Reflections on the #DallasPoliceShootings

On Thursday evening July 7, 2016, Micah Johnson shot and killed 5 police officers and several others wounded. Police reported that Johnson was “upset with Black Lives Matter” and he wanted to “kill white people, especially white police officers.” We here at R3 collected some reflections from this tragedy. If you would like to share, please email us at rhetoricraceandreligion@gmail.com or by Twitter or Facebook.  

I grieve for the five Dallas police officers who lost their lives to senseless violence. They deserved the right to come home to their families. I grieve for the senseless killing of Philando Castille and Alton Sterling. They also deserved the right to come home to their families. I hate having to say over and over again that most African Americans do not hate the police. Certainly not good police officers (we have them in our own families, churches, and communities). And I don’t know any African Americans who would condone the senseless killing of police officers regardless of their ethnic background. Even when those officers are morally corrupt and blatantly racist. Take your badge and gun? Yes. Kill you? No. Black Lives Matter wasn’t responsible for last night’s shooting. We need to reject such a claim-Christopher Michael Jones

Premature talks of reconciliation is a hustle. Indeed, the notion that we can have racial reconciliation before we have justice is illusory. Yes, we can worship and work together, get married, develop friendships, live in the same neighborhoods, love each other individually, and come together to address issues of police brutality, racism and injustice (and we should)—but none of that is RECONCILIATION at a macro level. Genuine reconciliation is IMPOSSIBLE as long as white supremacy is on the throne. As long as black and brown bodies are denigrated and marginalized economically, socially, and politically there can be no reconciliation except of the cheap, self-centered kind. Folks who want to rush to reconciliation do so because they are uncomfortable feeling, seeing and witnessing the anger of the oppressed. They must quiet that righteous rage and quickly assure oppressed people that everything is going to be alright because such anger and vivid examples of injustice threaten their tidy, neat Americanized ideology and expose it as a FRAUD. We must come to grips with the fact that the way America is organized is a sham and that much of our theology aids and abets it. Reconciliation that preserves the privilege of whites is no reconciliation at all.-Fredrick Robinson

This is neither philosophy nor semantics; this is neither wordplay nor creativity; but I am got damned tired of this language of ally-ship. To label oneself as ally is to exert and express a privilege that I rebuke. Slaughtered black bodies is not my doing. Families torn apart is not my doing. Neither oppression nor terrorism; neither structural nor systemic inequality; neither prejudice nor bigotry are MY creations. This is your shit. All of it. The creation, the blood, the devastation in its aftermath. This is yours. You don’t have the right to be an ally. You don’t have the privilege to be a sympathizer. I am not the one who is sick here. This is your damned disease. You do not have the freedom to fuck up the world and expect for everyone else to fix it. This burden is yours. Carry it. Quit heaving it upon the shoulders of those you have already abused. And while I am going to do my very best to ensure that you do not destroy more of me or my family or my people, you better understand that I do so knowing that racism and ALL of its engendered ills are YOURS. They belong to you. The diseased can never be both the diagnosed and the inoculated. There is nothing clean about your hands in this moment or in this world. Own what’s yours, then we can begin to have an honest conversation about how I can help you find the cure for your many pathologies. Black suffering is but a euphemism for white sickness! And for those who are quick to offer solutions, wrapped in respectability politics, about how I can survive another day as a black man in America, the first one better be the obvious one – tell white folks to stop killing us. Everything else is an act of violence in and of itself. No brother, no cousin, no friend or black-stranger of mine needs to pull up his damn pants, tell white people to pull up their damn humanity.-Ernest L. Gibson III

When a white person does anything violent he is without a doubt certifiably mentally ill (even though he’s really not) When a black person does something violent mental illness will never be mentioned once. That’s how racism and white supremacy work. When Dylan Roof goes to a place where he knows people he hate will be and kills them he’s a deranged lone wolf, yet All Lives Matter supporters are never thought of in connection with it. When the people in Dallas go to a place they know people they hate will be and kills them it’s an entire groups doing and Black Lives Matter is immediately connected. That’s how racism and white supremacy work. When officers are tragically and senselessly murdered the shooters are rightly arrested, and will soon be charged and then found guilty. When a black man is tragically and senselessly murdered by police there’s a small chance the officers will be arrested, an even smaller chance he will be charged and literally no chance he will be found guilty. That’s how racism and white supremacy work.-Benjamin Short

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