Edited by Azizi Powell
This pancocojams post presents several online article excerpts and selected comments from several discussion threads about how the police's reaction to the January 6, 2021 Washington D.C. Capitol siege was White privilege on display.
The content of this post is presented for historical and sociological purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post.
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Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/01/tweets-about-fbi-asking-people-on.html for the closely related pancocojams post entitled "Tweets About The FBI Asking People On Twitter To Help Identify Participants In The Jan 6, 2021 Washington D.C. Capitol Siege".
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ARTICLE EXCERPTS
Excerpt #1
From https://www.harpersbazaar.com/uk/culture/a35148638/what-happened-at-capitol-shows-white-privilege/ What happened at the Capitol shows white privilege in plain view
The disparity in police treatment of the Capitol supporters vs the BLM protesters wasn't just blatant; it was black and white
BY Chidozie Obasi, Jan 7, 2021
..."On 6 January 2021, angry supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Washington DC Capitol Hill in full-raid mode, thwarting Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory by attacking the building and causing disruptions. Trump declared a muted call for peace after the protests were well in motion but did not urge his mostly maskless supporters to disperse. In a thronged scene, protesters fought past police forces and breached the house, waving American flags as they marched through the hallways like demented Vikings. A woman who was shot inside the Capitol during the marches later died. Biden’s session was swiftly dismissed and lawmakers—including the building’s personnel—were rushed to safety.
The reaction in America has been, as across the rest of the world, condemnatory among the Black community. The common sentiment felt throughout the scenes of “domestic terrorism” was one of deep deflation. When the Black Lives Matter protests took place in June 2020 after George Floyd’s murder, Black protesters faced tear gas, flash grenades and rubber bullets. Many sustained serious injuries. To name just a few cases, as reported on by Time, 21-year-old Dounya Zayer had a seizure after she was pushed to the kerb by police, smacking her head on the floor. She is still recovering from concussion and a back injury caused by her fall. Donavan La Bella, 26, was left with a fractured skull and the bones around his left eye socket were broken, after police shot at him with an impact ammunition. Shantania Love, 30, was blinded by an officer who fired projectiles into a crowd. Yesterday’s protesters were met with little-to-no resistance from the police. In fact, in the midst of the turmoil, some protesters took selfies with law-enforcement officers. The hypocrisy was dazzling.
[…]
The differing treatment of the police, which we saw so plainly at the Capitol, says a lot about white supremacy. It exemplifies how much racial disparity is engrained in the nation’s system and how white privilege sits at the heart of racial injustice. In times of political strife and social angst, to see the scary reality of racial inequality taken to extreme proportions, look to the US: if Black people were the ones climbing up walls and causing havoc, the consequences would have been far more devastating. More guns would have been fired and the death toll would have been much higher, all at the hands of white power. To put it simply: if you are white and angry you get away with untold crimes, but if you are Black and show a sentiment of anxiety, if you protest for basic human rights, you are demonised.”…
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Excerpt #2
From https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/2021/01/06/nba-players-coaches-capitol/
NBA players, coaches comment on scene at Capitol: ‘This is the epitome of white privilege’
By Des Bieler, Cindy Boren, Ava Wallace and Ben Golliver, Jan. 7, 2021 at 10:12 a.m. EST
"Stunning scenes at the U.S. Capitol, where throngs of people stormed the building following a rally in support of President Trump, transfixed the nation Wednesday. Among those taking note of the unprecedented situation — and sharing pointed commentary — were NBA players and coaches.
“You do things like this,” tweeted veteran free agent Jamal Crawford, “when you know there is a certain privilege where nothing is gonna happen to you.”
Crawford was hardly alone in his sense that a racial double standard was in plain evidence, given the ability of the largely White crowd to break through barriers, smash windows and enter the Capitol building with apparent ease. Many in the NBA and elsewhere claimed Wednesday that the police and National Guard presence in D.C. and other cities appeared to be much stronger, better organized and more proactive during last summer’s Black Lives Matter protests in the wake of George Floyd’s death while he was in the custody of Minneapolis police.
Warriors forward Draymond Green said that canceling games was “not the answer,” but called the Capitol scene “ridiculous” and the law enforcement response “baffling.”
[...]
Green, like others, saw a system that he said has not changed.
“It’s baffling with the reaction that the law enforcement had and whoever else was involved from an authoritarian standpoint to see the National Guard standing on those same steps when there was a peaceful protest and now to see a terrorist attack and there was no National Guard,” he said. “It just goes to show you where this country is and where this country has always been and probably where it’s going to stay, to be quite honest. Nothing’s changed. I think through social media and all of these different things we have at our fingertips today, we’re more aware of things. But nothing has changed. This is the same America that it’s been. It’s no different.”
Warriors Coach Steve Kerr, long outspoken on social and political matters, traced the violence to years of lies and misinformation as he watched what was unfolding at the Capitol. “We’ve been talking about this for years, but the truth matters in our country,” Kerr told reporters. “If we allow lies to spread and if we enable people in power to lie, you all of a sudden have millions of people doubting an election that was certified in every state.
“A legitimate election is suddenly questioned by millions of people, including the people who are leading our country in government,” he continued. “Because we’ve decided over the last few years to allow lies to be told. So this is who we are. You reap what you sow.”...
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Excerpt #3
Social media users lambaste president and compare police treatment of racial justice protesters with response to mob
Lauren Aratani, Wed 6 Jan 2021 20.37 EST; Last modified on Thu 7 Jan 2021 09.32 EST
"Many Americans and people around the world watched in horror as a mob of Donald Trump supporters rushed the US Capitol in Washington DC on Wednesday afternoon, wreaking fear and chaos with seemingly little resistance from police on Capitol Hill.
The events inside the building quickly unfolded on social media as tweets poured out from concerned members of Congress and images of the insurgents inside the Capitol went viral.
While fury over the mob was directed at various Republican lawmakers on social media, Trump bore the brunt of the blame from his most stringent critics. Multiple people, including George Conway, husband of Trump’s former adviser Kellyanne Conway, and the US representative Rashida Tlaib called for Trump’s immediate impeachment.
Robert Reich
(@RBReich)
One person is responsible for this attempted coup. He is sitting in the White House, watching this on television and tweeting. He has been threatening and inciting this for weeks. This is the logical and inevitable consequence of Trump. https://t.co/z33clAmA1x
While images and videos of Capitol police pointing their guns and running around the building were shared, many more images of the Trump-supporting mob successfully overtaking the building, including sitting at the front of the Senate and walking away with a podium, spread on Twitter.
People were quick to point out the hypocrisy of law enforcement letting the mob, which was overwhelmingly White, take over the Capitol building with little hindrance.
“Always interesting to see how white protestors can encounter so little resistance and breach the capitol with the vice-president there, while black protestors would be lying dead in front of the capitol building right now,” wrote the writer Roxane Gay.
“White privilege is on display like never before in the US Capitol,” tweeted the author and scholar Ibram X Kendi."...
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Excerpt #4
…"There is simply no way to cover Trump, his mob, and what happened yesterday without talking about the racism flowing through our society and the racism that has been mainstreamed into our media.
By David Kurtz, January 7, 2021
"Yielding the floor to TPM Reader BK:
...If I see one more story asking “how could the capital police have failed so badly” I will scream. The answer is simple, indisputable, and disgusting. The Capitol was breached because these where white people with a WHITE CAUSE. Period. Can anyone who is not a complete denier/loaded with some other agenda assert that any large crowd of people of color, or BLM, or “AntiFa” would have made it within 100 yards of THE FIRST barricade??
We know they wouldn’t, because we saw the police presence this summer for the social justice protests. We have seen the State’s response to the BLM protests for the past 5+ years: rubber bullets, gas, batons. An overly militarized response. I mean, in the past 3 weeks police in Ohio have killed two people of color for minding their own business because the police feel they defied orders or posed some minimalist pretextual threat: a cell phone and a sandwich. But this mob of white people can storm the Capital with what appears to be only a single shot fired in defense of the building? Police fire more rounds than that at motorists of color for no apparent reason. Just ask the family of Bijan Ghaisar.
In the same way that a white man can load an RV full of explosives and detonate it in the heart of the tourist/commercial center of the 24th largest city in the country and yet not be referred to as terrorist, or the event a suspected terrorist attack, the answer is race. And until that is tackled head on, there will be no “unifying” the country, and yesterday, I am afraid, is just the start of what these domestic terrorists with their Trump flag will do. Because they know the consequences are simply not that severe. Because they know they carry a privilege that reinforces to them this is their land, and so the slight of not having their chosen leader must be acted upon."
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Excerpt #5
From https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/leak-pardon-himself-donald-trump/35314/ The real reason the news just leaked that Donald Trump is
trying to pardon himself by Bill Palmer | 5:06 pm EST January 7, 2021
[selected comments with numbers added for referencing purposes only]
1. Bronia Wroblewska-Potts
"Just read a news article that said this was planned for
weeks on parler etc. Where was the FBI as i thought they would monitor for shit
like this?"
**
Reply
2. Sharman Galloway
"This comment is from Maxine Waters yesterday:
**
3. Vicki Miller
"So it begins. The Feds are tracking down those involved in
yesterday's events and they are looking at everything including sedition.
rs cited Acting U.S. Attorney Michael Sherwin. That includes
charges of seditious conspiracy, rioting and insurrection.
https://www.rawstory.com/justice-department-chartes.../
Read the link because the idiot that stole the Speaker's
podium put it up on Ebay and the highest bid was $100,000. These individuals
were not the smartest people in the country and it shows. One person had a gun
with a bullet in the chamber and one had 15 Molotov cocktails on his person."
**
Reply
4. William Moore
"Wait two weeks so Trump has more trouble giving a pardon."
**
Reply
5. Kiersten Hall
"Not to mention all of the cameras recording on the
buildings, inside the buildings, body cameras, phones, news cameras, etc....
all of those nimwits running around without facemasks on (COVID violation.)
Facial recognition businesses are busy now, that's for sure!
All of those people had better have the book thrown at them,
too, as a terrorist. None of that 'Evangelical White People' double-standard
crap. :-/"
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