Navigating the need for community defense organizing here in New Jersey, but also in general presents interesting antagonisms from the state.
The report (linked below) contains some valuable nuggets of truth and some powerful personal accounts of navigating white supremacy. But it fails in many predictable ways.
The report does what we know it has to: It frame problems of white supremacy as a few bad apples that infiltrate otherwise neutral institutions like police, courts, the military, the board of education, and the state. It cites force reports analysis and a recent report about overrepresentation of targeted minorities, namely Black people, in traffic stops and instances of police brutality, but suggests heavily that it’s caused by racist individuals and not institutions that are built on, propagate, and encourage white supremacy.
The report also then makes suggestions about how to tackle white supremacy and of course this comes in the form of personal responsibility. Educate yourself and your children. Not that we should organize to combat it, develop community defense systems, or abolish institutions that thrive on white supremacy.
In this way, reports like this one serve only to protect the state’s authority from legitimate criticism as opposed to “exposing” white supremacy.
https://www.nj.gov/oag/newsreleases23/2023-0710_WSR-2023_v14.pdf