Blowing in the Wind: When Will Black Live Matter?
“How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?”
It appears that the last domino has fallen amid a perfect storm of a pandemic, unlike anything we have witnessed in more than one hundred years and still another senseless act of police violence. The murder of George Floyd has unleashed a torrent of protest nationwide that is mostly unrivaled in the long tortured history of these United States of America.
Fifty-three years ago, from April 1, 1967, through August 2, 1967, 109 cities in America erupted in race-related violence. According to U. S. News & World Report, One hundred-seventy seven people died, and thousands more were injured. Property damage during that period exceeded one billion dollars. By and large, the participants in those uprisings were black people. “Yes, ‘n’ how many years can some people exist Before they’re allowed to be free?” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., in 1967, made a distinction between the violence of the state, the police, and white supremacy and the destruction of property by the oppressed. He adroitly described riots as “the language of the unheard.” Earlier, in 1961, Franz Fanon, author of the seminal book,”The Wretched of the Earth,” said, “We revolt simply for many reasons, we can no longer breathe.” Those words have echoed decades later with a grim irony by both Eric Garner and George Floyd.
George Jackson said, “When the peasant revolts, the student demonstrates, the slum dweller riots, he is reacting to a feeling of insecurity, an atavistic throwback to the territorial imperative, a reaction to the fact that he has lost control of the circumstances surrounding his life.” Uprisings and demonstrations took place in 39 states in 1967.
Unlike the monolithic uprisings in 1967, those that are currently taking place today are diverse and run the gamut of ethnicity, class, gender, and religion. The real patriots and freedom-loving people from the gleaming shores of the Pacific Ocean to the white crests of the Outer Banks of North Carolina are making their voices heard and presence felt. Students, activists, and everyday people are insisting on accountability and change. The uprisings today, in all 50 states, are indicative of a society in serious trouble spawned by racism, socio-economic inequalities, and a wayward criminal justice system.
The fabric of the social compact is unraveling before our eyes. In western society, the social compact suggests that people live together bonded by an agreement of established moral and political rules of behavior. Black people have known for centuries that they are outliers in this arrangement. The pandemic may have ripped the thin veneer of believability asunder among many white people that in this arrangement they possess more than whiteness.
“Yes, and how many deaths will it take ’til he knows that too many people have died?”
The state insists that they have the exclusive sovereign right to impart structural and physical violence. And this state-sponsored violence comes in many forms: Inferior educational opportunities, redlining, health disparities, economic exclusion, unfair and inequitable prison sentences, voter suppression, and intimidation are all non-violent expressions of state-sponsored violence. The penultimate manifestation of structural violence is the death of Sandra Bland, Eric Garner, Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, Walter Scott, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Freddie Gray, Amadou Diallo, Jamar Clark, Terence Crutcher, Alton Sterling, John Crawford, Samuel DuBose, Akai Gurley, Oscar Grant, Ezell Ford, Stephon Clark, Anthony Hill, Meagan Hockaday, Ahmaud Arbery, William Chapman, and Sean Bell. And, of course, Fred Hampton. “Yes, ‘n’ how many ears must one man have Before he can hear people cry?”
Activists seek to make right the wrongs and injustices that are in contradiction to the social compact and civil society. Frustration mounts when they realize that the change they seek does not mean reform or improvement. Invariably, the answer to decades of non-violent “by the book” redress of grievances has been a resounding “NO!” No transparency, no civilian review process, no police accountability, no bodycams, no indictments, no convictions, no nothing.
The reflexive response by the authorities once activists take to the streets and all hell breaks loose is accusations of anarchy, lawlessness, looting, and violence. The ensuing chaos is quasi-retaliatory. There is a marked difference between venting one’s frustration against property as opposed to lethal acts of violence perpertrated by those that are supposed to “serve and protect.” Property can be replaced; George Floyd’s life cannot.
The narratives that follow uprisings are often couched in condemnation of property losses or old, antiquated civil rights era jargon, “the rioters were out-of-town agitators.” President Trump is blaming Antifa for the coast to coast protestations rather than the policies of his administration that have exacerbated racial tensions and bifurcation in the body politic. “Yes, ‘n’ how many times can a man turn his head And pretend that he just doesn’t see?”
Unfortunately, it seems as if very little has changed in America since the turbulence of the 1960s. In 2020, the police are attacking demonstrators, shooting at reporters, and using vehicles to plow through Americans exercising their constitutional right to assemble. We do recall the night of August 28, 1968, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago where antiwar demonstrators were brutally attacked by the Chicago police.
In the aftermath of the carnage of 1967, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders better known as the Kerner Commission, chaired by then Illinois Governor Otto Kerner, Jr., investigated the causes of the 1967 race riots. “The report berated federal and state governments for failed housing, education and social service polices. The report also aimed some of its sharpest criticisms at the media. The press has too long based in a white world looking out of it, if at all, with white men’s eyes and white perspective.” The report’s most famous passage warned, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one black, one white – separate and unequal.” The report was a strong indictment of white America: “What white Americans have never fully understood, but what the Negro can never forget – is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”
The Commission’s results suggested that one main cause of urban violence was white racism and suggested that white America bore much of the responsibility for black rioting and rebellion. The report called for the creation of new jobs, construction of new housing, and cessation of de facto segregation in order to wipe out the destructive ghetto environment. In order to do so, the report recommended for government programs to provide needed services, to hire more diverse and sensitive police forces and, most notably to invest billions in housing programs aimed at breaking up residential segregation.
It is reasonably safe to opine that the Kerner Commission’s report was summarily ignored. The response to the recommendations made by the Kerner Commission was the institution of New York Democratic senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s recommendation to President Richard M. Nixon in 1970, of a policy of “Benign Neglect,” or a “do nothing” approach to racial problems. In essence, the concept of benign neglect, ultimately blamed the victim and thus ignored the cumulative effects of centuries of racism, oppression, and white supremacy.
Yes, America has exploded and burning again with a rage and fury that echoes back to the 1960s. There is no Stokely Carmichael or H. Rap Brown around to blame this time. No black cries of “Burn, baby, Burn.” No black boogie men for white people to scapegoat.
The president is considering using the Insurrection Act of 1807 to deploy military troops into American cities. The uprisings in all fifty states are a refutation of the failed policies of neo-liberalism and Tea Party politics of the past 30 years in general, and the Trump administration in particular. Voting against Donald Trump and the insurrectionist Republican Parties nationwide in November is not a panacea. It is only the start of a “new birth of freedom.”
Bob Dylan said it best, “The answers are blowing in the wind.”
MLK Memorial Foundation
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