im·mu·ni·ty |iˈmyo͞onədē/

noun

(1) the ability of an organism to resist a particular infection or toxin by the action of specific antibodies or sensitized white blood cells; (2) protection or exemption from something, especially an obligation or penalty.

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It was 77 degrees in D.C. on February 21, 2018. “What’s the move?” I convinced some friends to do what I expected (hoped) other black folk would be doing that Wednesday. Gathering. My coat stayed in the car when I pulled up to Marvin’s on 14^th. Tanks. Shorts. Sundresses. Cigars were lit. Did y’all negroes go home and change? The vibe was ceremonial. This is what we do. Despite our mommas telling us to dress for the season, not the weather. We ignored that voice. We came here searching for each other.

I had a constant nose drip the next three days.

The kind that makes you steal the good tissue boxes from work. Where did this come from? Damn. Marvin’s outside patio. But there were so many other factors! I fly almost weekly. My four-year-old brings home whatever the girl with beads who sits next to him in class gives him for the day. My vitamin game is strong but I didn’t run that week. The list goes on. My body is constantly exposed to toxins, germs, and bacteria from any number of sources. From every source. I have to undergo a daily routine to maintain normal healthy habits, and, stay hypervigilant during flu season and other epidemic outbreaks.

When white men blow up people in Texas, shoot hundreds of people at a concert in Nevada, gun down babies at an elementary school, or kill black worshipers at a church, locating one particular source of his act is futile. They are constantly exposed to violent white supremacy. They are not immune from its side effects.

Austin Suicide Bomber Mark Anthony Conditt confessed in detail about designing each bomb that he sent through the city. Per the Washington Post, there is “no evidence… of radicalization;" just a self-described social conservative. The idea that people should not choose what happens to their bodies during pregnancy, or the notion that same-gender loving relationships are not natural, are both wrong, but not “radical.” Well, except if he watched women mobilize one of the largest demonstrations in American history, or heard a movement explicitly state black trans lives matter. But, not finding any obvious political motivation, the police offered a personal one: “Having listened to that recording, he does not at all mention anything about terrorism, nor does he mention anything about hate… it is the outcry of a very challenged young man talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point.”

Yet the personal is political.

Two thousand miles northwest of Austin, two Sacramento police officers shot twenty bullets and killed Stephon Clark on Sunday, March 18^th. The officers did not identify themselves as the police, and almost simultaneously yelled commands for Clark to display his hands while shooting him. There is no evidence that he was holding anything (the police have a history, record, and practice of planting items after they killed the victim that they claimed they saw). There is no confirmation that Clark ran from them or advanced towards them with anything. But, even if we accepted the police’s story, there are many personal and political reasons why a black man recently released from county jail would run from the police. The courts even recognize this. One, the police kill. Two, you don’t want to go to jail, especially not for doing anything besides trying to go inside your home. Three, they might shoot you while you are trying to explain this. You can do exactly what they say, and the police still kill you. Like, if they ask you to show them your hands, and you show them, and they still shoot.

Dylann Roof’s personal was also political. The explicit racist nature of his actions makes him the perfect criminal. He is the self-radicalized and self-proclaimed white supremacist with a public hate manifesto published online. He is the type of white person that America feels comfortable calling a racist because he says it aloud before he pulls the trigger, unlike Officers Darren Wilson, Ray Tensing, and Michael Slaeger. Roof instead told the worshipers, “Y’all are raping our white women. Y’all are taking over the world.” These ideas do not happen in a vacuum. He was a part of an actual community of white people who claim to feel threatened in America. Their subjective belief obscures the objective reality that Black people are disproportionately suffering in the world; that black women are disproportionately sexual assault victims, and that white men commit the largest percentage of sexual assault crimes against white women.

Many white men experience double immunity. Some people want to know what specifically happened as if they are immune from the constant violent, white, patriarchal supremacy in society. Not finding a violent extremist sticker on their forehead or diary, society then provides an extra layer of immunity from the consequences of their acts. Police officers don’t go to trial. If they do, they walk. If they are convicted, they don't get time. George Zimmerman's lawyer eats ice cream after the trial. Stephen Paddock is an ordinary casino gambler. White suicide bombers are made into HGTV fixer-upper characters.

Roof lost protection simply because he told on himself, though pundits tried to make the shooting an assault on Christianity.

For Conditt or any other mass killer, the explanation behind their act is rarely different. Seeking political reasons or beliefs for committing murder, attempted murder, and other crimes only soothes our worry that he could be anyone. That Conditt was handy around the house, homeschooled, and shy does not isolate him from social ills any more than my personal, lovable character traits prevent me from catching a cold. His personal challenges are the direct consequence of a type of social order that is too normal to create urgency, and too amorphous to deflate. Militarism, capitalism, and violence that people in power use to maintain and perpetuate white supremacy abroad is directly connected to Conditt’s bomb delivery service that mostly killed or injured Black and Brown people in Texas. He is not shielded from the rise in hate crimes in the United States for the second year in a row or the nonstop news coverage of a president who claims to be protecting jobs for white people who only have a 3% unemployment rate. The same president who blames mass shootings on people facing mental illness, even though they are overwhelmingly gun violence victims, not perpetrators.

White supremacy encourages the subjective feeling that whiteness is under attack. Everywhere.

Conditt is not immune to this disease. Something did not have to go “wrong.” We are all constantly living in a state of wrong. It is as regular as the germs we inhale and as contagious as the bacteria that we spread. Without learning about the function of white supremacy, grasping its roots, resisting its spread, anWd eliminating its evolution, we will continue to suffer. We must remain vigilant.

derecka

Writing since March 2018 · 1 story contributed