[a character looks sad in front of a sad city, under the sunset]
Things aren’t looking great…
It sucks when the state kills people
Wish we could do something about it
[the character is now in front of their TV, showing ICE agents surrounding a bleeding corpse on the floor]
Wait… this time they killed WHITE people
This means it could happen to me too?!
[an angry crowd is demonstrating, holding various signs such as…]
THIS TIME YOU’VE GONE TOO FAR
I DRAW THE LINE HERE
TOLERATE NO MORE
2025-31-12, Keith Porter, shot and killed by ICE agents
2025-09-12, Silverio Villegas González, shot and killed by ICE agents
2025-07-28, Jaime Alanis Garcia, shot and killed by ICE agents
27 shootings by ICE in 2025,
8 of which were lethal
31 deaths in ICE custody in 2025
11 deaths in ICE custody in 2024
7 deaths in ICE custody in 2023
3 deaths in ICE custody in 2022
5 deaths in ICE custody in 2021
18 deaths in ICE custody in 2020
9 deaths in ICE custody in 2019
9 deaths in ICE custody in 2028
This holds true with all these folks (assumably POC) who are upset about people getting upset about ICE murdering people, implying that we shouldn’t care because the victims were white; and implying that anybody who gets upset when the victims happen to be white are somehow racists, even though they have no clue how that particular person responded to the killings of George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, and all the other incidents that precipitated racial justice movements.
You might be a white person, and perhaps you support a racial justice movement whenever it happens, but is that going to matter a few years from now when they repeat the same old tired rhetoric that “white people never cared when the victims were POC”?
But if we’re not supposed to care now, simply because the victims happened to be white, then anybody pushing that line of rhetoric are ironically the actual racists.
I’m a non-racialized person from a non-English speaking EU country.
But my understanding of OP post is that he wanted to raise some rational info that people in a justified state of rage should have. Info that could open a rational debate and/or introspection exercise of how mass media has been shown them and, also, how people are reacting to them… But mostly, it cemented the rage showing how systemic is the state violence against the people.
Reading some answers, my reaction has been:
What is a “non-racialized person”? I’m genuinely curious, because in america people say things like “colorblindness is racism,” and that even though I tried not to see race when I was younger, somehow that made me racist?
OP was not raising “rational info,” he posted a political cartoon criticizing people for being upset about ICE murdering people who happened to be white. There’s nothing rational about that.
It is the literal translation of the equivalent of “POC” in Catalan and Spanish. Here racism is not only based on the color of the person, but also on ethnicity (e.g., Roma people) and obviously social class. We use racialized people (US: POC) and non-racialized people (US: white) in leftist spaces, but also in academic spaces. Also, as an example, it serves better to explain how a non-racialized Catalan could be a racialized person in the Anglosphere or in the 1993 Rwandan genocide.
The number of deaths was a rational info. I would say that the comic criticizes the reality, and call the people to react.
Wait, I’m confused by your wording. Is a non-racialized person a POC or a white person?
I thought race and ethnicity were different concepts. If I’m remembering correctly from sociology class in a US community college, ethnicity is based on ancestry/culture/linguistics, while race is a social construct based on appearance.
i.e. “white” is a race, but “German,” “Irish,” or “French” is an ethnicity. Likewise “middle-eastern” is a race, while “Arab,” “Persian,” or “Kurdish” are ethnicities. Or “black” is a race while “Tutsi,” “Hutu,” or “Xhosa” are ethnicities.
Drawing an arbitrary distinction between “racialized” and “non-racialized” to me seems a bit more harmful because it implies that there’s a “default” or a “plain/raceless” people group, and that anyone outside of it is “different” or “not normal”. To me it seems that such a distinction should either be applied to everyone or to no one.
Granted, I don’t know all the subtleties and implications of its use within Catalan culture; but that’s at least what its translation seems to indicate to my anglophone mind.
If the focus of the post were simply on the death toll so far, that would be totally fine. But the comic made the central focus be on blaming white people who are upset, and the names and numbers below seemed like more of an afterthought as an attempt to justify the comic.
The comic itself doesn’t criticize the reality, because the reality is that lots of white people were already upset before this. How do you expect the people to react if whenever they do somebody calls them racist for not reacting soon enough, even if they’ve already been participating in actions?
Wow what a lot of fucking straw.
As much straw as implying “All white people are racist because none of them cared about ICE until some white people got murdered”?
White people who got murdered while… obstructing ICE? As if they didn’t care until after they got murdered?
They’re not implying all white people are racist or that noone ever cared until white people did die.
But there is a racial component that led lots of people to ignore the issue and only start caring the way we’re seeing now, now that white people have died. And for far too many of those peope, they still think this is a recent phenomena and not inherent to the system, and that means their anger is misplaced at how the system is being used and not against the system itself.
Some people will always find a reason to claim white people aren’t upset enough, or aren’t upset for the right reasons, or aren’t upset at the right people, or weren’t upset soon enough.
I heard the same shit back in 2020. White people came out to support BLM and all you hear is “You should have been upset sooner; it took getting a murder on video before white people cared.”
Is that really what matters? Or is what matters the fact that people do care and are upset?
How is calling people racist for supposedly only caring when a victim is white “not implying that all white people are racist or that noone ever cared until white people did die?”
If someone posted a comic making sweeping generalizations about “Black/brown people don’t care about such-and-such until suddenly it effects them and only then do they care and that’s clearly WRONG!” It would be a completely different story. Everyone would call it out as racist and it would probably get taken down immediately, and I can guarantee you wouldn’t be in the comments arguing that “it’s not actually racist because it didn’t say all black/brown people.”
So try looking in a mirror before you apply double standards that convenience your own cognitive biases.
But they should have been upset sooner. It’s great that they’re upset now but if they don’t realise they should’ve been upset sooner then their anger will be misdirected at the actual cause of the issue.
And it’s not a sweeping generalisation at every white person. Pointing out systemic racism isn’t racism. If you get offended by that then really you’re telling on yourself.
But they were upset sooner. All of you keep making the same circular argument, “People should have already been upset!” They fucking WERE! How many times does that need to be said?
Making sweeping generalizations about all white people is not “pointing out systemic racism,” it’s just racism. If you get offended by this then you’re telling on yourself.
I’VE ALREADY SAID THEY WEREN’T SAYING NO ONE EVER CARED.
So apparently it has to be said a hundred fucking times before you stop strawmanning.
THEY AREN’T making a sweeping generalisation of all white people - they ARE pointing out systemic racism. The only people who get triggered by these things are racists. You’re a fucking racist. You saw a post being critical of the response white people are having and got offended because it couldn’t possibly be that systemic racism exists, surely they must be calling out all white people or something.
Everything you’re asserting is false, but if you’re just going to call me racist then I’ll just fuck off and when everyone else who’s been upset about ICE stops caring because you’re calling them racist and they fuck off too, good luck standing off with ICE when a large portion of the country isn’t on board with you because you called them all racist for getting upset about you making broad generalizations about them based on their race.