Color of Change Director Rashad Robinson on Brett Kavanaugh

Color of Change director Rashad Robinson explained how Brett Kavanaugh benefits from societal rules that don’t apply equally to everyone.

“The culture of sexual violence is so pervasive in America that we are, once again, witnessing a woman having to bear the burden of proof against a Supreme Court nominee,” he said. “Meanwhile Kavanaugh, the man who should be proving he is fit for such an appointment, could rely on the assumptions about gender and race so deeply held in this country as to be scarcely acknowledged.”

Robinson says that the argument “boys will be boys” was used throughout  Kavanaugh’s confirmation process as an accepted societal rule that frees him from any form of responsibility — something that doesn’t seem to apply to men of color.

“When I think about 12-year-old Tamir Rice, 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, and 18-year-old Mike Brown three Black boys killed for being Black boys, it is clear that they were not one of the ‘boys’ in that unwritten rule. Nor were they allowed to be victims,” he said. “America put them on trial for their own deaths. In this country’s imagination, Black people must have done something to deserve it and the onus is on us to prove otherwise.”

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