Michael Harriot on Kyle Rittenhouse - White Culture - Must Read

On August 25, 2020, a single mother packed her unemployed teenage son into a car and took him to a gang meeting. Like many mothers who don’t teach their sons to value education and hard work, this woman wasn’t aware that her high school dropout son had been running around with the wrong crowd. However, she knew her son was carrying a gun that had been illegally purchased with his welfare check. Her son was just one of many children of deadbeat dads in her community who live off the government instead of searching for a job. As soon as she dropped him off, the gang leader assembled the thugs together and told them to start “set tripping.”

Even though he idolized a violent group that had just killed a man days earlier, no one calls him a “gangbanger.” Even though his actions were planned online, he is not considered a terrorist. He was associated with groups who would later try to overthrow the government, but he was not “radicalized.” Even after he pumped bullets into the bodies of Anthony M. Huber, Joseph Rosenbaum and Gaige Grosskreutz, he was not called a killer.

Kyle Rittenhouse is white, so Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero.

This is not about Kyle Rittenhouse.

Instead of blaming one boy in one city who did one terrible thing, perhaps we should look at the culture that created him. When children aren’t raised in a stable home environment, they can’t help but fall into the wrong crowd. If they are raised in a culture that glorifies drugs, violence and the outlaw mentality, what do we think will happen? This is what we should be discussing.

It’s high time we talk about the white culture.

Yes, there is a white culture.

Let’s be clear: I’m not talking about all white people or even white people in general.

However, the wonderful world of whiteness is a politically and socially distinct culture. According to the Brookings Institution, most white people live in neighborhoods that are less diverse and whiter than the rest of America. White men are 31 percent of the population but 61 percent of gun owners, so maybe we should examine why one group produces more school shooters, mass shooters and domestic terrorists than any other group. Year in and year out, white people kill more police.

Because I understand how math works, I would never attribute the actions of a small minority to implicate an entire group of people. That’s why you haven’t heard Black people going around asking random white people why they don’t speak out against the Capitol insurgents or interrupting every conversation about violence with: “But what about Wisconsin?”

Only an idiot would do that.

According to the latest FBI data, 99.9 percent of white people don’t kill anyone in a given year, just like 99.9 percent of Black people. However, the fact that most white people have used drugs might explain why their neighborhoods and schools are dangerous. According to the 2020 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, 58.9 percent of white adults over the age of 18 reported they had used illicit drugs in their lifetime–more than any other group. Plus, 83 percent of white murder victims are killed by white people.

So maybe it’s time we talk about white-on-white crime.

I don’t know what else you would expect from someone who looks up to the worst people in society like the police and Donald Trump. Not to mention the famous white musical artists like Post Malone, Eminem or Morgan Wallen who talk about drugs, violence and crime. It’s not hard to figure out why they grow up without parents when you listen to their overly sexualized female musicians. I remember when nice white women like Madonna sang about their papa’s preaching, prayer and how they wanted to act “like a virgin.” Everything’s different now. Can Halsey and Ariana Grande talk about something other than sex? And will someone tell Miley Cyrus to please put on some clothes?

Pundits have attributed the 50-year Republican stronghold on white voters to economic anxiety, fiscal conservatism, or the fact that chinos and New Balance sneakers look great with a red MAGA cap. Some people say it’s just soft white nationalism. But what if it is because the RNC’s bylaws mandate that every Republican candidate must pose with a gun so their constituency can masturbate on the way to the gun range? It’s clear that they come from a more violent culture.

I know what Josh Hawley says about pornography and video games but why would anyone need to log onto Pornhub or buy Call of Duty when you can just log onto Marjorie Taylor Green’s Facebook page and masturbate on the way to the mass shooting? I don’t want to live in a country where fathers are taking their sons on nigger-hunting expeditions. Yet, the men who allegedly killed Ahmaud Arbery seem to think white jurors will overlook their crimes because they don’t speak out when they notice that their neighbors and family members have been radicalized by gangs and right-wing extremists. This is why their communities are so broken.

It’s not hard to understand why a mob of domestic terrorists would attack the Capitol if they were following someone like high-school dropout Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), who hid the fact that she lived more of a Thug Life than Tupac. (Seriously; Tupac has been arrested four times, Boebert five.) Steve Bannon had to be arrested because he refuses to testify about his part in the Jan. 6 insurrection. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) reportedly asked students not to expose his knowledge of ongoing sexual abuse at Ohio State. Whether it’s cops, Boogaloo Boys, white nationalist militias or a pickup truck lynch mob, the Caucasian community needs to stop this “stop snitching” madness.

Maybe they need to value education more. Suburban culture hates science, math and history. They vilify “liberal” professors, dismiss data and embrace conspiracy theories because their community doesn’t care about facts or truth. Perhaps the reason why they deny climate change, pass laws against teaching history and inject horse dewormer into their veins is that they don’t value learning. Maybe they should read a few more books before they show up at the school board meeting to protest masks, vaccines and Big Bird.

I blame the parents.

First of all, they let their kids talk to them in any kind of way. Karens are raised by Karens. These white ladies attacking flight attendants and school board officials didn’t spontaneously appear. As it says in the book of Probableverbs: “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not be strung out on opioids yelling the n-word on Instagram.”

 

We see this all the time. They no longer value family, skipping from wife to wife, not spending time with their kids like good Black fathers. Instead of paying porn stars for sex, maybe they should be helping their children get real jobs and stop living off taxpayers like Ivanka, Jared, Donald Jr. and the other dumb one who looks like he watches a lot of wrestling. Why would anyone be surprised that Rep. Paul Gosar ain’t shit when six of his siblings made a whole campaign ad saying: “Our brother ain’t shit”? Who would investigate the QAnon sex trafficking conspiracy better than Matt Gaetz, who is actually under investigation for sex trafficking and has a bootleg son?

 

All I’m saying is that the white community needs to step up if they want to stop the cycle of white gang warfare, school shootings and virus-infected schools. Instead of depending on the government to protect you from Critical Race Theory, start your own Confederate History afterschool program. Normalize role models like Anthony Fauci and Bill Nye the Science Guy instead of athletes like Aaron Rodgers, Joe Rogan and the hardest-working golfer in America, Donald Trump. I don’t know if Skechers makes cowboy boots or hiking footwear, but they should concentrate on lifting themselves up by their own bootstraps and stop asking for government handouts.

If they were truly interested in making America great again, they should address the problems in their own communities. If cops truly wanted to ensure the safety of their fellow officers, they should start some kind of outreach program to the white community. The rest of us are tired of worrying about whether our kids are safe at school. We’d like to walk down the street without wondering if we are going to be shot or called the n-word. We want our kids to learn real history and believe in science.

Why won’t the white community won’t let us have nice things?

Maybe they should just go back to Africa. (That’s where all humans come from, right?)

I know how racist this all sounds. But what other choice do we have? The only other alternative is passing meaningful gun laws, allowing teachers to teach facts, believing in data and science, working to erase these social and economic disparities, and trying to actually create a democratic society that treats every human being with dignity and respect.

Yeah, right.

Michael Harriot, The Root. 

Source: https://www.theroot.com/we-need-to-talk-about-the-values-of-the-white-community-1848067339