Open Season for Anti-Black Vigilantism

On August 25, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse shot three men, fatally killing two of them. It was the third night of protests following the shooting of Jacob Blake by police officers. Rittenhouse, a 17-year-old from Illinois, arrived at the site of the protest in Kenosha, Wis., openly carrying an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle. According to video evidence and his own account, he told the police officers in the area that he was there to “provide medical assistance” and that he was a licensed EMT — a blatant lie.

Rittenhouse wasn’t trying to save lives. Rather, he was roleplaying as a cop in an effort to defend whiteness — leading to the deaths of Joseph Rosenbaum (36), Anthony Huber (26), and the maiming of Gaige Grosskreutz (26). This type of protectiveness over whiteness, and upholding its systematic power, has been the catalyst for many deaths before, and as anti-Black vigilantism rises within the United States, the death toll will only continue to grow.

Rittenhouse committed horrific acts. Even so, many put him on a pedestal. Members of the far-right have launched a dangerous campaign that seeks to defend Rittenhouse’s actions and paint him as someone who was simply trying to fill “a void” that the police supposedly left that night, and that his actions are proof we need more “vigilante justice.” They’ve also mocked the frightened individuals Rittenhouse slaughtered, transforming his narrative from a killer shrouded in white supremacy to a “right-to-bear-arms” hero.

Put more simply, the right has been working to sell the fantasy embodied by Rittenhouse’s vigilantism, and depict the victims as having got what was coming to them. This is the same fantasy they tried to sell nine years ago.

Think back to 2012. That year, George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida. Zimmerman, a crime watch volunteer, alleged he was acting in self defence when he killed an innocent, Black 17-year-old walking home. He was ultimately found not guilty. And since then, vigilantism fueled by the political right has manifested throughout the country, from Texas’s anti-abortion laws encouraging citizens to whisteblow on those they suspect of aiding in or obtaining an abortion to the Jan 6, Capitol attack, one of the biggest vigilante attacks the country has ever witnessed.

Nine years since Martin’s death, the issues haven’t changed all that much. As many activists have noted, Martin died because he was a Black kid and Zimmerman was “suspicious.” U.S. society has grown in meaningful ways. More and more, recordings have captured Black Americans' interactions with law enforcement and been circulated on social media, a trend that's helped to push back against white America's impulse to believe that Black Americans invite violence.

But this hasn’t stopped the vigilante.

While the idea of vigilante justice itself is not inherently racist or wrong, it has always allowed the white majority to impose “justice” in their favor, often in service of maintaining a strict racial order. In fact, anti-Black vigilante justice has been around forever — the mass spectacle of lynching often happened because a white mob deputized itself to enact a warped sense of justice to maintain the racial status quo. And as the Rittenhouse and Zimmerman cases demonstrated, the difficulty of disproving “self-defense” has served as a perfect vessel through which vigilantes can claim innocence. The far-right’s form of vigilante justice isn’t the fantasy we were sold in comics, with Batman jumping in to protect the innocent against villainy. In the real world, if America is our Gotham, Batman would be our anti-Black man of the night, and someone like Rittenhouse would be his white-supremacist boy wonder.

Anti-Black vigilante justice has been around forever — the mass spectacle of lynching often happened ... to maintain the racial status quo.

Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man on a jog, was killed by white residents who assumed he was guilty of a crime. Rosenbaum and Huber died because they were out protesting the shooting of an innocent Black man. At the core of it all is anti-Blackness, and the only type of vigilante justice the country supports is when it’s upholding the racial status-quo and white supremacy. In an interview on Nov. 21, NAACP President Derrick Johnson told Face the Nation that the outcome of Rittenhouse’s trial was a “warning shot that vigilante justice is allowed in this country.” If Kyle Rittenhouse were a Black kid, the cops would have never allowed him to walk around with an AR-15, and those calling for Rittenhouse’s freedom would be clamoring for severe punishment; if Ahmaud Arbery had been a white man, his death would have been treated as a national tragedy; and if Trayvon Martin had been a white teen, George Zimmerman would’ve been put away for years — potentially for life — and his legacy wouldn’t be revered but instead one people despised.

The far-right’s form of vigilante justice is on the rise, and we should all be aware of the consequences that this has on the country. After Rittenhouses’s acquittal, Republican representatives, such as Reps. Madison Cawthrone (R-N.C.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), publicly offered Rittenhouse an internship making it clear to the public that some in power embrace his actions. Allowing individuals like Rittenhouse to deputize themselves has set a murderous precedent that is dangerous for us all, especially people of color and those willing to stand up for civil rights.

The far-right’s and Rittenhouse’s form of “vigilante justice” isn’t justice at all. It’s merely a way to uphold white supremacy. And I’m afraid that if vigilante justice continues to spread, my family, my friends, or even myself may be the next target.

Follow The Thread! Subscribe to The Thread monthly newsletter to get the latest in policy, equity, and culture in your inbox the first Tuesday of each month.