These are just a few of the insights put forth by Paul Brandeis Raushenbush in a recent article on the Huffington Post, What White People Can Do About the Killing of Black Men in America:
“There are a lot of events vying to occupy the American mind these days such as Gaza, Iraq, Ukraine, the immigration crisis, hate crimes against Sikhs, Ebola, and Robin Williams’ death. But in one way, the ability to switch among these traumas is a white person’s ‘luxury.’…
“Black Americans are rightfully outraged, but it will require all Americans to be mobilized before the racism that undergirds these killings will end and the deaths along with it. White Americans like me have to stop channel surfing all the outrageously bad news from around the world and focus on the death that is happening in our own cities to our fellow Americans…
“I also pressed Rev. Lee on what he would like to tell white Americans on how to show solidarity. I was humbled by his response:
We need to lock arms amidst all of this. If the police feel they are above the law with any one group, they will feel they are above the law with others. We need to learn from the civil rights movement. It wasn’t just black folks, it was everybody, because it wasn’t a black problem it was a moral issue. We are remembering 40 years after the Freedom Summer. That wasn’t just black people risking their lives, it was a community that went down to Mississippi because they knew that when any group within the nation is marginalized then we can’t be the nation we want to be.”
As Criss Crass further expands in Ferguson and Resistance Against the Black Holocaust:
“The people of Ferguson did not create this crisis. Centuries of white supremacy, a police system evolved out of the slave patrols, unchecked state violence against communities of color, mass incarceration of over two million, epidemic poverty, and the murder of a teenage boy named Michael Brown created this crisis. The people of Ferguson have created hope and possibility, through their resistance against the nightmare of the Black holocaust, that another world is possible. Do you stand with them? Or do you give your support, well intentioned or unintentionally as it may be, to the enduring reality of the Black holocaust?”
- Donate to The Organization for Black Struggle
- Donate to the Bail and Legal Defense Fund for people arrested in Ferguson
- Sign this petition for a Federal “Michael Brown Law” requiring all police officers to wear cameras
- Understand and stop the militarization of our police
- Make connections between what is happening in Ferguson and what is happening in Gaza
- Respect black rage
- And a few more ideas here: Ten Things White People Can Do About Ferguson Besides Tweet