Throughout our history, it has always been standard practice to demonize minority groups as a danger to public safety. We said black people were going to attack your wives and daughters. Immigrants were going to bring crime and disease. Gay people were all pedophiles. Muslims were all terrorists.
The truth of the matter is, minority groups have not been the perpetrators. Minority groups have been the VICTIMS. We stoked up fear of black people by claiming they were going to attack your wives and daughters…and at the same time we were slaughtering black people by the hundreds for trying to cast a vote or own a business. We cheated immigrants out of their wages so badly they were forced to live in dirty slums, then we pointed at the dirty slums and said, “See? That’s how immigrants live.” Muslims get harassed and targeted every time they step out the door, but whenever we see a Muslim we start worrying about…OUR safety.
Listen to Aaron Keck’s commentary
In North Carolina we just passed a big ol’ law to keep transgender people out of the bathrooms. Transgender people don’t commit attacks in bathrooms. Transgender people GET ATTACKED in bathrooms. Sixty-eight percent of transgender people say they’ve been verbally harassed in public restrooms. This is a survey from the Williams Institute. Nine percent say they’ve been physically assaulted. Calls to suicide hotlines have skyrocketed. We are literally harassing innocent people to the point of suicide because we’ve got it in our heads that THEY might be threatening US.
In Orlando, it was the gay community. Let’s talk about the room where this happened. Pulse is a gay nightclub. When Omar Whatshisname walked into that club, he was going in there to shoot up a room full of gays. This was a homophobic attack. I have to repeat this: this was a homophobic attack. I feel like I have to repeat this, because if you looked at the front page of USA Today this morning, you had to scour all over before you found any reference whatsoever to the fact that this was an act of terror that targeted LGBT people. If you go on Fox News, you’ll have to wait a while before anyone acknowledges the fact that this was a homophobic act. My friends on Facebook are going on and on about this attack and a lot of THEM are going WAY out of their way to avoid mentioning homophobia. It’s despicable. I see people on Facebook who say they’re angry because now politicians are talking about gun control…as if THAT’S the thing to be angry about, when 50 people are lying dead in Orlando. “Don’t care about four dozen dead people, the worst thing is that this might slightly inconvenience ME.” Now THAT’s truly despicable. But from liberals, people who should be allies, THEY’re going around in circles to avoid saying homophobia too. I don’t get it. In England a gay commentator just walked off the set of a live TV show because the two people he was on with – both of them liberals! they were talking about gun control – just refused to acknowledge homophobia. I don’t understand it.
And it’s not like this is an isolated incident. This isn’t the first mass homicide at a gay club. 1973, New Orleans, a place called the UpStairs Lounge. Thirty-two people died. Have you ever heard of this? Thirty-two people died. It didn’t make the news. They were all gay people. Nobody cared. The local papers mentioned it, but they carefully avoided saying it was a gay club. One minister held a small worship service to remember the victims; he got hate mail for doing even that. It happened on the last day of Pride Weekend. June 24, 1973. We’re coming up on the 33rd anniversary.
And that’s just the biggest one. I don’t have enough time to list all the police raids, all the random attacks of gays and lesbians just outside gay clubs. And those are gay clubs. In gay neighborhoods, usually. These are safe places for gays and lesbians. In many cases, just about the only safe places out there.
Dave Holmes just wrote this in Esquire, and thanks to Mark McCurry for finding it. I’m going to quote it:
“The FBI defines terrorism as ‘violent acts or acts dangerous to human life…that appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population.’ LGBT people around the world have been intimidated and coerced all our lives. Each one of us has moved to kiss our boyfriend on the cheek in public, or reached for our wife’s hand as we walked down the street, and each one of us has pulled back.
We have all needed to read the room, to think about how we present ourselves to the world, to determine how much of ourselves we are free to express. Each one of us, at least once, has worried whether we were coming off too gay.
Too many of us have been terrorized by actual violent acts, but each of us—when we are called names, when we hear a gay joke and nobody speaks up, when we watch a dozen presidential hopefuls from one of our country’s two political parties promise to amend the Constitution to steal our civil rights—has been subject to an act that is dangerous to human life. We all have scars on our souls from it. All of us.”
Every one of those words is true. We live in a homophobic society. This is a real problem in Islam…and we need to call out the fact that Islam has a problem with homophobia, and we need to be praising and supporting and standing up for those Muslim organizations that are out there right now working WITHIN Islam to promote tolerance and acceptance for LGBT people, because they’re out there and they’re doing everything they can. But it’s not just Islam. It’s a culture of masculinity that sees LGBT people as a threat. It’s fundamentalists in EVERY religion, and the politicians who pander to them. It’s even liberals who won’t talk about this as an attack on LGBT people. I don’t get why.
Let me be angry for two seconds. First of all, some people on social media have said this already, but I want to reiterate: after what happened in Orlando, I don’t want to hear another word about gays or lesbians or transgender people being some kind of threat to public safety. We’re done with that debate. If after this weekend it isn’t blindingly obvious who is and who isn’t a threat to public safety, there’s no point in talking any more.
And one more thing. After what happened in Orlando, I also don’t want to hear any more about how Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are two sides of the same coin and they’re completely indistinguishable from each other. We’re done with that too. One of those two candidates has gone out of his way to attack minority groups and stir up fear of minorities and hatred of minorities, and the other candidate has not done that. If you still think there is absolutely no difference whatsoever between those two candidates, after Orlando, then you do not care about gay people. Period.
And I’m going to be angry for one more second, if you’ll indulge me: if you’re wondering what you can do to respond to this tragedy, the Red Cross blood donation center is located at 4737 University Drive in Durham. Visit RedCross.org for hours of operation.
And hey, give an extra pint for me, because I’m not allowed to donate blood.
Okay, I’m done being angry.
Let’s talk about guns.
Now, I’m not a big supporter of gun control. There are people who think gun control will solve all our problems, and I’m not one of them. Whenever a mass shooting happens, there are people who immediately start posting on Facebook about gun control, and I always roll my eyes about that. Here are some relevant statistics: whatever we’re doing in this country to prevent crime, it’s actually working. The violent crime rate in the US has been dropping steadily since the late 60s. The murder rate in the US has been dropping steadily for even longer. Statistically, we are safer now than we have been for multiple generations. So whenever you hear some politician or some media talking head going on about crime, and you think, “oh God, there’s so much crime out there, it’s getting worse every day, we’ve got to DO something” – that’s BS. We’re actually not doing too bad.
Another relevant statistic about guns: what actually increases or decreases the crime rate? Does gun control make us safer? Are we safer if there are MORE guns? There are a lot of factors that affect the crime rate, so it’s not easy to tell. But last year there was a massive international study of gun laws, different gun laws from around the world, and here’s what it found: gun control laws CAN reduce the crime rate… but in order to make a difference, it’s got to be really strict gun control. I’m talking banning guns altogether, like they did in the UK or Australia. THAT level of gun control will reduce the crime rate, because then there won’t be any guns around to commit crimes with. “Oh, if guns are outlawed, then only outlaws will have guns!” No, if guns are outlawed, then even the outlaws won’t have guns, because they’ll be almost impossible to come by. Every gun that’s out there in society was legally manufactured and legally purchased somewhere along the way. This guy in Orlando legally purchased all his weapons. Next time there’s a mass shooting, maybe they’ll be stolen weapons, but they’ll have been stolen from someone who bought them legally. And that happens pretty frequently. We get the crime report from the Orange County Sheriff’s office every day. Lots of times there aren’t any crimes to report, it’s very nice. But whenever there’s a breaking and entering, whenever there’s a robbery, more often than not, it’s the guns that get stolen. Guns and electronics and hardware. That’s how criminals get guns. Either they buy them legally or they steal them from other people who did. Ban the legal sale, you take the guns off the market; you take the guns off the market, then criminals will have no way of obtaining them, at least not without going through really extreme channels. You won’t eliminate gun crime, but you’ll reduce it. Gun rights advocates point to the Paris attacks and say “look! Gun control doesn’t work!” But that’s one incident. You don’t look at one incident, you look at the overall numbers. Yes, the Paris attacks still happened, but the overall rate of gun crime in France is way way lower than it is in the US.
Now, having said that, should we impose strict gun control here? I don’t think we should. That international study says we won’t actually make much of a dent in gun crime unless we do something really drastic, like banning handguns altogether. Would that be a good public policy move? Maybe, maybe not…but in this country it doesn’t matter, because I think we can mostly agree that that level of gun control would be unconstitutional. The second amendment does protect the individual right to bear arms. It does NOT mean we can’t have any gun control at all…we CAN have reasonable gun control policies, that doesn’t conflict with the Second Amendment…but it would definitely conflict with the second amendment if we tried enacting the level of gun control we would need to enact in order to have a big impact on the crime rate. So in general, I think gun control is a red herring.
Having said that: we need to ban the AR-15. We need to do it now. NOT because banning the AR-15 will reduce the overall crime rate – because it won’t – but because banning the AR-15 will make it a hell of a lot harder for domestic terrorists to kill dozens of people in one go. And I say this NOT because I disagree with the National Rifle Association, but precisely because I AGREE with them.
Remember the line that Wayne LaPierre’s PR people came up with after Sandy Hook: “The only thing that can stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” Which is an awfully pessimistic worldview, first off, because it assumes we’re always inevitably going to be surrounded by bad guys with guns. I don’t believe that. I think rather than focusing on how to stop bad guys with guns, we ought to be focused on how to PREVENT there from BEING bad guys with guns in the first place. But more on that in a minute. Suppose we have a bad guy with a gun. And suppose the NRA is right. The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun! Well, if that’s the case, the problem with the AR-15 (and weapons like it) is that the bad guy can get off dozens of rounds before the good guy even has a chance to react! 800 rounds a minute, by the way, that’s the potential speed of an AR-15. Bad guy can fire 10 rounds in a single second before the good guy even notices anything’s gone wrong. Good guy notices, that’s another second, another 10 rounds. Good guy reaches for his gun, that’s another second, another 10 rounds. Good guy pulls out his gun, that’s another second, another 10 rounds. Good guy fires, one more second, another 10 rounds. Supposing the good guy is an action-movie hero and he’s able to hit the bad guy and completely neutralize him in one shot, that’s 50 rounds he’s already fired in five seconds…and we’re assuming none of those 50 shots hit the good guy.
So yes, I think we ought to ban the AR-15…and I say this as someone who does NOT believe gun control is the answer. Now, there are people who are worried about tyranny. There are people who worry that government will run amok and start trying to terrorize us, and in that case the Second Amendment is our last line of defense. But here’s the thing: that ship has sailed. The same people who run around yelling about how we need the Second Amendment to defend ourselves against government thugs, those are all the same people who have gone out of their way to give the government as much money as possible to buy nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, biological weapons, conventional weapons, smart bombs, stealth fighters, surveillance technology, drones, guns, tanks, tear gas, riot gear, sniper rifles, training for special ops, and military bases all over the country. These are the same people who yell and scream whenever anyone even suggests we THINK about cutting any of this funding. And these are the same people who think their Second Amendment is going to protect them against government tyranny. That may once have been the case. But believe me, if the government ever decides to turn tyrannical – when they show up on your doorstep at 3 in the morning with a hundred thousand troops and tanks and guns and drones and gas and everything else, trust me, your little gun is not going to do squat against that. And if you don’t believe me, get on a plane, fly up to Idaho, go to Ruby Ridge, and ask Randy how he’s doing.
I hate to break it to you, but the Second Amendment isn’t going to protect us against government tyranny. There’s only one thing…there’s only ONE THING… that can protect us from government tyranny. And that is education. Civics education. Values education. Teaching our kids values from the beginning, so when they grow up and take over positions of power, they’ll have the moral capacity NOT to abuse it. We need to teach EVERYBODY… every child…to respect human beings. To respect human decency. To care about human rights. To care about the Constitution. To see each other as HUMAN BEINGS…rather than objects.
WEB DuBois, in “The Souls of Black Folk,” talked about how people never saw him as a human being. They saw him as a Problem. Whenever they talked to him about race or asked him about race, it was always the same underlying question: “How does it feel to be a problem?”
When we fail to see each other’s humanity, that’s when we start to kill. When you look at a transgender person and see not a PERSON but a THREAT…when you look at a Muslim and see not a PERSON but a THREAT. Or maybe not even a threat. When you look at a woman and see not a PERSON but a GENDER. When you look at a gay man and see not a PERSON but a SEXUAL ORIENTATION. We OBJECTIFY each other. It’s common. We do it all the time. We identify each other with the thing that sets us apart. We think of Barack Obama as BLACK before we think of him as MALE, and we think of Hillary Clinton as FEMALE before we think of her as WHITE. Why? Because in the group of presidential hopefuls, it’s mostly white men. Obama stands out because he’s…black. Clinton stands out because she’s…a woman. We do this with each other all the time.
But when we fail to see past the distinction…when the distinction is all we see…that’s when we stop seeing other people as PEOPLE and start seeing them as OBJECTS. This terrorist who walked into Pulse on Saturday night, he didn’t think he was walking into a room full of people. He believed he was walking into a room full of GAY. And he believed there was a fundamental distinction. That’s why he bought the gun. That’s why he walked into the club. That’s why he killed fifty people.
And at the end of the day, THAT is the thing we have to fight, first before anything. This is not about guns. This is not about Muslims. This isn’t even about gays and lesbians. Before anything else, this is about us…looking at each other and failing to see humanity. This is about us looking at each other and seeing not people, but objects and categories. This is about us being so afraid of each other that we feel the need to arm ourselves whenever we walk out the door. This is about us looking at a foreign person and seeing a FOREIGNER rather than a person. This is about us looking at a gay person and seeing a GAY rather than a person. This is about us looking at a black person and seeing a BLACK rather than a person.
This is that we’ve got to change.
How do we change it?
We change it by getting involved in our world. We change it by joining local organizations, volunteering, helping other people who are different from ourselves. We change it by teaching our kids about human decency and human rights. We change it by teaching our kids to love. We change it by being loving ourselves. We change it by speaking out whenever we see people trying to divide us into categories and stoking fear from one category to the other.
I said this on Facebook earlier, but I’m going to repeat it here:
Here’s the bad news:
You, as an individual, are not going to fix the world’s problems.
This world is too big for any one person to step outside and wave a magic wand and make all the bad things go away. You can work, and work, and try, and try, and all the problems will still be there.
And that fact can be frustrating. It can be overwhelming. It can make you want to give up.
But here’s the good news:
*We* can fix the world’s problems.
Together. A little at a time.
When you go out tomorrow, do one thing to make the world a slightly better place. Pick up one piece of trash. Smile at one stranger. Volunteer for one hour, for one organization. Walk to work. Turn off the lights when you leave a room. Buy the local food instead of the brand name. Call your family. Call your friends. Don’t fear. Don’t hate. Don’t judge. Be an example for others.
If you do that, and I do that, and we do that…there’s no telling what we can do.
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