😔 One Violent Month

And what it tells us about ourselves

Many tragic incidents have taken place in the United States in the past three months, a six year old shot his teacher in Virginia, and the LAPD tased a school teacher to death, but three stand out in particular: two mass shootings targeting the Asian-American community in California, and then the brutal beating and death of Tyre Nichols by police officers in Memphis, TN.

Many are pointing to the fact that the perpetrators in each of these three cases were of the same race or community as the victims. In California, the suspects in both cases were older, Asian men. In Memphis, several of the police officers charged were Black.

The identity of the perpetrators is irrelevant in many ways, and it doesn’t make the murders any less heinous. But it does uncover a story.

We internalize racism, even if we are the targets.

W. E. B. Du Bois said that among the worst tendencies of racism was that it made its victims see themselves through the eyes of people who hold them in contempt.

In a 2010 study …