The Kyle Rittenhouse verdict just handed white vigilantes a de facto badge

Published by the San Francisco Chronicle on November 19, 2021

For the second time in a year, the globe watched to see whether there would be justice for Black life in an American courtroom. The first, of course, was the trial of Derek Chauvin, who murdered George Floyd in May 2020, resulting in worldwide uprisings. The result was a conviction. Chauvin was sentenced to more than 22 years in prison for kneeling on Floyd’s back for almost nine minutes while Floyd cried for his mama and said, “I can’t breathe.”

Not so on Friday.

On Friday, American justice reminded Black folks that the institutions supposedly meant to uphold law and order were in fact built to uphold the status quo of white supremacy. Kyle Rittenhouse did not kill Black people. He did, however, kill people who were standing in defense of Black life. The people he shot were protesting for justice for Jacob Blake, who himself was shot seven times in the back by a Kenosha, Wis., police officer.

On Friday, an almost all-white jury decided that neither Blake’s life nor the lives of Rittenhouse’s victims matter and that Rittenhouse had the right to assert that fact with a gun.

Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, are dead. Gaige Grosskreutz, then 27, was grievously wounded.

Rittenhouse is not guilty on all counts.

I knew this would be the outcome — that his “baby face” and crocodile tears would sway a jury already swayed by the ingrained white privilege, power and anti-Blackness of this country. So I don’t know why this feels like such a punch in the gut.

But a punch in the gut it is.

I am — as I imagine so many other Black people are — exhausted with this country’s disdain for my skin and repeated assertion that my humanity does not exist.

The foundation of Rittenhouse’s defense was that he was defending himself and that he was scared for his life. The problem with this claim is that he created the situation he was allegedly scared of, which in some places would automatically make this claim null and void. But the laws are murky and too often the race of the person claiming self-defense often determines the validity of that claim.

Rittenhouse is not from Kenosha. He traveled 21 miles from his home in Antioch, Ill., to allegedly protect the property of people he had never met and did not know. With the unique and flagrant arrogance white supremacy affords white men in this country, Rittenhouse took an AR-15-style weapon across state lines to police a demonstration where he had no reason to believe that any of the demonstrators would be armed.

Kyle made the decision that if someone broke a window he had the right to stop them.

With a bullet.

And when people became alarmed — righteously scared — by Rittenhouse in the crowd with an assault-style rifle, Rittenhouse fired at them to keep himself from being disarmed.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who just 15 days before shooting Rosenbaum, Huber and Grosskreutz, was caught on camera saying he wanted to shoot looters outside of a CVS store.

Kyle Rittenhouse, who immediately after pleading not guilty, went to a bar, drank beer, posed for pictures with Proud Boys and flashed white power symbols.

In the end, Kyle Rittenhouse was not who was really on trial here. On trial were Black Lives Matter protesters and our allies. On trial was the left wing of America’s burgeoning culture war over race, policing and free speech — which Donald Trump violently reignited when he turned over the rock racists were hiding under and they gleefully slithered out.

Day in and day out, for months, Trump and his media cronies portrayed Black Lives Matter activists and our allies as radical and violent antifa members endangering the social and cultural fabric of America. Too often, mainstream media outlets gave credence to these views with shallow both-sides coverage.

To believe that the white folks on that jury panel weren’t influenced by this culture war coverage is willful ignorance at best. Day in and day out the antifa boogeyman and so-called Black extremists have been dragged all over both conservative and liberal media.

Because Rittenhouse was defending white America against Black Lives Matter protesters, and wholly imagined dangers of anti-facists, his acquittal no doubt reified his status as hero to many and will further radicalize some of the most dangerous elements in American life.

We should all be concerned about the acts of violence that will follow against Black bodies and our allies. Be clear that white supremacists and others have been watching this trial closely to see what they can get away with. They were told that as long as they can prove they were scared for their lives — just like police — white vigilantes can kill with impunity.

Americans should be ashamed.

I imagine there will be protests. People will take to the street. Windows may be broken in anger as these protests grow across the nation. Whether that actually happens, I imagine the Kyle Rittenhouses of the world will be there to “defend.” And they now know that they are free to do it with the barrel of a gun.

Cat Brooks is an award-winning actress, playwright, the executive director of the Justice Teams Network, the co-founder of the Anti Police-Terror Project and the co-host of “UpFront” on KPFA.