29. 29.

    Omnes Omnibus

    Thank you for posting this. I am not going to have anything else to say on this thread. I will read what others have to say though.

  34. 34.

    phdesmond

    @oatler:

    for the last couple of nights, i’ve been posting  clips about the Ahmaud Arbery death trial — in the late evening political thread that regularly occurs, whatever the topic.

    i am motivated by the ridiculous  claim that black pastors are scary.  for my part, i am also impressed by the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s stamina.  i saw him address a street rally in West Berlin in 1985, and 36 years later he’s still flying the flag of freedom.

  35. 35.

    oatler

    @Major Major Major Major:

    I’m confined to a nursing home in AZ currently on lockdown (can’t leave my room). I don’t have anything better to do but scan news stories all day. But if it offends people I’ll shut up.

  39. 39.

    There go two miscreants

    A powerful essay; I appreciate your comments here. The stark truth in your last paragraph is very striking.

  41. 41.

    WaterGirl

    @oatler: Did you see my response to your question?

    If you’re in a position to be reading and scanning news stories all day, then by all means share links to stories in open threads and send email to me or someone else if you think something should be front-paged.

  43. 43.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Conversely, white men in White America not only have permission to be vulgar, mean-spirited assholes in public, they’re rewarded for it.

    They also try to punish us if we aren’t.

    That, blacks are going to storm your house and rape all the womens is likely what drove Arebey murders, but I rather suspect Ritterhouses problem is more playing way to many FPS video games and the associated power fantasies.

  45. 45.

    Starfish

    @WaterGirl: There are so many things being done on climate change.

    I have a friend who volunteers for the Citizen’s Climate Lobby. (Their website appears to be down right now.) They tried to press a carbon tax in some recent large bills. They are always working to get more people to promote a carbon tax.

    There is also work being done on sustainable agriculture.

    There are people pressuring various banks, retirement funds, etc. to divest from oil and gas. You can look at your own 401k holdings and just hold less oil and gas stocks.

    Does your bank invest heavily in oil and gas?

  48. 48.

    Kalakal

    That’s an excellent article.

    Trouble is, white people aren’t always innocent bystanders, and looking the other way most of the time when bad things are happening to black people makes them accomplices. That realization makes them uncomfortable.

    This nails it. I’ve lived in America for a few years now and every I think I’m starting to get it something happens that is outside my experience it just flips the script*. This article throws light on quite a few things

    *I’m not trying to do down the US in comparison to other places here. I lived in the UK for many and the amount of vicious racist pus that emerged along with Brexit totally blindsided me.

  49. 49.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Especially when black people ain’t smiling.

    Nailed it.

    My perspective on a lot of this stuff is that I was raised to be the bad guy.  I grew up in South Carolina and Kentucky.  I was surrounded all my developing life with the worst messages.  So much of the time, when I ask how bigoted assholes think, I just look at my reflex reactions, the ones life has taught me I need to be better than.  That sentence got a jolt.  Yeah, specifically when a black man stops smiling bigots get mad and scared, big time.

  50. 50.

    Ohio Mom

    @oatler: Maybe a better approach would have been, “I saw this elsewhere on the internet and found it incredibly disturbing.”

    Because that’s true, you saw it elsewhere and it is disturbing.

    A person can’t demand that others feel a certain way, though I can assure you I find the PBs revolting. And I’m a little offended as a native New Yorker that they’re tromping through *my* park. Yuck.

    There’s lots of issues I follow that don’t make it into Balloon Juice (mostly disability-related in one aspect or another), and there are things Balloon Juice can harp on that I don’t particularly care about. That’s just the nature of the place.

  53. 53.

    Ohio Mom

    @oatler:

    Stuck in a nursing home, that’s the pits. That could wreck anybody’s thinking. People aren’t meant to be confined, you are basically living in an unethical sensory deprivation experiment.

    This makes the emotion of your first comment understandable to me. Proud Boys and their ilk are prolonging the pandemic, and you are suffering for that.

    I’m sorry man, wish there was a way to make things better, faster for you.

  54. 54.

    Sure Lurkalot

    Thanks for posting this excellent piece in its entirety. I missed the link in whatever thread it was in.

    About 3 years ago, my RW brother told me he was tired of being made to feel guilty about being a white man. BEING MADE TO. As if his grown white ass had no agency at all. As if his shallow white ego could not bear any stain on his privilege.

  56. 56.

    Starfish

    @oatler: Oh, that sucks.

    To preserve sanity, you should figure out how to opt out of some of it. I opted out of Kyle Rittenhouse on Twitter five days ago. It was a great call. Opting out of the Proud Boys is also sanity preserving.

    These folks are basically New Jersey tourists going to “the liberal city” to thumb their noses at its denizens. New Yorkers just try to live their lives and avoid the tourists. Nothing is going to come of this.

    Can you opt for more obscure news, as in on particular topics you enjoy?

  59. 59.

    Ohio Mom

    Back to the original post, just like everything I’ve read by The Thin Black Duke (when I see them, I always follow your links to your essays published elsewhere), it’s beautifully written, authentic and unarguably on target.

    The only hope I can hold onto is cell cameras, that the murders of Black people by sociopathic whites is being documented in a medium that is easy to distribute, and those videos are being seen. It’s not a big hope but it’s a hope.

  60. 60.

    Fair Economist

    @oatler: I think it’s more constructive to talk about people pushing for vaccination, and other vaccination success stories. Often talking about something even in a negative way makes people more sympathetic to it.

    Better would be stories about people getting vaccinated because of mandates. Lots of those possible.

  62. 62.

    Skepticat

    Ironically, Kyle Rittenhouse is the homicidal sociopath that a delusional White America imagines black people to be.

    The truth encapsulated.

    Now, may we please start calling this sniveling disgusting terrorist Rottenhouse? It may be immature, but it’s also about as vicious as I want to be.

  71. 71.

    Woodrow/asim

    @WaterGirl: Everything about the murder, the crime scene, the autopsy, but no photos of the person whose life was taken.

    Yeah. I’m actually in a D&D game and keeping an eye on the old/sickly kitties while my Partner is off on a photo shoot, so I’m really lacking time to engage here, much.

    But I will tie this to what oatler just did. Oatler, I know it’s important. Trust me, me and The Thin Black Duke? We’re gonna be up against the wall well ahead of others, when it comes to what the Proud Boys are doing and saying. We’re not ignorant.

    And yet, a Black man is trying to speak. Was given the floor, here. We’re not seen in a lot of these debates and discussions to begin with; I just had to write my heart out a few hours ago to someone I considered a friend, who tried to “both-sides” journalists who actually speak against White Supremacists, with people like Tucker Carlson.

    That’s the kind of crap that made Dr. King, over half a century ago, yell about “white moderates” — and more than once. When the debate/discussion becomes about nothing but  White reactions to White Supremacists, which is exactly what the Rittenhouse discussion has become in many spaces, it risks pushing out what the Black voices (in all our own beautiful diversity) are trying to say. It’s an example of centering not the Black experience in this, but the White one that isolates its allyship from the very people they claim to be concerned about.

    It doesn’t mean you’re a bad person to do it, but it does mean you’re risking — risking — implying that you know what’s important to pay attention to, over the Black man who made a critical guest post. And at a point where a lot of Black folx are in pain.

    Black people already have to navigate all the images of Black dead people, Black folx in distress, Black bodies dropped on the street and those pics passed around like so many trading cards from hell. We would like to share what we can, in ways that allow people to understand a bit of what we go thru.

    Having to navigate people choosing — in all honestly goodness and decency on their part, concerned on the right of White Supremacists and their hangers-on  — that what we’re saying might not be the most crucial thing right now,is…uneasy on me, at least.

    I think anyone here can understand that’s not a great look, even if coming from the best of intentions, which I’m certain you have.

    Thanks for reading. I have cats and games to get back to, so any responses might be delayed, if at all.

  79. 79.

    Betty

    @WaterGirl: On climate change, Michel Mann’s book The New Climate Wars is intended to answer that question. His theme is urgency and avency. If you give in to gloom and doom, the fossil fuel companies win. Don’t let them.

  80. 80.

    banditqueen

    @oatler: Not only did they hold the pathetic march but afterwords the shame-boys barged through the big emergency exit door to get on the train. The NYPD usually like to beat up people they don’t like who do this, so I guess this means our boys in blue like the unlawful thugs who cheated the MTA. Comply for thee, not for me.

  82. 82.

    Gin & Tonic

    I thank both TBD and Woodrow for sharing their views. They are important for us white folks to read.

  83. 83.

    Anotherlurker

    @banditqueen: NYPD is a Nazi organization.

    This is coming from someone whose nephew/godson is a 20 year Sgt. with 24 excessive use of force complaints against him.

    I am ashamed of him.

  84. 84.

    banditqueen

    Thank you, Thin Black Duke–I will never stand down, aside, around, or anything else, in the face of the racist, fascist right in this country. And yes, everyone deserves a defense, but not a racist defense: the 3 murderers on trial for Ahmaud Arbery’s horrible death have already pulled the crocodile tears ploy, and their defense team has tried and failed twice now to get a mistrial because there were black ministers present.

  88. 88.

    lowtechcyclist

    Thanks for sharing this, TBD. Even knowing that the lived experiences of white people and black people in America are two vastly different things, doesn’t mean a white guy like me can really understand what that means. Thanks for helping us see how it looks from the other side.

  90. 90.

    Ruckus

    @The Thin Black Duke: 

    You are a great writer.

    Thank you for this and I’m so very sorry that you had the opportunity to put it to paper. The young man had a bright future and people who only know hate took that away from him. That this happens, and happens far, far too often is inhuman and horrible.

    @WaterGirl:

    As white people we may think we know and understand, and it’s possible we really can. But whiteness is ingrained in our culture, in our upbringing and in our daily lives. When I was 12 I worked in my fathers business and he had a black man working for him named Richard. He was old enough to be my father and he took me under his wing and treated me like any other person, and I did the same to him. I give him an immense amount of credit for this small gesture, that has stayed with me my entire life. But, even with all of that, I can not truly know or even understand the constant strain white people in general give black inhabitants of this world, the perspective is just too screwed up. I can appreciate how fucked up it is, how it needed to end a very long time ago, and how it won’t in my lifetime, it is too immense and deeply ingrained of a problem. But it is wrong and that wrong will not be righted at speed, as it should have been long, long ago.

  94. 94.

    dopey-o

    Because this punk is the embodiment of the hatred that White America has for black people, so Rittenhouse’s murderous rampage was inevitable, and the systemic racism deeply embedded in this country made it ridiculous easy for him to get a rifle and act out his violent fantasies.

    Having seen this movie since the early 60’s, I look around and realize that nothing has really changed in the decades. What will we do when we all see that racial justice may never come to America? Does anyone have a Plan B for saving our neighbors? Our country?

    We can’t wait for the bigots to die off – they’re teaching their children to hate. We can’t teach the history of race in America – they cover their ears and storm the school boards.

    Thank you, TBD. Hearing your voice makes it better.

  95. 95.

    TheQuietOne

    @The Thin Black Duke: Sorry to be so late but I need to thank you Duke for this very timely essay. I don’t stand by anymore!! I just can’t. When grown friends show their true racist colors I tell them they are wrong then walk away from them and leave them out of my life. I’m just done with the shrug of the shoulders or worse the lies they tell.

     

    It’s 2021!  It’s well past time for even old white guys to make a stand somewhere!!

  96. 96.

    UncleEbeneezer

    Just wanna say this is a really great post and essay.  Thank you Thin Black Duke, for sharing these powerful words.

  97. 97.

    Laura Too

    Thank you for the beautifully written essay, and for providing it to us for a wonderful discussion. Woodrow/asim I appreciate your gentle education on lifting black voices.

  99. 99.

    Madeleine

    Thank you, Thin Black Duke, for your essay. I read it last evening and again this morning. Different things struck me, different thoughts were provoked.

    and Woodrow/asim, thanks to you too for your comment.

    i hesitated to thank both of you in one comment, but wanted to say that, whenever I see either name at the head of a comment, I pay particular attention. I appreciate your thinking, knowledge, and writing. And I appreciate the different ways that you approach issues, the differences in issues you raise, the ways that your two different personalities shine through.

  100. 100.

    WaterGirl

    @Madeleine:

    i hesitated to thank both of you in one comment, but wanted to say that, whenever I see either name at the head of a comment, I pay particular attention.

    I appreciate your thinking, knowledge, and writing. And I appreciate the different ways that you approach issues, the differences in issues you raise, the ways that your two different personalities shine through.

    So say we all.

Comments are closed.