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*(Via WearYourVoice.com) – If you’ve been paying attention to anything in the news lately, then you’ve seen the onslaught of headlines about racialized violence. Across the country, Black people are facing a continuous waves of anti-Blackness at the hands of white folks calling the police on them, simply for existing in public.
While this may read as a new way for white people to assume their racism onto Black people, it actually isn’t anything new at all. #ExistingWhileBlack illustrates the history of anti-Blackness that reigns throughout U.S. history and reminds us of the ways that white people — and particularly, white women — are evolving their white fragility to keep anti-Black racism thriving.
To call the police on Black people, no matter the reasoning, is violent in and of itself simply because the act cannot be separated from historical context. In the last decade alone, we’ve seen how police brutality has led to the murders of Black people across all genders and ages throughout the country. We’ve seen documentation of how systemic and systematic anti-Blackness is, and how it permeates Black communities at all economic levels.
Most recently, in Oakland, California, a white woman called the police on a Black family having a cookout in a public park because they weren’t in a “grilling approved section” of the park.
A Starbucks store manager in Philadelphia called the police on two Black men waiting for a friend. A mother and daughter in Brooklyn were accused of shoplifting at a vintage store in Williamsburg, where they were also handcuffed and searched by police.
A group of Black filmmakers (including Bob Marley’s granddaughter) had the police were called on her and a group of fellow Black filmmakers checking out of an AirBnB because she didn’t smile to a white neighbor who claimed that they were robbers.
A Yale student called campus police on another Yale grad student for napping in her common room. The list goes on and on but these seemingly random instances reinforce the assertion of dominance that white people are fighting to keep hold of over Black people.
This article by Cameron Glover continues at WearYourVoice.com.
