Zahra Gordon

Hi America! 

I’m a blogger and a black person. I have some concerns, to say the least, about your continuous defence of white privilege. A defence that translates into the blatant disregard for and refusal to acknowledge the fact that black people are human beings worthy of time, effort, justice, understanding, and other things of that nature. It bothers me – again, to say the least – that people who are considered “white” have the privilege of being above the law. I’m not even sure if that is the correct way to describe what black people are living. When a white man can shoot a 17-year old black boy in the chest because he found that he “looked suspicious” and there be no repercussions, do we call that being above the law? Or is that just evidence that the white man is the law, period? 

Most recently, Jason Russell, one of the instigators behind the KONY Propaganda Movement, was detained for masturbating in public, disturbing the peace, vandalising private property and public indecency. That’s a long list of offences and notice I said detained, not arrested. When “white” people do things like this its not a crime. There is always some euphemism: he was just stressed, he needs to be cared for, he didn’t mean to do it. Did I mention that the police also thought that he was under the influence of some sort of drug? Did I also mention that many of the black people in the US prison system are drug abusers who need rehabilitation and not criminalization per se? Better yet, did I mention that I have a friend with no record who was put in jail with hard criminals – drug dealers, a woman who ran over an ex-boyfriend with her car purposely, etc – for an unpaid j-walking ticket? Of course, the difference is that she is considered black, like me, and not considered white like Jason Russell. Its the same distinction made between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman.  

And these are only the cases that we hear about. How many black people die because of fear and prejudice every year that we know nothing about? How many black mothers scream into deaf ears day and night? Haven’t we shed enough tears and lost enough loved ones for America to recognize that we are human?