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Which White Lives Matter Most?
The lionization of Kyle Rittenhouse by the right hurts more than his acquittal.
My eyesight isn’t what it used to be, but I’ve been blessed with the gift of intuition: I often can see what’s coming from several miles away, even with my eyes closed — especially when it comes to matters of race. I call it The Sixth Sense of Black Americans, and I have it.
That’s why the Kyle Rittenhouse not guilty verdict didn’t surprise me. It didn’t matter that all three of his victims were White. I’ve heard the cut-down “nigger lover” enough in my life to know that White lives don’t always matter that much more than Black ones. White abolitionists often lost their lives for being on the moral side of the slavery debate in the decades leading up to the Civil War, and today in these Black Lives Matter times, White Americans who stand too close to Black people or stand up for them do so at their own risk.
The Whiteness of Freedom Fighters Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman didn’t save them from the Ku Klux Klan’s guns in 1964. Only seven of the 18 men charged with torturing and murdering them and their Black fellow civil rights activist James Chaney were convicted of conspiracy to violate the civil rights of the three men (none served more than six years), and it’s not hard to imagine something similar…
