It feels like we are at a new stage in the crises that have shook our society for months. Many people are venturing out again, especially to protest racism.
Two plagues, Covid-19 and racism, are now inextricably mixed.
How we react next will determine whether the outcome is transformative or not.
Some voices for reform want to defund police departments. I understand their rationale but it is hard to envision that being a realistic option. Who would we call in a crisis? What about serious crimes, accidents, and the dangerous moments when we call 9-1-1? In order to demolish the police we would have to create an alternative.
A majority of the Minneapolis city council supports defunding their police department in the wake of the killing of George Floyd. That department has a notably egregious record of violence against black people, and it may be relevant that, as reported by Minnesota Public Radio, the police there were trained at times by Israeli law enforcement specialists.
Those would be the same specialists who have repeatedly abused Palestinian citizens, including killing them. Why in the world would any U.S. police department turn to *them* for advice? Reports indicate that it occurred under the pretext of "anti-terrorism" training; which is chilling given what racist extremists have called our peaceful protestors this time around -- terrorists.
This is not terrorism, this is democracy.
More measured police reforms are being proposed by elected officials, primarily Democrats, but do they have the public support and political clout to prevail?
Probably the saddest outcome of all of this uproar would be a return to the status quo, because that would be the easiest option. Inertia remains a potent force when the magnitude of change seems so huge.
Growing up as a white boy in small towns in the Midwest, I don't believe I had any encounters with the police whatsoever. It was only when I went away to college that a combination of getting to know fellow students who were black and the mass demonstrations that were then sweeping college campuses opened my eyes to racism and police violence.
My black friends had all been harassed by police in Detroit, Flint and other cities.
Meanwhile, by working as a student journalist, I met the leaders of black student groups, as well as athletes like the great basketball player Cazzie Russell. Many became my friends and sources; I would know when activists were going to chain themselves to a building long before the police had a clue.
Journalists trying to cover demonstrations often got trapped within the perimeters set by police to contain and disrupt large crowds. They still do.
Over and over, I saw the constitutionally guaranteed freedoms of speech and assembly violated by law enforcement forces, including the National Guard. I saw many arrests and got arrested myself. I was roughed up but never really beaten.
My black friends never got off that easily.
What exactly is racism? And how can you experience even a modicum of its pain when you are white?
I don't think it is actually possible to do so; the closest I ever came to feeling it was when I went to a movie or a demonstration or a football game with friend who happened to be black and happened to be a girl and we felt the disapproving glare of older white people as we passed. That never happened when I was with a white girl.
Of course, at some of those times, I was also called a "n----- lover."
These experiences, as trivial as they are when compared to the actual horrors visited upon my black friends, did cement inside me an anger and determination to oppose racism wherever I encountered it the rest of my life.
Fifty years later, the ugliness remains. Many millions of people oppose racism now. Will it finally matter?
Or will we still be left waiting for what James Baldwin called "the fire next time"?
In case you've not read or have forgotten his book, by fire he was talking about love -- the love between races and the love for one another.
I fervently hope that this is our long overdue fire next time.
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