White backlash: The Rittenhouse debacle from a Native perspective

During the George Floyd protests, twenty-five people were killed. Most of them were Black Lives Matter protesters. They were not killed by the police, but by white supremacists who traveled to the protests from out of town for the sole purpose of hunting Blacks and their allies. Self-styled vigilantes enforcing America’s caste system, Kyle Rittenhouse fits squarely in this group.

Judge Bruce Schroeder, bending over backwards to humanize the plaintiff and de-humanize the victims, provided the aura of a show trial, as if a lawful slave patrol was on trial on the front porch of a plantation house. Rittenhouse’s defense was funded millions of dollars by white churches and far right political groups. They stood like neighboring plantation owners in the yard, knowing full well it’s the Black protesters, the victims, who were really on trial. The message the verdict sends to the lower castes is clear: next time you…