No, you know what? I can. I can believe it because I see racism all the time, most often from people who don't know any better. Sometimes it's well meaning. Sometimes it's ignorant. But it exists, and the more you study it the more you notice it in places you didn't before. It's everywhere, but usually it's quiet and subtle.
And then there are the times everyone can see it and what's been boiling under the surface of American society literally since the day it was founded comes the surface. And it's ugly. And people don't like it.
I'm seeing a lot of social media in reaction to what's happening right now in Baltimore, most of it from middle class white kids who have never been given more than a speeding ticket, and certainly don't wonder if they're going to die every time a police officer talks to them. Violence, they say, isn't the answer.
What is the answer?
Violence may not be the answer, but it's an answer, and it's an answer to a problem most middle-class white Americans will never think about. Kids gun each other down every day in Baltimore, and no one says anything. The crime rates and poverty rates are disproportionately high in the black community, and no one asks why - until someone burns down a pharmacy. And then people talk about it. Not positively, but they talk.
Violence isn't effective? Seems like it might be if the only time you ever consider what life might be like in inner-city Baltimore is when part of it is destroyed.
Maybe the answer would have been to tell the cops who let Grey die in the back of a van that violence isn't the answer. The people I talk to ask me that I give the police the benefit of the doubt. They say that we don't have all the answers. They say that we weren't on the scene and don't know what it was like. They don't extend the same courtesy to the citizens of Baltimore.
Do I agree with the destruction of private property in Baltimore? No. Do I get it? Yeah, I do. The argument I see the most on Facebook is that the black citizens of Baltimore should be following the law and acting peacefully. That's because the law, to many middle class whites, means not running a stop sign or refraining from shoplifting, whereas in some places in this country the law is a protection racket for the people that murder kids. The law let Freddie Grey die. If the law is under no obligation to act peacefully, why should its victims be?
In all these self-righteous posts about doing the proper and legal thing, I see the uncomfortable shadow of paternalism. "Those people are destroying their own neighborhood; they won't accomplish anything that way." In these statements lie the sinister implication that whites, particularly middle class whites, know how to run a country best and are more capable of accomplishing political objectives, whereas poor blacks don't and aren't. Most often these arguments are accompanied by Martin Luther King quotes, because, to a lot of people in this country with a high school education in race, MLK must be the spokesperson for all black people. Let's not talk about Nat Turner. Let's not mention Denmark Vasey or Gabriel. And don't even think about Malcolm X.
Incidentally, here's a quote from Reverend King: "It is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard."
Now why am I not seeing that one in circulation?
Here's a little something I picked up in my six years studying race in this country: black history is horrifically violent, and most of the time, that violence was white on black. A lot of black violence was in response to white violence that was institutional, systematic, and widespread. Accounts of personal brutality against blacks would nauseate your average middle class mallgoer. Watch a video of a lynching sometime. Martin Luther King and peaceful marches are not black history. They are a part of black history. A very very small, if admittedly important, part.
None of this is to say that burning down a CVS is right, because it's not. However, it is to say that there is more going on here than people see or want to see. This is not about Freddie Grey. This is about the long history of police brutality, particularly against poor blacks, that exists in the country, and the refusal to acknowledge it or to hold the police accountable. Context is important.
I don't like Obama. I hate Obama. I think Obama is a horrible human being with a sinister agenda. I think he's petulant, egotistic, and hides behind his popularity like a shield while he plots to do whatever it takes to protect his legacy - and nothing else. But tonight, for the first time, he said something I agree with: "If our society really wanted to solve the problem, we could; it's just that it would require everybody saying, 'this is important; this is significant.' And, that we don't just pay attention to these communities when a CVS burns, and we don't just pay attention when a young man gets shot or has his spine snapped, but we're paying attention all the time because we consider those kids our kids."
I hate Obama. But it takes genuine guts for an American president to say those things. And they're true.
If you don't want to see riots, hold your government and your law enforcement accountable. Don't pretend the problem doesn't exist until a group of people who deal with it every day make you see it in the only way left to them. It's not hard. It doesn't take thinking about it every day day in and day out - it only takes being aware of it. It takes thinking about it for five seconds before you post that pious little status about how you think people whose experiences are nothing like your should act. That's all.
If all we ever do when someone dies at the hands of those who are sworn to uphold the law in this country is blame the reaction to it, the riots won't stop. Riots, as King said, are "the language of the unheard." Perhaps when we learn to listen, that language will no longer be needed.
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