Democracy is White

Dear Editor,

On Wednesday, for the first time in the last century, we have White people who stormed the United States Capitol, and they were met with gentle force.

The police managed the crowds of rioters with such gentle delicacy, we remain shocked. If they had been Black, they would not have been handled such; they would be another Rodney King, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, any young Black man or woman shot while being Black.

There were no police shootings as they would at a Black body stopped and already subdued. There was a crowd of white supremacists lawbreakers, called extremists by a country, yet supported by a system that is structurally white, structurally racist and structurally patriarchal.

Black, feminist scholar and critic bell hooks refers to this system as white supremacist, capitalist, patriarchy. But it could also be orange. It just could not be Black.

The United States revealed how, as much as this current president has referred to shithole countries where violence, corruption and lawlessness are rife, the United States is not dissimilar.

One party chooses to empower a group of White people it will not help in their legal fight; but the system will not shoot to kill, or shoot on sight, or shoot out of fear, when they storm the Capitol Building. Democracy, at least in this case, is racist.

Democracy is White when White supremacist, capitalist men can walk away from this attack on democracy and still talk about the chance of not charging the man who instigated the actions from the first day of his presidency and particularly when he claimed, after Williamsburg, that there were very good people on both sides.

Not only is democracy White, but it is also male, privileged and corrupt. It is blind to the rights of Black and Brown bodies, and women, in particular non-White women, and a little less so to White women’s bodies, but they must be controlled.

They are less valuable than White male bodies. It is blind to the crimes committed against enslaved Black bodies during and after slavery, during reconstruction and up to the lynchings in 2020. Much like the colonial structure of postcolonial states, this democracy is male and powerful as it rapes, exploits and tortures the bodies of those it claims to own and protect. It holds only itself in esteem.

If those rioters had been Black or Brown bodies, young working-class, poor Black or Brown bodies protesting the deaths of their family members, killed for walking away, for stopping and surrendering to a stop and search, (always reserved for Black and Brown bodies), for driving while Black, as Ta-Nehisi Coates, bell hooks, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Kimberlé Crenshaw, Patricia Hill-Collins, Angela Davis all point out in their work, they would now be dead.

They would be dead in body bags in front of the Capitol.

Democracy is White and male; it is also biased and sexist and racist and homophobic. This we saw upfront and personal on Wednesday!

The democracy that allowed Trump supporters to storm the Capitol building, all-but-unimpeded, to show their contempt for a system that is meant to govern, shows how utterly flawed, just like those shithole countries where dictatorships run things, like Venezuela that Trump and his party often accuse the Democrats of wanting to recreate in the USA, run no differently than that democracy where the Capitol stands.

Democracy is White because when one is White and storms the seat of government, they let you in. Will the head rioter be charged with sedition? Or anything? Or will this simply go down in history as a blimp in the timeline?

The United States has shown how flawed its system is. Yet the president has remained protected as he sparks racist, bigoted, White supremacist flames. We have clearly seen the White supremacist, capitalist, misogynistic patriarchy in action, and it is ugly.

This is when you know, democracy is White.

— Ian A. Bethell-Bennett

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