White Women, I’m Glad You’re Showing Up. But I’m Not Sure I Trust You Just Yet.
I moved to Los Angeles in 1992, the year a jury with no Black people on it acquitted the four policemen who had administered that horrific, now-infamous beating to Rodney King. I was 25 years old and had never before seen anything like what I was witnessing; the world was on fire.
A man with a video camera just happened to have captured King’s beating from his apartment balcony across the street from where the LAPD stopped King’s car. It was a rarity for the time ― this was pre-social media ― so the world was shocked to see the proof of the savagery that Black people had been screaming about for decades.
Some of us, for the first time in our lives, felt a semblance of vindication — for finally, there was evidence that could not be disputed. It was on film, it was on the news, and it was on the front page of every newspaper. I felt the collective anger and sorrow of my Black brothers and sisters. Still, surprisingly, at the time, I felt hostility-tinged apathy from a number of the white people in my life.
With a few exceptions, these white people were resistant to discussing the real causes of our civil unrest with me: slavery, lynchings, Jim Crow, segregation, the war on drugs, police violence against Black men, systemic racism, privatized prisons, etc. But they were annoyingly vocal in their support for the “real” victim, Reginald Denny, the white truck driver who was ripped from the cab of his truck at Florence and Normandy and beaten nearly to death during the riots.
For more than a month, Los Angeles was divided in an insurmountable way. And during that time, I felt like some of my white friends showed me who they really were.
I was drowning in a sea of outrage and sorrow, and bitter about the fact that some people were unwilling to join me in it. I felt especially betrayed by white women, as I know how powerful their sway is. When they have a cause, they take over the stage. And they do not stop until they have been heard by everyone...
