PickleMeThis

thespitfireemporium:

clembastow:

A lot of people are posting Billie Holliday’s Strange Fruit today, presumably in response to the execution of Troy Davis.

It feels like the “right” or a “relevant” song to post, I’m sure, except for one thing: lynchings ≠ capital punishment. Both are abhorrent, but they are not the same thing. Davis wasn’t lynched, he was executed.

It’s worth remembering that another man was executed today: a white supremacist from Texas.

People like Lawrence Russell Brewer committed - and continue to commit - the acts that inspired Strange Fruit. The death penalty, state-sanctioned barbarism, is another matter. 

Of course the most awful aspect of Davis’ execution is that it’s very likely he was, in fact, wrongly convicted; I’m certainly not denying that. But the frustrating thing about much of the commentary today is that it’s coloured by a fair-weather edge; people who are against the death penalty… mostly.

If you’re truly against capital punishment, then Lawrence Russell Brewer’s execution, no matter how appalling his crime (and it was one of the worst), is also tragic. As is the fate of the 3400+ people currently on death row in the USA.

Do you care about their lives, too?

You know what, no. Just no. Holy fucking no.

I’ve seen Strange Fruit reblogged many times today on my dash and in all but one case it was by Black women, Black women who are in pain over Troy Davis’ murder in ways we white people cannot even begin to comprehend. I’ve read writing talking about this as a lynching (and by god had you better understand the intertwined history of lynching and the death penalty in the USA before you go making “≠” declarations) - and it’s by Black people.

The death penalty is grounded in White supremacy, part of a system of institutionalised racism. “Our results suggest that the death penalty has become a sort of legal replacement for the lynchings in the past” and “during the 1980s prosecutors in Georgia sought the death penalty for 70% of black defendants with white victims, but for only 15% of white defendants with black victims… Notably among the 38 states that allow the death penalty, approximately 98% of the prosecutors are white.” [From the above ACLU and OSU links]

If we white people feel badly about Troy’s murder today, is should be with the certain knowledge that we are NOT Troy Davis and never will be. There is safety, lack of intimate pain, separation, for us that is given by our White privilege. We White women do not live with the constant knowledge that Whiteness wants to murder the Black men we love, and us. We can moralise on these lived experiences because they’re not our own. Indeed we have always been part of the problem (see: White women’s perceived fragility, need for protection, worth, being the catalyst of lynchings).

Similarly on Twitter the Troy Davis hashtag is flooded by POC calling for an end to ALL state sanctioned murder as well as grief over Troy. Here’s one tweet just as an example. If you aren’t seeing it you aren’t paying attention. BTW, the family of the man murdered by Brewer? They were vocally opposed to the him being killed, and to the death penalty as a whole (compare to the McPhail family).

So this, above? Disgusting. We are not the ones being murdered. This is not some objective points-scoring issue of discussion. We are not the ones who get to decide what feels right or relevant or is worth remembering or which terms everyone should use because it makes White people feel more comfortable.

Today is seriously not the fucking day for white chicks to be telling people of colour how to feel.  Especially, to be fucking blunt, Australian white women who of course feel comfortable acting from a nice safe distance across the ocean like this is some kind of interesting capital punishment thought experiment they can manipulate from a distance, like it doesn’t involve an actual human being dying because of the colour of his skin under the charade of being found guilty for a crime he probably didn’t commit.

And if, to note clembastow’s follow-up post, the only people she saw reblogging Strange Fruit today were white?  Probably says a fuckload more about who clembastow chooses to follow than anything else.