Micah Fletcher, survivor of Portland knife attack, calls out city’s “white savior complex”
Two Muslim girls – one wearing a hijab – were the target of an onslaught of threats on a Portland train last week. Three men, including Micah Fletcher, came to their rescue and got in between them and the white supremacist who was threatening them. The three men were then attacked with a knife and only one survived.
Now, more than a week later, the surviving hero is calling out those who have tried to make him the focus of the story and not the Muslim girls who were initially being targeted. He went on to call it a “white savior complex,” implying that people needed to prioritize his actions to relate to and celebrate the story.
“There is a problem,” Fletcher said in a now-removed Facebook video, according to the Huffington Post. “We are forgetting what is in my opinion the most important part of this entire series of events … We need to remember that this is about those little girls.”
“We in Portland have this weird tendency to continue patterns that we’ve done forever and one of them is the same old, just to put it bluntly, white savior complex,” he added. “I think it’s immensely, immensely morally wrong and irresponsible how much money we have gotten as opposed to how much support, money, love, kindness that has been given to that little girl.”
Fletcher recently had the pleasure of reuniting with with one of the girls he helped save that day. Destinee Magnum, 16, can be seen hugging him in pictures posted on Facebook by her mother and gave him a t-shirt that read, “I love you and you are my hero.”
“I want you to imagine that for a second, being a little girl. This man is screaming at you. His face is a pile of knives. His body is a gun. Everything about him is cocked, loaded and ready to kill you,” Fletcher said. “These people need to be reminded that this is about them. That they are the real victims here as well.”
“Remember that they got hurt, too,” he added, “and when it comes down to it, when a kid’s hurt like that, we as a society, as a world have a moral obligation to do something about it and to help.”
Photo Credit: Dyjuana Hudson Facebook