Trump Must Go - Racism Must Go

Trump Must Go - Racism Must Go

For the past several days I have been watching closely the results of the horrific conjunction of events that have occurred in my lifetime. As 2020 began, there was at least hope that the United States and the world might emerge at its end a better nation. By that, I mean Trump and his corrupt cult, once known as the Republican Party, were voted out of power and a more reasonable attempt could be made to repair the Hadean mess this man has caused. 

Then came COVID-19. With a totally incompetent response to the pandemic at the federal level, the case count today is 1,867,620 with 107,979 dead in the United States -- and rising. The best current hope we have is for either an effective treatment or prophylactic medication to be found (intravenous remdesivir has some activity but is no panacea) or for a safe, effective vaccine with reasonable durability of immunity. We are all aware of where we are currently: states and cities in varying levels of lockdown and requirements for masking, social distancing, and hand hygiene that many unfortunately appear to be ignoring. The economic consequences have been dire. Unemployment claims have topped 42 million and the evidence is that workers are only slowly able to return to their jobs. The long-term economic inequality of the U.S. ensured that this blow fell most severely on people of color.

The death of George Floyd at the hands of the Minneapolis police then added the tumult of nationwide protests. I will say simply that the disease of racism, endemic to our nation from its founding and in fact from 1619, has joined forces with COVID-19 and economic collapse to threaten the very being of our existence. To bring our nation back from the brink of the abyss into which we stare will require strength that I hope we have available to us.

Racism has long roots in the heritage of our species. When indigenous peoples were killed and pushed away and when chattel slavery began with Africans kidnapped from their homes and brought to the Americas in chains, that root sank deeper. White supremacy was born and has been nurtured by generations over the past four centuries. It has pervaded every aspect of our national being. A bloody civil war, the rise of Jim Crow after the failure of Reconstruction, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s provided basic rights in law to people of color that had been denied beforehand. The laws, however, were not enough; the norms deeply embedded in white society ensured that inequality reigned and that white supremacy and white privilege continued.

The death of George Floyd is only the latest police outrage to occur. Policing became a professionalized agency in the 19th century and was always slanted to protect the property of the wealthy. Protection of property often meant violence directed at protesters, such as strikers, who fell outside the accepted norms of white middle- and upper-class society. As with any culture, it was handed down over generations as “what the police do.” As Sean Illing reports in Vox, it’s not just a few bad apples; the system was designed this way. Policing ought to work like preventive medicine or public health. It cannot do that when its culture communicates to its people that certain groups are bad actors and they should not be treated as human beings. The videos of the past week show over and over how people of color are harassed when they protest, gassed, flash-banged, beaten, shot. What is rotten is the system that does this. 

It is made worse when the phrase “Law and Order” is tossed around. There is conflation of the peaceful protests by millions and the few people who take the liberty to ransack and pillage. Donald Trump and his minions, especially Bill Barr, want to blame Antifa for the civil unrest that has wracked America; there is little if any evidence for this. At the same time, Trump and Barr will not say that the far-right white supremacist groups are involved. There will always be fringe elements that want to use protests for their own purposes. Whoever they are, left or right or just anarchist, they need to be investigated and prosecuted. I believe that white Americans are blaming black Americans for scenes of arson and looting. 

The following quote is from Martin Luther King Jr’s. The Other America speech: “But at the same time, it is as necessary for me to be as vigorous in condemning the conditions which cause persons to feel that they must engage in riotous activities as it is for me to condemn riots. I think America must see that riots do not develop out of thin air. Certain conditions continue to exist in our society which must be condemned as vigorously as we condemn riots. But in the final analysis, a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it that America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the Negro poor has worsened over the last few years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice, equality, and humanity. And so in a real sense, our nation's summers of riots are caused by our nation's winters of delay. And as long as America postpones justice, we stand in the position of having these recurrences of violence and riots over and over again. Social justice and progress are the absolute guarantors of riot prevention.” King condemned riots but also noted they do not arise from thin air. He said they are the language of the unheard. For four centuries black Americans have been the unheard, marginalized, made unequal, and brutalized by governments at local and state levels in a host of ways. And now we are here in early June 2020.

The federal government cannot sink to the level of the George Wallace’s and Bull Connor’s of the past. At Trump’s order, peaceful protesters were brutally removed from Lafayette Square -- just so Trump could parade to a church, hold up a bible, and have a photo op. He was accompanied by General Milley, the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wearing his battle dress utilities and looking like a tinpot general trailing his tinpot dictator. Ladies and gentlemen, this is approaching the ultimate wrong, where the U.S. military betrays its oath of office to support and defend the Constitution to escort a cowardly tyrant for a photo op. I was somewhat relieved when multiple retired flag and general officers finally spoke up and denounced this travesty.

So where are we now? Still a COVID-19 pandemic, likely to be worsened by the protests. Economic calamity. And an ever-increasing need for white Americans to realize it is they and not their brothers and sisters of color who must step up and work harder than ever before to end the culture of racism and white supremacy that is the ancient poison of our democracy. A good place to start is by reforming the culture of policing. No more deaths like George Floyd. None.