This morning, I happened to post an e-mail from one of my sisters-in-law in Chicago, whose first name is Dolishia. She’s black. Dolishia wrote “They’ve been rioting and looting at my store they thinking about closing it it’s so heavily damaged all the black areas in Chicago close are devastating they tore up the black community.”
Then just now I read Maxine Waters, a well-known black woman, a Democrat, who’s in the House of Representatives from California. I tried to e-mail her, but her system refuses it because I’m not in her district. That being the case, I’m blogging here, as it does have some broader meaning.
In light of what Dolishia told me, what Maxine said troubles me. She said
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“A lot of negative language gets used against black people, describing what whites often believe is true about us: that language includes ‘lazy,’ ‘criminal,’ and ‘rioting.’ It’s all negative language used far too often in a description of black people by folks who fundamentally don’t see black people the same way they see whites and others.”
But ordinary black people use the same language that white people do. When black people riot and loot, they say there’s rioting and looting. Maxine shouldn’t be saying that this is peculiar to whites.
Maxine has been at this for decades, trying to replace the word rioting by insurrection. But my sister-in law Dolishia apparently hasn’t got Maxine’s message, and it’s a good thing she hasn’t. Dolishia knows that a bunch of people were rioting and looting near her. She didn’t have to say they were black, because the South Side is 93 percent black.
Maxine shouldn’t deny the facts. That won’t help black people. She really should be decrying the looters and rioters, black or not. Her solidarity should be extended to black people made worse off by the destruction.
Certainly the South Side rioting and looting was not insurrection, which is a revolt against authority. Why would people loot a Food Basket store near Dolishia, one that she patronizes, if it were insurrection? Why would they loot anything? They’d be marching against people and places of authority and making demands, and they’d be armed.
Maxine injects a charge of racism into a situation where it’s a false charge.
And the problem is that she’s not alone. She and others have made a career out of claiming racism for over 50 years.
