Memphis Player Charged

As the teams walked toward center court following Bowling Green’s 73-60 win in the Round of 16 game [on Thursday night], Memphis’ Jamirah Shutes stopped to talk with Falcons’ player Elissa Brett. After a short conversation, Shutes appears to throw a punch at Brett’s face.

(CBS News, March 24, 2023)

No, the Black Memphis player did not lead a gang of Black women on a wilding spree and mug an old White woman. But that’s how far too many White commentators are framing this punch.

Of course, Donald Trump gave them license to “say the quiet part out loud.” And they are using it with relish. TTrump called the Black Manhattan DA an animal. They are aping him by insinuating that Shutes is one too.

Jamirah Shutes punching Elissa Brett shows race matters

Shutes was wrong. Brett elbowed her during the game. And what she said on the handshake line might have been even more provocative. But none of that warranted punching her.

Except that, thanks to Trump, Whites are now playing the victim card. The Orwellian projection this reflects is almost too cynical for words. I mean, Blacks never played the race card so reflexively.

But the election of Barack Obama as the first Black president of the United States triggered most of it. Whites reacted as if his election created “an alternative America.” The 1995 film White Man’s Burden dramatized this America. In it, Blacks and Whites have reversed social and economic positions.

This one punch does not reflect a scourge of Blacks preying on Whites with impunity. And it’s a far cry from how Whites have been preying on Blacks with impunity for centuries.

Even so, I’ll give those White, gaslighting snowflakes 50 years of spasmodic incidences of Blacks preying on Whites, and raise them 400 years of Whites enslaving, lynching, and systematically subjugating Blacks.