Kenosha Killings Only Brings to Light More Questions

The latest act of terror in the continued reign of white supremacy and police brutality comes from Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a 17-year-old with an assault rifle took the lives of two people and injured one other. 17-year-old domestic terrorist, Kyle Rittenhouse, attended the protests that were being held in Kenosha. Let it be known that people were peacefully protesting the wrongful shooting of unarmed black man, Jacob Blake.  The protests had been going on for three nights. The third night is when Rittenhouse took it upon himself to start patrolling the protest with an assault weapon. 

Social media findings show that Rittenhouse is a boy who likes guns and supports “Blue Lives Matter” and Donald Trump. All the makings of a white supremacist who feels that walking around endangering public safety is something that he can get away with. This seems to be a more common theme in news reports and even more so since Donald Trump took office in 2016. 

This left many people wondering why Rittenhouse was patrolling peaceful protests with a weapon in the first place and what gave him the right? To start, he is underage. Rittenhouse was charged with two counts of recklessly endangering safety and possession of a dangerous weapon while under 18, which is only a misdemeanor. The most serious charge is intentional homicide which can come with a life sentence. We’ve all seen the kind of crime that white men get away within this country especially when it’s a white man who is associated with the far right. So it’s likely that he will avoid prosecution to the full extent of the law. 

The sheriff of Kenosha says that he was asked to deputize citizens and that what happened with Rittenhouse is a prime example of why he wouldn’t do such a thing. He claimed that doing so would be a huge liability to himself, the department, and the state of Wisconsin because once citizens are deputized, they fall under the Wisconsin constitution. The sheriff said that Rittenhouse may have been one of the groups of individuals who wanted citizens with guns to become deputized. 

The alleged reason for wanting to deputize citizens that carry is to protect property and businesses. This just goes to show that America has become a capitalist dystopian nightmare in which people value property more than they value the lives of others and that random citizens with guns who murder others in cold blood can walk away from a crime scene and be apprehended the following day away from the scene of the crime. 

This is a wild contrast to Black men are who complying with law enforcement and are still blatantly murdered for no reason at all. We live in a country where a white person can illegally carry a gun, but a Black man who told an officer that he had a gun (legally) was killed in his vehicle. 

When will absolute hypocrisy and blatant discrimination that has caused an entire movement that exists solely because some people refuse to treat Black people like PEOPLE, end? When will the media start calling out white supremacy and domestic terrorism for what it really is? We are all so sick of seeing white men who have committed acts of terror against citizens of this country have their community service photos plastered all over the news, rather than their mugshots. These people get special treatment and get called “mentally ill” or “lone wolves” when they are really just cowards who took something into their own hands and know that they wouldn’t even be villainized when they commit heinous crimes. 

When it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter how mentally ill or how alone these criminals were. The fact of the matter is that they are murderers and need to be treated as such. The Brock Turners, Dylan Roofs, and Kyle Rittenhouses of the world need to be held accountable. They don’t need to be sympathized or empathized with and the media needs to stop trying to find ways to make them seem like they’re less than what they are, monsters. 

The media should be taking the time to focus on the victims and shine a light on the things that they believed in and stood for. For example, one of the men who was killed by Rittenhouse was Anthony Huber. He’s remembered by his friends as an avid skateboarder and a sweet person. There’s footage of Anthony Huber attacking Rittenhouse with his skateboard after he fired the first shot. He died a hero and trying to save others. The “All Lives Matter” degenerates have been pretty quiet on speaking up on Anthony’s account which proves the point that it was never about standing up for all lives, it was about silencing black ones. 

 

-Kaitlan Darby

Kaitlan Darby is a recent graduate of UL Lafayette. She has a B.A. in Mass Communication with a concentration in Public Relations and a minor in promotional management. She is a publicist, writer, and aspiring actress. She is the founder of Black Mamba Creative, which is her own creative arts/services outlet.

Instagram: @blackmambacreative

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Photo by Prince Akachi.