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There is a certain irony regarding the reaction to the
incident surrounding Sharmeka Moffit who recently set herself on fire and
scrawled an unfortunate word and the letters KKK on her car in toothpaste. The
irony occurs at multiple levels.
First, the reaction is suprisingly similar to the reaction
which often occurred in small, white, southern communities following the
commission of a crime in the pre-civil rights era. Whenever people heard about
a crime at that time, the predominant racist sentiment was that someone black
had committed it. Harper Lee’s To Kill a
Mockingbird comes to mind as an example and also conversations with family
members who lived through that era. The racism inherent in the general fear of
African-Americans by their white contemporaries is both disgusting and
revealing.
A lot of the reaction in the social media sphere was ready
to raise a hue and a cry against that old, decrepit specter - white
supremacism. As one local news station reports, the reaction of one facebooker
was to say “a suspicious looking white person was seen in the area with a
Romney bumper sticker.” This echoes of the pre-civil rights era, when,
regardless of the crime and the evidence, black people knew to be afraid
because one of them was likely to be singled out and accused of a crime. Of
course, back then, it would have been the authorities reacting, now it’s just
ignorant people on social media sites and feminist blogs like those
at the crunkfeministcollective. The point is this, we can’t just change
who we revile and who we generally blame for crimes. We should reserve judgment
on any case until we know as many of the facts as are available, the George
Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin case might have benefited from a little bit of
circumspection as well.
We can’t simply stop suspecting black people and start
suspecting white people, justice would not be served that way, we should
reserve judgment until we know something.
Second, there are also some fringe groups who are saying
that even if Ms. Moffit did set herself on fire, it must be the fault of a
society that embraces white supremacy and capitalism. This argument is so
specious that it doesn’t really deserve comment. Individuals are responsible
for their own actions, not society. If there is no such thing as individual
responsibility, there is no crime that can’t be blamed on someone else which
means that there is no crime. Even in parts of the Islamic world, where women
routinely set themselves on fire to escape the horrors of child marriages and a
real patriarchal culture which bears no resemblance to our own, the women who
set themselves on fire are still to blame for the effects of the fire, though
not perhaps for the legal system which oppresses them.
Finally, no one seems to be willing to voice any concern
over the implications of Sharmeka’s actions other than to make muted comments about
how this might be blamed on a culture of this or that. If the reports we have
about her self-incineration are true, then she should be at fault. Not only for
setting herself on fire but also for inflaming the issue of white supremacy,
when clearly, there were no white supremacists involved. When an individual
assassinates the character of another individual, it’s called libel or slander,
we have no suitable word for the crime when its object is not another
individual but an entire group of people united only by the loose and transient
bonds of race and gender.
Now I’m not suggesting that the KKK represents the “white
race” or even “white men” insofar as those phrases even represent coherent
groups of people – which they do not. But, there will be some people who
perceive all white men to be the same, who conflate the KKK with all white men, just as there were once (and may still
be) people who perceived all black men to be the same. And in the perceptions
of these people, Shameka’s actions could have inflamed some suspicion and
hatred of white men.
Shameka is guilty of attempting to rape the reputations of a
whole group of people, who are mostly unassociated with each other and
innocent. Nevertheless, I don’t think
she should be punished. I believe in an absolute freedom of speech and writing
slurs on your car using toothpaste is fair game. Also, since she didn’t
implicate a particular person, she can’t be accused of making a false
accusation. I can’t even begin to highlight how ironic it would be if the KKK
brought suit against her for copyright infringement or slander. Maybe
the prosecutor in Louisiana will disagree with me, but I think she should walk free,
but be scarred for life as a result of her own actions.
If we are all going to live together in a society composed of multiple ethnic groups, we have to stop rushing to judgement on the basis of appearances and recognize that when someone commits a race-based crime or makes false accusations against anyone on the basis of their race, it is a despicable act deserving of our censure.
