Politics
Actually, This IS America
Testimony from the Jan. 6 Capitol riot shows us exactly who we are
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When multi-hyphenate performer Childish Gambino released his visual for “This Is America” in 2018, it sent shockwaves through the Twitterverse and beyond. Everyone was talking about its violence, its darkness, and its irrevocable honesty. The same can be said about the testimony of the four officers at the first hearing of the Select Committee for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. Officer Harry Dunn, Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, Officer Michael Fanone, and Officer Daniel Hodges all gave harrowing accounts of what transpired for them and their fellow officers on that fateful day — the day our government was almost overthrown while the Confederate flag breached the Capitol Building — a sight unfathomable during the Civil War, let alone now.
Their accounts of the violence, the taunting, and the verbal and physical abuse they experienced on Jan. 6 were like watching Childish Gambino’s video come to life right before our eyes.
“I have never been called a nigger to my face while wearing this uniform,” said Dunn, who is Black. He said it with a tone that was meshed with both grief and disbelief — the cocktail du jour experienced by most Black people in America. Dunn’s accounting of the racial epitaphs being hurled at him — beginning with a White woman’s taunts intended to rile up the mob of White men—conjured another awful memory for many. Hours after being honorably discharged from the United States Army after fighting for his country in World War II, Officer Issac Woodard suffered a brutal attack at the hands of South Carolina police as they pulled him off a bus and beat him, leaving him blind. What is clear is that the only uniform that many White Americans care about is the one that can’t be removed — our Black skin.
To continue the lie of White American exceptionalism, you must erase any evidence of their involvement with violence, torture, rape, and genocide.
Because of their race and ethnicity, both Dunn and Gonell experienced the White terrorist attack on the Capitol Building differently than their fellow officers. Hodges referred to the mob as…
