THE WEIGHT OF HISTORY,TECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES
Your MassMiss is having technical difficulties. While I deal with this, please talk amongst yourselves in the comments. Here’s an email back-and-forth to get you started, from two MassMissers with American History backgrounds.
J: This is probably not the time to try to have constructive conversation about racism in America today, a complex topic in fact, when passions are so high and there is a universal sense of entitlement to make rather loudmouth, simplistic and unbalanced statements about the murder of a black man by the police and the reaction to it. I share that loudmouth tendency but I come to this from a completely different place. Over the past few decades I have moved almost 180% from the left-liberal anti racism ideology which I find not just counter productive (it does not solve the problem of police violence against black people and I do not think it is really designed to) but arrogant,. self righteous. and an abuse of history. For example piling the entire history of racism, slavery, segregation, police brutality etc etc on this incident and then using it as a justification for breaking some windows or throwing rocks at the police – and then adding insult to injury by claiming you are, in fact, not saying it is a justification for violence which you of course don’t approve of but of course “understand” given the history of racism slavery segregation police brutality etc etc. Well its a bit disingenuous, to be academic and elitist about it.
S: …most of the protest country-wide has been peaceful- we all need to grapple with the impacts of slavery that are still impacting all of us- police violence against black men is much higher than against whites (in Minneapolis, Victims of severe police tactics- choke holds, knee to neck etc – are 7 times more likely to be black) You know well the US has essentially criminalized being black in major and minor ways- convict labor, poll tax, redlining,segregated neighborhood, unequal education- yes we have personal experiences with being young protesters- and I agree that there probably always been extremists on the right and left involved in and stoking violence plus, of course , provocateurs from the law enforcement side-I’m proud that we demonstrated against the war, racism etc. and I’m surprised you aren’t- yours in solidarity!
J: Well I partially although not totally disagree but I think the topic needs to be open for discussion. But one is not allowed to raise the issue and have it open for discussion. The left is a dark, repressive place, whether the issue is race, global warming or free trade. The right wing is much worse but that is no excuse. There are thousands of police departments all over the country with thousands of police officers. Some of them are racists and they get into very volatile situations with people in low income communities, which have a higher percentage of people of color. As you well know, it is a combination of race and class. This is a very violent society with all kinds of people with guns. Statistically there are a very few police killings of people, even in those situations, so that means that the law of averages means that the percentage variations between different groups of people is going to be relatively high.It does not help at all to drag in the history of slavery, segregation, lynching and everything else. [….] I just saw Ken Burns’ doc on the war and if you think the situation is bad now, check that out, Not to mention people being murdered for trying to register to vote, which was not uncommon. And I am not proud of being in PL which had zero base of support but was about playing revolution and getting on TV via throwing rocks at the police. Sorry My rhetoric is perhaps out of line but this stuff really drives me crazy, both as a 60s activist and historian
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