Carnage at Capitol exposes white privilege in America

Many are calling what happened over the course of the last few hours a "disgrace" after Trump supporters were seen storming into Capitol to violently interrupt the process of certifying President-elect Joe Biden's victory.

Systemic racism on full display

When Minneapolis police officer killed George Floyd –after asphyxiating him by pressing his knee into Floyd's neck in May of 2020– hundreds of protestors around the world marched in solidarity for the black community to fight racial oppression. But the treatment they received was met with tear gas, violence and arrests.

In contrast, the MAGA rioters were not nearly as ill-treated as many of them were left free to roam Capitol without even being arrested for blatantly breaking the law. Reports from the media showed cops being much more docile than they were during the BLM protests.

Frustration among Black community leaders point to a disgustingly-obvious injustice when comparing the way peaceful protestors were mistreated during the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. NAACP board member Michael Curry said:

This is, again, a tale of two Americas. If you are of privilege and you control police departments, you get one kind of justice and one kind of policing, and you get another type if you are Black or brown in this country.

Reaction from Twitter users

The general public has also decided to share their sentiments regarding the staggering display of systemic racism in the way that police handled the riots. With Twitter exploding following the violent-ridden coup d'etat, analyses were made contrasting the two events by many users.

One such observation describes how the violence-inciting protesters seen at MAGA (Make America Great Again) were barely touched or even restrained for trespassing Congress:

The trending hashtag #LockHimUP has come about following the looting at Capitol with users denouncing Trump for being the personification of racial inequality in the USA:

Monica Cannon-Grant, a community leader who helped organize Black Lives Matter protests echos similar sentiments:

Watching them climb the side of the building, Black folks would have never been able to get that far, they would have shot us with pepper spray.