Why the Sudden White Interest in Black Lives Matter?

Today we are witnessing an interesting, yet probably fleeting, phenomena; white people who really are supporting Black Lives Matter.

Pictures of the national demonstrations show as many young white people demonstrations as black people.

This includes the now infamous assault on a 70 something old white man, who was pushed over and seriously injured by a young police officer in Buffalo, New York. This was a older white man who was attacked during a Black Lives Matter gathering to call it a demonstration is wrong. In fact there were hardly any black faces amongst the demonstrators.

And then, the row of police officers ran over the man, not offering first aid, just walked over him.

That was a startling thing to see, an elderly white guy was being treated like a black man. In fact, the police ran into another white man, and attacked him…two for one!

And the white community began showing up even more at the Black LIves Matter PEACEFUL demonstrations.

Why? Is it white guilt? Is it finally dawning on white people that they were wrong, that racism and prejudice has pervaded American History for 400 years?

Maybe…but not quite.

The reason is safety and mortality.

White people in America are relatively speaking, the safest people on the planet.

Only parts of America has ever seen war, the south after the Civil War. And those victims of total war are all gone.

The anxiety and anger that occupation by northern United States troops tripped off into a Jim Crowe and KKK terror era that is still evident in southern and even border states. That anger and anxiety has allowed white supremacy to be practiced in plain sight, a constant breeding ground for white rage that spills over into New York and afflicted a young baby boomer named Trump.

There is no doubt that a backlash to an African American President launched Trump’s political career. His presidency is payback for electing a black man.

And the reaction of northerners is telling. What Obama did was remind them that their safety and position in society was in some kind of jeopardy…so the backlash took shape in the Tea Party, which had far more to do with race than taxes.

Democrats foolishly nominated a woman for President, and now two targets of ages old Americans Prejudice were made plain; payback for a Black President AND a potential Woman President.

And the bigot who questioned the Black President’s citizenship won in an upset.

That should have satiated white privilege…but it didn’t. Now, the assaults on civil rights and justice have just started.

But then the Pandemic hit and made it a new ball game.

The first thing to white people about the Pandemic is that it was unpredictable. And, it was a definite existential threat to mortality and safety.

Suddenly, white people were cast into the net of terror and instability that is African and Native American’s everyday lives.

Native American Experience teaches that a genocide and a cultural disaster can hit at anytime, virtually ending a civilization. Inter generational trauma is rife in Native American life. They are lost, similar to the Jews after WWII. The book Exodus and later movie, was a testimony to the anxiety and pain that a genocide can do. Cultures react in predictable way to pressure and disaster….

Two things are lost immediately, a sense of safety and mortality. When 6.5 million souls were murdered along with 55 million killed in WWII, mortality was a clear and present danger to Native Americans and Jews for sure.

The current Pandemic is having the exact same effect on the white privileged of the world…especially in America.

For the first time in the nation’s history, save the 1919 Pandemic, the white privileged are really threatened with mortality and a lack of safety.

The screams of outrage, the demonstrations where people actually refuse to wear masks, refuse reality, is reminiscent of the behavior of Native Americans with the Ghost Dance that led to Wounded Knee.

Human beings are fragile beings…they are prey to anxiety and fear. And nothing does that more than a pandemic.

Suddenly the run to the suburbs is worthless for that certainty of life that white people have enjoyed in the United States since 1865.

Remember, there were no civilian casualties, save Pearl Harbor during WWI or WWII. Germany, Russian, Britain et al, saw huge civilian casualties in WWII especially.

Humanity does not like to be reminded of the short or shorter time on earth we all have.

And white people always had it happen to “that black or brown person” not to my family.

This first time pandemic break down of security, the failure of the calming effect of two huge oceans that should protect us from the pestilence of Europe, the Middle East (shades of 9/11) and Asia were at least kept thousand of nautical miles away, was a shock to white people in America.

And the pandemic skipped over the waters like it wasn’t there. And Trump’s. denial was made to look even more as the con that it was.

This coupled with a President who pretended the threat of global pandemic somehow was still going to miss the United States, set the American People, white people particularly, in for a mortality and security dooms day scenario that was real and immediate.

Trump’s reaction is telling here, he chose to ignore it. He knows, being a bigot, that white people cannot take being reminded of mortality through a break down of safety. That threat is usually reserved for people of color in America!

So he pretends it isn’t there.

The same behavior was seen in Jewish communities in Germany, who denied the concentration camps until the doors closed in the showers…the Native Americans truly believed the White Buffalo Propecy that the white men would somehow disappear.

Trump is acting just like the Chiefs of the Sioux acted and the Jewish Civic leaders acted in the Warsaw Ghetto, it all was a ruse, a hoax….somehow God or the Great Spirit will save us.

Denial is a classic human trick too sooth the anxiety of people. And unfortunately God does not intervene…Actually it did with the Jews, God was the United States Army and the Soviet Army, that is the ONLY thing that ended Doomsday.

And killing Fascists was the only way to end that pandemic.

The problem is reality, providing proof everyday of a mortal danger for all, that being white doesn’t guarantee any protection from. And that white people simply cannot handle.

The minimalists, who troop out statistics showing that as many die of automobile accidents (leaving out the facts that the virus death toll in America is only two months long)…is so pathetic that even hard core Trump adherents don’t believe it.

Nothing can match the danger of this pandemic save the pandemic of 1919….and that was a earth shattering event at the end of WWI, that somehow hides in history. I remember reading one paragraph in the U.S. History book in high school about the “Spanish Flu”…

White people can now relate, and they don’t like it, to African and Naive Americans. For years the lower white classes where told by the aristocrats, that “At least you are better off than the Indians or the Blacks”…

That ruse doesn’t work with a virus that is color blind; that strikes rest homes the worst, that are mostly populated by old white people. African Americans and Native Americans on average don’t live long enough or can’t afford rest homes.

So again, whites are made aware of mortality and holes in security no matter how much money you have; and they don’t like it.

For once, for a fleeting moment in time, white Americans get a glimpse of the life that Native and African Americans have lived for centuries.

One traffic stop, one trip to the doctor for diabetes that goes wrong, and death is right there waiting for Native and African Americans.

Whites don’t get stopped and the doctor is but one of many options for good health.

Until now.