The Demon in Darren Wilson's Head

[Ken Burch]

3. a bit more:

This problem of surplus powerlessness among most whites is a psychological problem that is rooted in a history of white-on-white racial violence: when the mass of European immigrants to the United States lost their political and economic power and their ethnic identities, the elite whites who took these things away from them taught their white victims to blame their losses on black folk.

The “race problem” between the police force and black Americans won’t go away because it’s a deadly ruse. Race talk about the need for more black police officers in black communities, more body cameras on cops, more civilian review boards for police, and more special prosecutors will never solve the core emotional problem. Neither will Al Sharpton’s pleas for the Justice Department to create national guidelines for investigating officers when they use deadly force nor pleas from people like Democratic committeewoman in Ferguson Patricia Bynes for fuller participation in traditional politics. Such talk hides a pervasive political, economic, and social disorder that compromises the emotional integrity of whites who then blame blacks for terrorizing them. The blacks in this white drama are “simply” the scapegoats. Or more precisely, the collateral damage.

The disempowerment inflicted upon whites by other whites in the process of constructing a collective white identity has been almost impossible to understand politically because it began with the slave count. Few American historians write about this racial ruse.