Justice, Racism

I Wouldn't Have Slapped The White Woman Who Totally Deserved To Be Slapped

A slap is simple, but the thought behind it is complex.

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Bat slapIf you call me the n-word, I probably won’t hit you. Of course, I may hit you. I may choke you. I may take your head and repeatedly slam it into the hardest surface I can find, then feast on your fetid brain as my last meal before the cops come get me. But I probably won’t. If that’s a risk you are willing to take, shout your epithets at me. Most likely, I won’t be willing to throw away my life to end yours on that particular day.

May the odds be ever in your favor.

There’s a video going around showing a white woman who was willing to take that risk. She shouted “n**ger” at a man, three times, while on a crowded bus. The other passengers did nothing. The bus driver did nothing. The man, who is clearly trying to calculate what he is willing to give up in order to make this stop (his freedom, his life?) dares her to say it “one more time.” She says “You’re missing your stop, n***er,” then cackles.

The laughter stops when the black man slaps the f**king smile off her face, then hops off the bus.

This is an issue where multiple things are true, all at the same time. If you live in a world of absolutes, you’re going to have some trouble with the following list of thoughts I am able to hold in my head, all at once, without ripping a hole in space-time.

  • I would not have slapped that woman.
  • I’m delighted that somebody slapped her.
  • The video shows an assault that should be prosecuted.
  • I would not aid the prosecution if I were a witness, nor would I vote to convict if I were on the jury.
  • I don’t think violence solves anything.
  • Violence clearly solved the problem of the white lady cackling in your face while calling you n**ger.
  • I think it’s a coward’s move to hit a woman who probably can’t take you in a street fight.
  • I think racists are cowards who know that the entire police state is on their side and will act as the racists’ “muscle” should any Negro dare to stand up for himself.
  • The white people who say “this, sadly, just confirms fears that black people are violent and can’t control themselves,” are the secret racists in your life. You should treat them accordingly.
  • Those same white people don’t have any idea of the immense, nearly beatific RESTRAINT required of black people to merely get through a day in this country without actually murdering two white people a day.

One of the things I try to explain to my white friends — the few I have left — is that my life as a black person in this country is just more complicated than theirs. It took me half and hour to just write out that list. Brother on the bus had to process and organize most all of those thoughts and emotions in 55 seconds — in addition to such mundane concerns as “where to get off the bus” — all while being shouted at by this white lady.

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For the straight white man, this is a theoretical case. Nobody is actually going to shout a racial epithet at you while on a bus. For the gay white man, this a case hits a little closer to home. Somebody might shout slurs at you.

For the racial minority, this is a Tuesday.

You’re barely going get through a day, much less a week, without some risible racial s**t happening to you or around you. It happens so often, and so relentlessly, that you can’t actually emotionally and intellectually keep up with all of the racism. It’s overwhelming. So you start drawing arbitrary lines around words or phrases or situations. You tell yourself, “I’m not allowed to be bothered by this, I’m allowed to notice, but not react to that.”

You know what white people don’t understand? The n-word is the one word that WHITE PEOPLE have allowed us to react to. I think about slapping a white motherf**ker every time one of them calls me “lazy.” I think about choking the life out of Richard Sander every time a white person calls me an “affirmative action admit,” even though they couldn’t get in spitting distance of me on a test. Every time one of these blonde-haired, blue-eyed, barely pubescent, Trump-voting waifs just assumes I find her boney ass attractive, I FANTASIZE about inventing a bio-weapon I’d lace into the Ivanka Trump clothing line that would give them all festering boils.

The n-word is the ONE THING I’m allowed to react to, in pretty much whatever way I see fit, with the least amount of blowback from white America.

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That is the complicated, multi-faceted risk white people take when they use that word, around me. You don’t know me. You have no idea what I’m capable of.

Viral Video Shows Black Man Slapping White Woman for Calling Him the N-Word [The Root]

Elie Mystal is an editor of Above the Law and the Legal Editor for More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC on Twitter, or at elie@abovethelaw.com. He will resist.

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