Yesterday, Racialicious published a wonderful piece by a guest blogger named Harsha Walia, entitled "Hate Crimes Always Have A Logic: On The Oak Creek Gurudwara Shootings". In this piece, the blogger makes the excellent point that referring to hate crimes as "senseless acts of violence" ignores that they're rooted in discrimination and in this country, that includes the idea of white supremacy. This has been especially apparent in the media coverage of the violence that occurred on Sunday at a Sikh Temple in Milwaukee. Walia makes an excellent point that I think bears repeating here, so I'll leave it in her words:
While these murders were abhorrent, they were not ‘senseless’. The ad nauseaum suggestion that the killings were senseless attempts to construct the shooting as random and without logic, when in fact racist hate crimes operate through the very deliberate and precise logic of white supremacy
Whenever there's an act of violence of any kind, it's tempting to refer to it as "senseless", maybe to psychologically shield ourselves from the reality that there are many, many people out there to whom the act made perfect sense. She goes on to dissect why this argument relies on (white) supremacy:
White supremacy, as a dominant and dominating structuring, actually necessitates and relies on a discourse that suggests that hate crimes are random. Otherwise, whites might just have to start racially profiling all other young and middle-aged white men at airports or who are walking while white. Whites might have to analyze what young white children are being taught about in schools and in their homes about privilege and entitlement. Whites might have to own up to and seek to repair the legacy of racialized empire, imperialism, and settler-colonialism that has devastated and continues to destroy the lives and lands of millions of people across the globe.
I actually hesitated to share this article on Facebook, or to blog about it, because I know that for many, this type of argument seems unnecessarily inflammatory. It's not...it's the real honest truth. The most dangerous thing about privilege is that its benefactors are largely unaware of its existence. Even for those who don't participate in the white supremacist movement, the fact that it's such a part of modern American culture acts as a protective shield around them. As long as these acts are "senseless", no one has to face the fact that this nation was built on white supremacy. More to Walia's second point, they also don't have to consider the real repercussions of what it would mean to restructure our nation so that this was no longer the dominant narrative. As she notes, recognizing white supremacy would mean that white people would have to take on some of the burdens that are now shouldered only by non-whites: things like teaching their children about race and colonialism. Even more challenging, they'd have to start seeing each other as the demonized "other"...the source of so much fear and "senseless" violence.
