What White People Need to Understand About Racial Unrest
A white friend of mine recently said that, while he agrees with many aspects of the Black Lives Matter movement, when things turn violent, leading to destruction of property, he looses sympathy. In fact, many white people were surprised and upset by the outrage that followed the murder of George Floyd. As a white guy myself, I thought it might be worth taking a minute to review the history, and see what my friend might be missing.
This problem of racial injustice in America is far from new. The first enslavement of human beings by other human beings on this continent occurred in Virginia in 1619, more than four hundred years ago. A lot of violence went down during the 243 years from first enslavement to emancipation proclamation. It wasn’t until 1865 that slaves in Texas were freed. And even then, the violence only transformed from exploitation enforced by beating (slavery) to exploitation enforced by lynching (Jim Crow).
The riots provoked by George Floyd’s murder is also not the first time people of color have attempted to call attention to the intolerable social conditions under which they were living. Exactly three hundred years after the first African slaves set foot on American soil, the “Red Summer” of 1919 brought racial unrest to over three dozen cities across the US. Those events were provoked by white supremacist attacks against minorities. The Chicago riots were the bloodiest, with 537 people injured, and 38 people killed. Two thirds of the injured and killed were African Americans. Once calm was restored, white Chicago city officials convened an interracial commission to investigate the causes. Their report urged an end to prejudice and discrimination. Little changed. That was more than a century ago.
Sixteen years later, in 1935, when conditions had worsened for minorities, there were riots in Harlem during which sixty people were injured, three African Americans were killed and seventy-five (mostly black) were arrested by police. Nothing changed then either.
Eight years later, (1944) racially motivated unrest broke out in: Harlem; Detroit; Beaumont, Texas; Mobile, Alabama and Los Angeles. In Harlem, where a black WWII veteran was shot by a NYC policeman, two days of rioting resulted in six deaths, hundreds injured, and nearly 600 arrests. Harlem residents credited police brutality and discriminatory treatment as well as resentment over segregation of black and white troops for the violence. It took four more years for Truman to desegregate the military. Police brutality remains a central issue to this day.
In August of 1965 the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles erupted after white police officers arrested a 21-year old black man and his mother. 14,000 National Guard troops were called in to quell the riots, resulting in 34 deaths. According to Bayard Rustin: “The whole point of the outbreak in Watts was that it marked the first major rebellion of Negroes against their own masochism and was carried on with the express purpose of asserting that they would no longer quietly submit to the deprivation of slum life.” A high-profile McCone Commission issued a 101 page report identifying the root causes of the Watts riots to be high unemployment, poor schools and inferior living conditions endured by African Americans. The report recommended “emergency literacy and preschool programs, improved police-community ties, increased low-income housing, more job-training projects, upgraded health-care services, more efficient public transportation, and many more.” Long after the riots, the LA Times did a follow up article. Their conclusion: “25 years after the Watts riots: McCone Commission’s recommendations have gone unheeded.”
In 1967, two years after the famous Watts riots, 159 so-called “race riots” broke out around the country. In Detroit at the time, 30% of the city residents were black while 93% of the police force was white. That summer, the “12th Street Riot” exploded following a police raid on a welcome home party celebrating the return of a black Vietnam veteran. A total of 43 people died, 1,189 people were injured, and 7,231 people were arrested. A Detroit Free Press survey following the riot revealed that residents viewed police brutality as the number one problem prior to the riot.
That same summer, police in Newark, New Jersey pulled John Smith, a black taxi driver, from his cab for having steered around a double-parked police car. Two officers beat Smith before taking him to the police station, where a crowd gathered to protest his arrest. The bottom line? 26 dead, 727 injured and 1500 arrested. At the time of the riots in Newark, 50% of the population was black, while 89% of the police force was white. Police brutality was credited with triggering the unrest.
Following the riots of 1967, President Lyndon Johnson created the Kerner Commission to investigate the causes of the outbreaks, and to make recommendations for America’s future. The final report blamed urban American turmoil on white racism. The commission members found bad policing practices, a flawed justice system, unscrupulous consumer credit practices, poor or inadequate housing, high unemployment, voter suppression, as well as culturally embedded forms of racial discrimination to blame for the upheaval on the streets of African-American neighborhoods. “White society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.” In 1967, the Kerner Commission report found the US so divided, it warned the nation was poised to fracture into two radically unequal societies — one black, one white. The commission’s primary recommendation — “a policy which combines ghetto enrichment with programs designed to encourage integration of substantial numbers of Negroes into the society outside the ghetto.” The Kerner Report recommendations, like the McCone findings before them, were largely ignored.
Twenty-five years later, after a by-stander filmed the brutal beating of Rodney King by four Los Angeles police officers, five days of violence erupted. Those riots resulted in more than 50 deaths, 10 of whom were shot and killed by LAPD officers and National Guardsmen. More than 2,000 people were injured, with nearly 6,000 people arrested. Still, no change.
Sadly, George Floyd’s and Rayshard Brooks’ names now join the long list of recent victims of excessive force used by police and law enforcement officials in America. To name only the best known cases, Breonna Taylor, Eric Garner, Meagan Hockaday, Michael Brown, Alexia Christian, Philando Castile, Mya Hall, Walter Scott, Miriam Carey, Tamir Rice, Shelly Frey, Alton Sterling, Tanisha Anderson, Stephon Clark, and Michelle Cusseaux, not to mention Trayvon Martin, have joined the list of people of color killed by so-called “law enforcement” officers. During the six years between 2013 and 2019, a total of 7,666 people in this country have been killed by police. In only 99 of those cases were charges brought against the killer, and in only 25 cases was there any conviction.
When collective frustration reaches a boiling point, it can, and perhaps should, erupt into social unrest. Rather than experience surprise at the outrage created by deaths like that of George Floyd, it might be more appropriate to feel amazed that so little has changed, despite desperate efforts to call attention to these problem. Given that the nation has seen so little progress in the 20th and 21st Centuries in the areas of racial justice, and police violence against minorities, what will it take to get the nation’s attention?
It’s not surprising that police departments in America have, for the African American community, come to symbolize white power, white racism, and white repression. We are far beyond the point of reform. As a minimum, police should not be trained and equipped as warriors any more than the citizenry should be viewed as enemy combatants. Would that the problem of excessive force were a story of rogue police officers in the occasional police force. In fact, the case of police violence against minorities is only a symptom of a much larger disease, that of persistent racism. COVID-19, which should, in theory, effect all people equally, has killed people of color at a rate more than three times higher than that of white people. Why? Because, in America, the darker your skin, the more likely you are to: grow up poor; lack adequate health care; be denied loans and promotions; live in a community with polluted air and water; suffer from type-2 diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and Alzheimer’s. Statistics also show that the darker the color of a person’s skin in America, the greater the likelihood of their being victim of police violence. In fact, for black men in America, the sixth leading cause of death is being killed by police.
Isn’t it time for real change?
