Two Versions of Liberty: One for George Floyd and One for You.
When challenging systemic racism, peace is most convenient to the oppressor
I just can’t understand why people don’t comprehend the reality of what we are watching unfold after the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The existence of 2 different sets of “liberty” in America and what one version looks like to people that don’t look like you. If you believe that you are a proponent of liberty, please ask yourself whose liberty you are fighting for.
I am so disappointed right now, by friends who can’t recognize the hypocrisy of their support of protests over lockdowns that threaten their economic security and their disdain because protests over the fundamental human right of physical security became violent. They clutch their pearls, point their fingers, and are actually serious in their wonder of why protests in cities across America become riots? Bullshit. They know why. Whites can hold weapons and scream in the faces of police with no harm coming to them, but Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old black child, was shot and killed for holding a toy gun. Two versions of liberty.
Unarmed people of color who peacefully assemble are tear-gassed and shot with rubber bullets. I have to ask: what do liberty-espousing friends honestly expect to result from that reaction? What would they have said if supposed “peaceful” protests at the state Capitol had been met with the same response? I somehow suspect they’d have lost their collective shit.
Where do they honestly expect the rage and frustration of years and years of harassment, unprovoked profiling, unlawful detainment, and the killing of innocent black and brown people to go?
When nothing changes. When another black person is killed for no reason other than the fact that two versions of liberty exist, and they don’t enjoy the right one?
Liberty fighters: If your white children had experienced the kind of repetitive harassment endured by families of color, would you feel peaceful? Or maybe a better question is, would you have tolerated this systemic, ingrained, and repeated injustice and attack on your liberty (and freedom to live your life without the constant shadow of suspicion and fear)? Peacefully? You who fly a “Don’t Tred on Me” flag over injustices — like the executive orders that hinder your businesses staying open, your bars serving your favorite brew, or your decision about mask-wearing — yet you fold up that flag because some angry, misguided, grief-stricken people and ugly opportunists can’t control their anger. If you genuinely are students of liberty, you can’t erase the Loyalists that were tarred and feathered, the riots, the destruction of property in the name of the liberty you idolize. This is hypocrisy.
Peace is convenient for the oppressor. I don’t condone the violence in these protests in any way. I abhor the violence, the innocent police just doing their jobs put in harm’s way, the businesses and neighborhoods destroyed, I hate it. But if the response of my friends to the tragedy of unchallenged racism is dismissive because some of the angry lose control, they are self-righteous and blind. If they refuse to use their intellect and love of freedom to advocate for one version of liberty for all, they are making a grave error.
