As I take a look at pictures and video footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, the Black folks I see have been defenders—both Capitol or Metropolitan Police, Black members of Congress and their employees, or different Capitol employees.
The attackers, a mob of hundreds of overwhelmingly white faces, are described as “insurrectionists.” But for me and different Black of us I do know, the members of that mob evoked photographs of previous assaults on our communities: massacres in Tulsa, Rosewood, East St Louis, Chicago, and New York Metropolis—simply to call just a few. The legacy of lynching was evoked on Jan. 6 by an all-too-familiar noose.
I see the twisted, distorted faces of white folks gone wild, and it scares the shit out of me after I suppose that these folks and their households will vote to make their chief, Donald Trump, president of the USA (of a throwback to the Confederacy) as soon as once more.
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I wished to see if there are tales taking a look at Jan. 6 by means of the lens of white supremacy. There are!
In August 2022, Sandhya Dirks wrote “The unstated function of race within the Jan. 6 riot” for NPR.
The Jan. 6 committee has been uncovering what led as much as the rebel, however lurking beneath the hearings is a typically unstated motive — race and the lack of white energy.
She makes use of audio from the Jan. 6 hearings and contains commentary from Stanford political science professor Hakeem Jefferson. Remarks made by Jan. 6 committee Chair Bennie Thompson have been no shock to me. The Mississippi congressman was born in 1948. That’s one yr youthful than me, so I do know what he has lived by means of.
SANDHYA DIRKS: There’s this putting second again on the very starting of the hearings in Senator Bennie Thompson’s opening assertion.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
BENNIE THOMPSON: I am from part of the nation the place folks justify the actions of slavery, Klu Klux Klan and lynching. And reminded of that darkish historical past as I hear voices right this moment attempt to justify the actions of the insurrectionists on January 6, 2021.
DIRKS: Thompson attracts a direct line from the misplaced trigger to the massive lie. Hakeem Jefferson, a political scientist at Stanford, says Thompson’s very presence as an elder Black Southern man on the helm of the hearings holds that means.
HAKEEM JEFFERSON: To see somebody who seems to be like Bennie Thompson wield this quantity of institutional energy in opposition to an individual like Donald Trump, who’s awash within the markings of whiteness and privilege and all that it affords.
DIRKS: Whiteness, Jefferson says, is on the middle of the occasions this listening to is interrogating.
JEFFERSON: January 6 was a racial backlash.
DIRKS: Extra exactly, he says, it is a part of an ongoing white backlash in opposition to the very notion of racial progress.
JEFFERSON: Some white individuals are actually involved a few lack of energy and standing in American society.
DIRKS: On the coronary heart of January 6, Jefferson says, is a narrative about energy – white energy.
JEFFERSON: It is not about energy that is maintained by burning crosses. It is in regards to the energy that is maintained about telling some tales and never some others in colleges. It is in regards to the energy to elect individuals who you suppose will do your bidding.
DIRKS: Over on Fox Information, hosts like Tucker Carlson, who has peddled virtually each conspiracy and lie about January 6, have persistently mentioned that race or racism has nothing to do with it.
Jefferson was additionally interviewed for PBS’ “Information Hour”:
From the transcript:
JEFFERSON: Race is the central organizing characteristic of American politics and nothing else comes shut and what we lose and never attending to that actuality is that we miss the core of what we have seen that these white People are merely upset that Donald Trump will not be in workplace. They’re upset that his defeat symbolizes a change within the racial order and the racial hierarchy {that a} multiracial coalition of voters went out to the poll bins and elected Joe Biden who mentioned that he was combating for the soul of a sort of multiracial America. It’s that actuality, the truth of race and American racism. That’s on the core of January the 6 and these different points of American politics that we’re observing.
Watching the mob stroll away after their invasion of the Capitol that day, I didn’t simply react to the racism of all of it: I additionally famous the white privilege which allowed it to happen.
I used to be not alone in considering that means.
The U.S. Capitol Riot Was a Case Research in White Privilege. Train It That Approach
Our college students deserve the reality about racialized double requirements
I sat in shock final January as I watched televised information protection of a whole lot of individuals (if no more) storming and overtaking the Capitol. Boldly, they flooded one of many highest-security buildings in Washington. It baffled me that some have been in a position to make it onto the ground of the U.S. Senate and stay there lengthy sufficient to be photographed. How one man in some way made his means into Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi’s workplace, sat in her chair, and left her a handwritten be aware was all so mystifying to me.
After which, there have been the rioters dangling off the aspect of the constructing. “How might this be occurring?” I bear in mind repeatedly asking myself. I additionally puzzled why so little was being carried out to cease the rioters and why they have been so visibly unafraid of the implications of their actions. I contemplated one extra query: What would have occurred had these been Black folks? Many different Black People, together with educators, posed this identical query in social-media posts, op-eds, and media interviews.
Frankly, my reply to that final query is: If it had been Black folks, they might be lifeless, or if left alive, they’d be incarcerated for all times. Periodt.
Don’t overlook (I definitely haven’t) that President Joe Biden didn’t mince his phrases 9 months later when he known as out the white supremacy the Capitol assaults have been rooted in.
From The Impartial’s YouTube notes:
President Joe Biden has instructed the 6 January Capitol riot was “about white supremacy”. Talking on the tenth anniversary of the Martin Luther King, Jr. memorial in Washington DC, Mr Biden additionally put the incident within the context of different racist episodes in US historical past.
“Torches rising from darkish shadows in Charlottesville, carrying Nazi banners and chanting anti-semitic bile, Ku Klux Klan flags. The violent, lethal rebel on the Capitol 9 months in the past, it was about white supremacy, in my view,” he mentioned.”The unhealthy information: we had a president who appealed to the bias. The excellent news is that it ripped the Band-Assist off, made it completely clear what’s at stake.”
All anybody ought to want to do is hearken to the racism spewed day by day by Donald Trump and his MAGA minions (and echoed by the Republican wannabe presidential candidates like Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley) to get “what’s at stake.”
Don’t ever overlook that this can be a nation the place white folks despatched one another lynching postcards—I definitely gained’t.
On Jan 6, 2021, members of the mob took footage of their racist “bravery” with their cell telephones. and posted them to Fb and Instagram, or despatched them to household and associates, who cheered them on.
And for anybody able to criticize me, saying, “You Black folks all the time wish to make every little thing about race!” I want I might wave a magic wand and make you Black for a day—possibly, simply possibly you’d perceive what I’ve to say.