In William Faulkner's Light in August, Joe Christmas struggles with his racial identity. Born illegitimately, he was orphaned as a child because his grandfather couldn't handle the thought that he might have some black blood in him, despite looking unambiguously white (today we'd call him white-passing). At various points throughout the novel, different characters note that he appears to be white, and have only heard rumors (originating from Joe himself) that he might have some "n----- blood." 

There's a turning point, though, from rumor to fact when Christmas is accused of murdering his lover and burning her house down. He goes from being weird guy to a violent n-----.

The reason is clear enough, and almost a hundred years later (Faulkner completed the novel in 1932), it still explains why the almost daily slaughter of innocent black children, women and men goes unpunished and unstopped. Christmas's blackness didn't matter to the all-white political elite of Jefferson until after he was accused of murder, because non-white violence doesn't fit the racist narratives of most white people. Before the murder, his blackness was and could remain casual speculation, but after being accused of such a horrific crime, it only made sense if he was black.

Now, of course, we substitute "thug" for "n-----" (actually, not even), or in the case of Sandra Bland, we call her an angry black woman who shouldn't have challenged the authority of a bully cop. Sandra Bland didn't use her blinker when she pulled over. She refused to put her cigarette out, in her own car. She was annoyed that she was being treated like this. An activist, though, she must have know what could happen to her, and she must have been terrified. Then we look at other cases. Michael Brown was jaywalking and had stolen a pack of cigars. Tamir Rice had a toy gun that looked threatening. Eric Garner was selling cigarettes without a license. Freddie Gray was walking in a black neighborhood. Walter Scott had a broken tail light. 

The common denominator? Petty offenses, if even illegal, are propagated as justification for murder. Challenging power, challenging the status quo, is uncomfortable. For white elites, the victim has to be a criminal to justify punishment, and in that mindset, violence is inextricably tied to blackness. A racist will say, "Well, white people are killed by the police. Why doesn't the mainstream media report that? Where is Al Sharpton when a white policeman gets killed?" (etc.). But those stories don't get popular because they're uncomfortable to hear, difficult to consume. People don't want to see that because they don't know what to make of it. A good first step to understand internalized racism is to ask ourselves, Why are we more comfortable with some deaths than others? What words and stories do we use to make ourselves comfortable with murder? 

****
Thug. Bitch. Angry Black Woman. N-----. The white psyche demands words like this to fit smoothly into our narratives of criminality and to justify the mutilation of black bodies. Christmas' blackness was just as crucial as Michael Brown's thugness in the stories surrounding their deaths, despite the fact that Christmas was white and Brown was actually a nice guy who had just graduated high school. You can't lynch a white man any easier than you can shoot dead a kid just out of his graduation robes. That's why Christmas became black. It's why everyone knows the irrelevant information that Michael Brown had stolen a pack of cigars, and it's why we've heard repeatedly that Sandra Bland might have smoked weed earlier in the day. It's why we see Sandra Bland's mugshot (terrible questions about which have been raised on social media) instead of a selfie at work or a picture with friends. We construct irrelevant and often fictitious criminal histories over their non-white corpses in order to soothe white feelings. 

The difference, of course, is that Christmas was guilty of murder and was offered a trial, whereas black people today are regularly executed without recourse for petty crimes they often didn't even commit. The times are certainly a-changin': it's getting worse.

****
Say their names. 

Sandra. Walter. Michael. Tamir.Clementa. Ethel. Cynthia. Depayne. Myra. Sharonda. Susie. Daniel. Tywanza. Dontre. Freddie. Deven. Eric G. Eric H. Feras. The list goes on....

Cry for them, then do something about it.  I'm reminded of Dr. King's eulogy for Jimmie Lee Jackson, where he incriminates politicians, preachers, congregants and citizens for their indifference and irresponsibility toward Jimmie Lee's murder and toward the struggle for civil and human rights more generally. Who murdered Sandra Bland? 


We did. 

It's always a treat to sit in the exit row of a crowded plane. There's more leg room, it's convenient, and you feel a bit of a moral superiority to the people sitting in coach; you're there to help people in the event of an emergency landing, a gatekeeper of the plane's welfare. But there's always a slight uneasiness associated with sitting in the exit row. What if the plane actually goes down and I actually have to coordinate an escape effort? Uh oh... 

And so it is with Merkel, Schäuble, Dijsselbloem and Juncker sitting comfortably in the Grexit row, smug and entitled, but increasingly nervous. A Grexit, to say nothing of its impact on Greeks, would reveal the European project as a sham. (I remember an intro to European politics class I took in undergrad, where the professor began by saying "There is no such thing as Europe.") And as Thomas Piketty has pointed out, the European response so far, and the continued moralizing of Germany et al., reveals the blatant hypocrisy and short-term memory of Europe's leaders. 

Aside from the patronizing nature of German austerians' self-professed "moral supremacism," it's also bad economics. As John Aziz notes in an essay for Pieria, Germany is rich today because their post WWII debt was forgiven, allowing them to re-establish their industrial supremacy. The free movement of labor and capital facilitated by the EU and eurozone only bolsters Germany's standing, by letting it attract the best workers and investment, often from its southern neighbors. 

For a lot of Germans, though, it's nevertheless an issue of local culture and ethics. Aziz cites Jürgen Stark, who claims that, "in contrast to many eurozone countries, Germany has reliably pursued a prudent economic policy. While others were living beyond their means, Germany avoided excess. These are deep cultural differences and the currency union brings them to light once again." What makes this so cringe-worthy, in the same way as the callous indifference of many of Germany's leaders (see, for example, German finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble's comments on debt restructuring here), is the pompous ignorance of what has allowed Germany to thrive--not in spite of, but relative to and because of, the rest of Europe. 

Schäuble's Wikipedia entry is just as damning: "Schäuble is also of the view that Europe's problem is not the European Union, but rather certain national governments that cannot resist the temptation to make the EU and Europe the scapegoat for their own national problems." 

What's happening now, of course, is the exact opposite of Schäuble's analysis. Europe (Germany, in particular) is using national governments (Greece) as a scapegoat for structural problems inherent in Europe's design, while Greece's left-wing government has admitted and begun trying to rectify precedent governments' corruption. But the convenience of blaming Europe's problems on Greece, just like the convenience of sitting in an exit row, comes with the risk of choosing between saving yourself or helping your fellow passengers, a risk increasingly realized European political elites as the plane plummets toward the ground.