"The Black Body is Always a Threat: White Racial Paranoia Killed Eric Garner"
I am posting as an OP a reply I posted on an OP by sheshe2, because I think that in light of what has happened in Ferguson, MO, this excellent (longish) article on Alternet by Chauncey DeVega should get wider distribution:
I am, of course, able to post only 4 paragraphs, but it is absolutely worthwhile to read the whole piece.
The Black Body is Always a Threat: White Racial Paranoia Killed Eric Garner
by Chauncey DeVega
Black life is cheap in America. The historical irony is, of course, that the fluctuations in the value placed on black life, and the labor output it produced, were the basis of America's economy for centuries.
<snip>
America was and remains a lynching society--where black bodies were once hung from trees, burned alive, cut apart, or otherwise brutalized by blood thirsty white mobs comprised of men, women, and children, now black people are shot dead by white cops and white street vigilantes.
<snip>
In the United States, the black body is a crime. The black body deserves punishment. The black body is somehow dangerous and especially provocative. To be in the black body means that you are de facto a criminal until proven innocent. The legal dictate of innocent until proven guilty is inverted. Black humanity is existential criminality.
In the White racial imagination, Eric Garner provoked his own killing, Trayvon Martin's iced tea and candy were deadly weapons, Renisha McBride should have been shot in the face because she knocked on a stranger's door, Jonathan Ferrell was a giant black beast who scared the police, and Jordan Davis was "disrespectful" and "uppity", his "loud" music constituting an assault and threat that should be met with lethal force by any "reasonable" person. Lynching victims were killed by the same white logic too. They transgressed white authority and white norms. In doing so, the black lynching victim committed a type of suicide <emphasis added>.
<snip>
= new reply since forum marked as read
Unfortunately, however, it has become clear that certain of our current tactics aren't working all that well. Therefore, I'm afraid that these disclaimers have actually become all too necessary for the time being, at least until people can finally understand exactly where we're coming from. That one step may just prove to be highly effective in bridging the communication gap. But it's up to Mr. DeVega and other spokespersons of the SJ movement to make that critical change. And it's up to us to help keep that in place, thru positive reinforcement. 
