a black man died and two white men who were trained to save lives, let him die in front of them.
for a number of years, I was a soldier in the “green berets”. I was trained as a medical NCO, which in civilian skills is a mish-mosh of surgical, laboratory, health, dental & veterinary skills.
one night while we were training with some troops from other nations, my team and several others made parachute jumps into operations. on the ground, word spread that one of the other teams had a fatality during the jump. weeks later, when we returned to camp, I learned who and how.
(posted at sexgenderbody's tumblr)
one of the troops from Nigeria had landed in a swamp and fallen face forward into the muck. he had water and silt in his lungs. the two white SF aidmen that I had trained with and knew well, refrained from giving mouth-to-mouth to a black man. he had a family. he was smart. he worked hard. he was alive and it was their job to save him...and he died because hate was stronger than anything else.
these two white soldiers did not face charges. they went on to careers that ended with an honorable discharge. one of them posts flags on his facebook page and declares that there is no such thing as race, only melanin.
- white privilege is choosing to let a man die because he is black.
- white privilege is never being held accountable for racist fatal actions.
- white privilege is being free to walk around for the rest of their white lives, saying that there is no such thing as race - only melanin; and quoting MLK & Mandela asking for peace.
- white privilege is the rest of us white soldiers who knew parts of the death - going about our lives and letting it go unpunished.
- white privilege is turning someone from Nigerian to black to suit the white supremacy narrative
I could have said something, we all could have. we didn't. and the perpetuation of the white code of silence, is the worst white privilege of them all.