The four police officers who testified at the first hearing of the January 6th Capitol riot described harrowing experiences of violence and racial slurs. Officer Harry Dunn recounted being called racial slurs while in uniform. Their testimony mirrored the darkness of Childish Gambino's "This is America" music video. Republicans have tried to dismiss the riot as "excitable tourists" rather than the white domestic terrorist attack that it was, as part of ongoing efforts to promote lies of white exceptionalism and erase the truth about racism in America's history. The insurrection showed that the country is at war with an ideology seeking to destroy truth and progress.
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Actually, This is America
1. Actually, This IS America
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.
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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
2. 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.
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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 White domestic terrorists and went on to read the U.S. Code,
which defines such a horrific act as those that involve “acts
dangerous to human life that are a violation of criminal laws of the
United States or any State intended to intimidate or coerce the
civilian population.” Hodges testified about the White mob trying
to convince him to come over to their side. “Are you our brother?”
they asked. He spoke boldly about the sea of White male attackers
in combat gear carrying signs of White supremacy seeking to
destroy everything in their path — including our democracy.
3. “I got called a nigger a couple dozen times today protecting this
building,” Dunn stated. “Is this America? They beat police officers
with Blue Lives Matter flags. They fought us, they had Confederate
flags in the U.S. Capitol.” His accounts and repeated use of one of
the most heinous words in the English language once again
reverberating through the sacred halls of our democracy
illuminate for all that indeed this has always been America.
This is precisely why Republicans have been fighting tooth and
nail to destroy any evidence of that day and gaslight the country
into believing this was nothing more than a group of “excitable
tourists” as opposed to being a White domestic terrorist mob we
saw with our own eyes. This is what the beginning of tyranny looks
like. Spreading fear and lies across the nation like butter on toast.
If you think that the actions on Jan. 6 aren’t connected with the
attacks on critical race theory, think again. To continue the lie of
White American exceptionalism, you must erase any evidence of
their involvement with violence, torture, rape, and genocide. You
must indeed pretend that, as Rick Santorum stated, “nothing was
here before we got here.” You must refer to slavery as a “necessary
evil.” You must refer to any attempts to tell the truth about this
nation as lies or the liberal agenda. You must rewrite history as it’s
unfolding.
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4. If Jan. 6 showed the country anything, it is that we are at war. We
are at war with an ideology that seeks to destroy everything that
resembles truth and progress. The sooner we realize this, the
sooner we can act. Jan. 6 was a first attempt at bringing our
democracy to its knees — it will not be the last.
As James A. Baldwin once said: “Please try to remember that what
they believe as well as what they do and cause you to endure does
not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity.”
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