What Happened to Allies in the Fight for Racial Justice?
The silence surrounding the murder of Amir Locke in Minneapolis shows how quickly people go back into default mode
The United States saw the largest-in-decades civil rights protests during the summer of 2020. It felt like some actual movement was about to happen in the fight for racial justice. Two years later, many supporters of the movement are now supporting Biden blindly handing cops billions of dollars in COVID relief money. Funds that are being used to buy more weapons of war.
Instead, the public views local police killing a legal gun owner during a home invasion as somewhat of an acceptable act. Is it because he’s a Black man? Amir Locke was murdered in a similar fashion and circumstance as Breonna Taylor. Is there no outrage because the system keeps killing Black people and you’ve gone back to normalizing it?
What about the white couple in Houston who thought there was a home invasion in progress and fired at police as they executed a no-knock raid based on an officer’s falsified statements and planted evidence? The militarized cops returned fire with weapons of war, killing them both. Only one officer, the Black cop, is charged with murder. Is this satisfactory? Is that why there’s no outrage?
Is it justice when white cops walk free for killing Black people and Black cops are prosecuted for killing White people? Even when Black cops kill Black people they are often rewarded. As long as cops perpetuate the centuries-old practice of disproportionately targeting and killing Black people it seems most in the United States think it’s just fine. Status quo because y’all don’t like change.
I began writing about the disappearance of allies last year. And I have to be honest, it’s almost anomalous. I mean, it would be if it wasn’t so predictable. Many of us saw your virtue signaling and use it for clout so you can try to be the next influencer. You pretended to be woke by stealing the labor of others who’ve been doing the work. Instead of promoting those thinkers, you used our decades of work to act as if you’re the go-to person on all things racism.
Oh yes, we saw you. We still see you. And while you may have fallen off on the real work, we didn’t. We’re still working. We’re still influencing where we need to be an influence. And the next time you try to steal our work, we’ll call you out again and embarrass the hell out of you. Instead of stealing from us, lift us up. When it comes to racial justice, lift Black people up first.
keep the truth coming