This is All We Can Think About: The Deaths of Ahmaud Arbery and Nina Pop, the False Binary of Covert/Overt White Supremacy, and Where to Redistribute That Stimulus Check
Ahmaud Arbery’s murder was not an anomaly.
His death is one of countless egregious and horrifying modern-day lynchings at the hands of a couple of self-appointed “citizen patrollers” enacting whiteness as Nell Irvin Painter describes. This is the manifestation of centuries of violence stemming back to slave patrols, which have now morphed and evolved into the prison industrial complex and The New Jim Crow that Michele Alexander wrote about. This is genocide made possible by cronyism -- made possible by capitalism.
Something that Ericka Hart talks about frequently is how white supremacy is too often viewed in a binary of “covert” and “overt” manifestations. But this false binary sorely discredits the violence of ALL forms of white supremacy, even the ones that are considered “covert.” Hart explains that this framing is really only serving white people who have a harder time understanding that all forms of white supremacist violence are “overt” when it comes to the experience of those who are the targets of that violence.
As Hart describes in a recent tweet posted to Instagram,
“People are not connecting everyday incidences of racial violence to Black genocide in the US. The racism complaint ignored by HR contributes to our death. The celebrities doing Black face and making money off of Black features contributes to our death. The white kids stealing tik tok dances from Black kids contributes to our death. The racist president who doesn’t get impeached for being racist contributes to our death. The all white staff, production crew, neighborhood, etc. contributes to our death. We deserve more when we are alive.”
Overt white supremacy and anti-Blackness can show up in any sphere of our society even the ones that are trying to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive. With heaviness, we admit that our platform is no exception. We recently received some feedback at Terra Incognita Media following one of our “Toxic Masculinity in the Outdoor Industry” workshops that we need to provide more resources for Black women and femmes, and women and femmes of color who are most targeted when it comes to toxic masculine violence. We are tremendously grateful for this feedback, and we are currently working to implement this insight in order to improve our offering. We hope our transparency about this encourages others to act on their spoken values too.
Anti-racist action must be taken all year round, seven days a week, 24 hours a day. Not just when someone’s life has been taken through racist rage. Not just when it fits into our schedule.
Because in order to prevent people from being murdered like Ahmaud Arbery who will now miss his 26th birthday today, May 8th, 2020, and Nina Pop, a 28-year-old, Black trans woman who was found murdered in Sikeston, Missouri on May 3, 2020, we must challenge the status quo of white supremacy in every facet of our lives whether that’s in our homes, on the phone with Grandma, at work, or in our personal relationships.
Whiteness programs us to see the upward mobility and freedom of movement of anyone who is non-white as a threat. Whiteness connives us into being possessed by individualism at whatever cost to others. Hoarding frozen chicken breasts and toilet paper is one result. Sending body bags to Seattle Indian Health Board instead of COVID-19 testing kits is another. We are programmed to believe that there is never enough (scarcity). White supremacist conditioning warps the way we perceive situations and events, like a Black man out for a jog, so that we operate on impulses to exert our power and control.
In this time of global crisis, we can give in to the fear of scarcity and we can succumb to our centuries of conditioning, or instead, we can get to know it, acknowledge it, see it for what it is, and most importantly, choose differently. We can choose community over isolation, even if right now we are physically isolated. We can choose giving over keeping, especially when it comes to giving UP our power, over keeping it. Because we know that giving up power leads to communal wellbeing. We can choose to share. Because in the end, we know that giving and sharing what we have creates abundance for us and everyone.
We can act on our values, and bring our visions for an equitable future to life.
Our friend Brian Frank shares this anti-capitalist message and created a great resource if you want to find out where it’s best to redistribute your stimulus check. (You can also redistribute it here):
“People like me who are class privileged can sometimes think we are experiencing scarcity because we had to dip into our savings, or stop eating out at restaurants and buying new clothes, or might not get a nice vacation trip this year. This is capitalism tricking us. Real scarcity is not having enough $ for food or rent, swimming in debt, no family/parental safety net, no access to federal or state benefits. I invite my owning class friends to join me in rethinking scarcity, and give bigger. Together we can take care of each other. Fuck capitalism, smash the state, community care for the win!”
— Brian Frank, Bookkeeper, Consultant, and Fiscal Trainer
Giving up our power, in whatever ways we can, will ensure that oppressive hierarchies won’t stand a chance.
Relevant Reading:
How We Think About Enslavement Matters by Nell Irvin Painter
Relevant Listening:
Big Think Interview with Nell Irvin Painter about the “Blue Period”
A Podcast Interview with Nell Irvin Painter About Her Book A History of Whiteness
Hoodrat to Headwrap Podcast by Ericka Hart and Ebony Donnley: 30 Days A Slav--Essential: Disposable Tomorrow. Stop Killing Black People.
