Society Shows No Shame in Ignoring the Murder of Patrick Lyoya
From the fight for racial justice just two years ago, back to silence
Many deep conversations were had in 2020 about racism, racial justice, whiteness, white privilege, systemic racism, and so much more. While those conversations didn’t provide the sought-after results, what they did do was highlight precisely what was happening before the murder of George Floyd and what’s happening in the current moment.
It’s like newfound allies went back to the default mode of silence in the face of injustice. Millions and millions of quotes were shared, books were sold, and influencers profited. Meanwhile, it’s no longer trendy to be aware of what’s happening on our streets. By our so-called police forces that target non-white groups. Primarily, Black people. Now, it’s trendy to be “anti-woke.”
Thanks to loud-mouth thinkers attacking “wokeness,” finding allies willing to stand and fight for justice is as difficult as ever. Looking back, it becomes more difficult to deny that voices like Bill Maher and Joe Rogan are promoting the same system of white supremacy that groups like the Proud Boys, the KKK, and white corporate America are trying to uphold.
They’re angry because we can’t address racial justice without talking about them or how they speak using coded language and have the same motivations as any eugenicist or Klan member. The difference is, they have platforms to protect so they use more subtle language. What they do is covert, yet more and more obvious every day. Looking at someone’s entire body of work speaks for itself. And when it comes to the Mahers and Rogans of the world, it’s hard to deny.
So here we are. Back to zero. To the place where the entire world watched a man get shot in the back of the head while in a vulnerable position. Everyone saw a police officer execute a Black man and no one wants to admit they saw it. Instead, they went from “don’t post the video of the murder” to not talking about it at all. Where we were before the murder of Trayvon Martin.
What felt like U.S. society taking ten steps forward ultimately resulted in most of the country taking twenty steps backward. After Joe Biden was elected, what became evident was that the vast majority of white people hated Donald Trump more than they hated what Trump was doing. It wasn’t about him trying to foment a race war. It was about him and nothing else.
It wasn’t about the gross mismanagement and blind faith in police funding. Nor was it about the militarized police that brutalized thousands of protesters. Most don’t even care about the 14,000 protesters who were arrested in 2020, some charged with felonies that can ruin their lives. So spare me the outrage when talking about the fewer than 1,000 protesters arrested in Cuba.
Police brutality and state-sanctioned murder on the streets of the United States feel more acceptable than ever. Silence has dominated social media channels as police continue on the same path that outraged entire nations. Liberals fear saying anything about police being out of control for fear of Democrats being labeled as desiring to defund the police — a slogan appropriated by the far-right to sow discord and create political animus.
Similarly, Joe Biden allowed for the use of COVID relief money on policing. Billions in federal dollars were handed to police with nearly no oversight if any. Political fear is silencing the conversations that need to be had. Racial justice still needs to happen. The most pressing issues of our time, including poverty, are still out of control.
The inhumane treatment of migrants is still happening. Yet, like everything else, it’s all been deprioritized since the election of Joe Biden. While Biden supporters inundate us with memes about what Democrats have done, they refer to numbers that are no longer valid. Poverty is higher than it was before the pandemic. 11,000,000 children still don’t know where their next meal is coming from. Police are still killing people on our streets.
For some reason, white America seems to think this all just went away with a single election.
They forget that Donald Trump’s brand of politics has been adopted by tens of millions of U.S. voters. They act as if the threat has suddenly gone away. But, for Black people and people of color, it’s still very real. Ignoring the threat the far-right poses is an exercise in the complacency that led this country to a place of normalizing someone like Trump.
You ignored the hate during Barack Obama’s presidency and acted as if racism ended because we elected a Black president. Meanwhile, the Tea Party was right there normalizing political hate speech. Opening the door and laying out the red carpet for a wannabe dictator that will promote their brand of Christian white nationalism. They don’t care that he isn’t Christian. They care that Trump promotes their agenda built on hate for non-white people.
Allies? Well, they suddenly seem all too cool with it.