Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
id583745501
This is the first place in the story where the race of the pontoon boat people becomes relevant. They were all white. It is fashionable among some willfully ignorant members of society to say that the pontoon boat people could have just been, well, assholes, and their race is not important. But I would argue that you simply wouldn’t see a handful of Black revelers preventing 227 passengers from disembarking from a commercial vessel for 45 minutes while the crew tried to cajole them to move. Black people know that if we tried that, we’d end up spending a night in jail, while our boat would be impounded at the bottom of the river. The people preventing the Harriet II from docking had to be white, because only white privilege inspires the kind of irrational confidence needed to hold up an entire riverboat full of people.
✏️ This is a good example of outlining how race matters. Yes, one could make a shallow argument that the race didn’t matter and those people were just assholes.. but only white people would feel that innate privilege to be so confident in not moving from a spot that isn’t theirs. Black people would never do a thing consciously, because they know that in that country, they would be immediately jailed, abused or even killed with little repercussion.. because of the systems of oppression in place. 🔗 View Highlight
id583746927
That’s the teachable moment of the brawl; that’s the moral lesson I wanted to share with my children. Black people will stop white violence against us—much more quickly and effectively than law enforcement or the courts, sadly—if we are only given a chance to see the brutality before it’s too late. We will risk the legal consequences of our actions. We will put our personal safety on the line to free a fellow Black person from the clutches of violent white folks. We must. I promise you, every Black person who joined in the fight knew that one day, they might be Damien Pickett. Those folks weren’t defending a stranger; they were defending their future selves, or their children, or their friend.
id583747054
That’s why most of the videos you’ve seen or stories you’ve read about a Black person being killed or attacked by violent white folks share one key feature in common: isolation.