February in 1992 I was waiting to cross the road to my UN peacekeeping job in a very small Bosnian-Croat village when 3 men in uniforms pulled a lone man out of his old Yugo, pummeled him with their fists then tossed him into a snowdrift before driving away in his car. I watched the whole thing in silence.<\/p>\n
I crossed the street as the bloodied man pulled himself out of the snow and walked on. Fighting sobs, I flashed my ID at the distraught Danish UN soldier who was manning the gate and by UN rules was only allowed to use his gun for self-defense. I recognized his tears of shame – we’d watched and done nothing. We followed the rules. Of course this event was benign compared to the atrocities perpetuated under our watch during the Balkan wars.<\/p>\n
It happened so quickly. That’s one thing I can tell myself but it doesn’t make me feel better. I was silent. I did not yell or curse at the bastards. Shock? Fear? I can’t recall. But here’s what I do remember: the shame of my silence, of being a small part of that terrible chapter of Peacekeeping history.<\/p>\n
I feel it again, that sick feeling, as if I’m standing on a corner watching while history repeats itself faster and faster. Now it’s not even days but hours<\/em> between white men in uniforms killing innocent black men while we watch. Now, it is being part of my race that causes me shame.<\/p>\n I try to distance myself, prove that I am not racist, that I’m different because I come from generations of leftists including my grandmother who voted for Jesse Jackson back when he ran for President. I can tell you how I proudly live in an economically and racially diverse community, how I struggle financially and raised my daughter on my own after losing her father to addiction and suicide. I will tell you that to distance myself from the oppression, to let you know that mine has not been just a life of privilege since I am a woman. I will tell you these things as if to prove I am an okay-white person. But how ridiculous – I will do this to make myself feel better. It doesn’t let me off the hook from the collective truth.<\/p>\n I am waiting to cross while the street is exploding.<\/p>\n And I just don’t know what to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" February in 1992 I was waiting to cross the road to my UN peacekeeping job in a very small Bosnian-Croat village when 3 men in uniforms pulled a lone man out of his old Yugo, pummeled him with their fists then tossed him into a snowdrift before driving away in his car. I watched the … Continue reading A Silent Witness Is Not Enough<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[260,18],"class_list":["post-5382","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-racism","tag-war"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pPzTS-1oO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5382"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5387,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5382\/revisions\/5387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/triciatierneyblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}