White supremacy is not perhaps the explicit or conscious reason why Rittenhouse did what he did, but rather the lens through which he saw the protests. Failing to understand the real concerns and even anguish of Black Americans and feeling he must go and “defend against” them somehow. Also: you are leaving aside his statements that he wanted to go and shoot protesters ahead of time (recorded & not allowed by this judge) & his meeting w/ supremacists & flashing WS hand symbols, also ahead of this trial. You put quotes around the police as former slave patrols and yet this, indeed, is the history of police in the South. White supremacy is the failure of white people, even refusal, to understand history from the lens of those who were also a part of it. It is this very essay.