Imagine for a moment that you turned on the news and heard a story about two young people shot dead with an illicitly attained firearm; killed by a suspect who had spent time posting on a militant facebook message board where members called for the formation of an armed gang to take to the streets of an American city.
The weapon he used, you learn, was purchased through a fence- an older friend of the suspect- because the shooter could not legally acquire it for themselves. You listen as they explain how the suspect eagerly funneled cash to this friend, who returned to him with a high capacity .223 caliber semi-automatic rifle and a few boxes of hollow-point ammunition, which the shooter intended to tether around his body and carry into town to “help people” and “provide security” miles from his safe, quiet home.
When he arrived at his destination, a city that had been making news for uproar and outrage (at the demonstrable police shooting of an unarmed black man) -he would clip a few spare magazines to his belt, charge a live round into the chamber of the rifle, and walk into the streets with his friend and a gang of heavily-armed acquaintances, knowing very well that he was purposefully carrying a hot weapon into a tense, violent situation where local law enforcement officers had been calling for calm and de-escalation.
Hours later, after dusk turned to dark, two people lay dead in the road; a third is in an ambulance to the hospital; all three victims shredded by bullets from the shooter's smoking barrel.
In most cases, this story would sound like urban gang-related violence. The image it would conjure is of late-night cable news reports and high-stakes investigations of Hollywood proportions- a vicious young thug illegally acquires a dangerous military-grade firearm on the black market, drives into downtown, and exacts his vengeance on the subjects of his ire. The casting director would find a talented BIPOC actor, and the makeup artist on set would be sure to give him a menacing neck tattoo and use an eyeliner pen to brush some dirt under his nails. These are the stories we tell.
But, Kyle Rittenhouse is not this character. He has a dough face and a corn farmer's crop cut hair. He has a German surname, deep azure eyes, and a ruddy-pink, caucasian complexion that makes him look perpetually like he just finished running a mile for his high school wrestling coach. He is 5-foot-4-inches tall and strikes a diminutive appearance when standing in a gaggle of armed, adult militia. Kyle's “type-casting” is more Riverdale class bully than it is Narcos junior street dealer. And because of this, the young Mr. Rittenhouse has the great privilege of being alive to take the witness stand and tell stories about unarmed college kids with skateboards yelling obscenities at him until finally "forcing" him to gun them down in the road for his protection. Because of the Whiteness of his killing, he is alive to act as a first-hand witness of his killing.
In any other context, the most easily imagined scenario is one in which the line of officers in armored vehicles (who passed him by after he fired into a crowd) would have gunned him down without hesitation.
But in a nation where officers routinely judge, fear, arrest- and execute- young black and brown people armed with little more than skittles, a cell phone, or a loose cigarette- we must remember to ask why Kyle Rittenhouse can obtain -and kill with- a high-capacity firearm after posting to politically militant message boards, crossing state lines, and involving himself in an already highly policed barrier-zone conflict, while the FBI focused it’s attention on profiling the protesters.
The only reason he could walk himself, of his own volition, into a police hot zone, kill unarmed people- and live to recount the story, through tears, as a harrowing tale of “self-defense”- is because of his Whiteness. The only explanation for the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse is the incredible privilege that the body of Kyle Rittenhouse commands, appearing to the average riot-policeman as someone who doesn't meet their description of a threat, even when splashing the blood of his fellow man on the pavement, while geared up like he's spending the evening with a pickup truck full of Hezbollah rebels.
No matter the results of this trial, the stories, and summations, and examinations of decisions yet to come- it is imperative that we remember that a jury is judging him because he is breathing. Unlike a legally armed, permit-holding black driver with his hands on the wheel, he is breathing. Unlike an emotionally charged, unarmed social justice protester, he is breathing. He is breathing, while George Floyd cannot. He is breathing, along with Dylan Roof, James Holmes, Jared Lee Loughner, Patrick Crusius, and TJ Lane- because he, like the officers who waved him to the side of the road- was young and white and armed with a rifle developed for trench warfare. And in an encounter with law enforcement in The United States of America, the hair-trigger shooting of an unarmed Jacob Blake juxtaposed against this child of privilege walking comfortably into his murder trial, is yet more proof that your Whiteness, not your innocence, still saves you; even with the “smoking gun” hanging from a strap around your neck.