When will we ever learn?
- By Peter I. Rose
(Demonstration in Rochester, New York, on May 30, 2020. Democrat and Chronicle.)
I sat in front of the television set three nights ago, watching replays of a video of the choking death of a hand-cuffed and pinned-down African American by a white policeman in Minneapolis earlier in the week. These were alternated with live pictures of a whole section of the city, including the district police station, going up in flames. Crowds of people were seen bearing signs of protest against the killing, calling for the officers involved to be arrested and charged with murder, and repeatedly crying out George Floyd’s final words, “I can’t breathe.” A short time later, after arsonists – who may have been violent revenge seekers, sheer opportunists, or agents provocateurs – caused the precinct to burst into flames. Some observers set off firecrackers and many cheered. A few entered the building and removed some of its contents. (Other buildings were broken into and looted, too)
I was immediately taken back to similar events. Some were quite recent but many dated back to the first two decades of the twenty-first century, others to the 1990s and the 1980s and the 1970s and, especially, the 1960s, when I expressed my thoughts on the rioting that was then occurring in Rochester, New York, the city in which I was born and where my grandmother still lived in a letter to the editor of the New York Times. It was published on July 27, 1964. Fifty-six years ago I wrote:
As a native of the area, I have been appalled by the wanton riots, the pillaging and the total disregard for law and order exercised by some members of the community the past few days. As a lifelong advocate of integration, I am deeply troubled, for I see in the streets of the city the acceleration of the “boomerang effect” that responsible civil rights leaders have so assiduously tried to avoid. But, as a social scientist, I am not at all surprised by what is happening. There have been changes, but in too many instances they have been token measures which have done little to alleviate the basic malaise.
For years there have been warnings of the consequences of continued denial and exclusion, of the real possibility of violent upheaval, of dislocation and civil strife. And now the predictions are the frightening facts of daily life.
No one wins in these skirmishes. The police may succeed in maintaining or restoring order, but only at the expense of greater alienation and repeated charges of brutality. The white community may say that this merely proves that Blacks are unfit for entry into their sanctum sanctorum, but they do so only by failing to recognize that the hatred and deprivation which pervade the ghettos is not mainly the Blacks’ problem but their own. The rioters may thrill at the power they wield as they run amok through the streets striking their blows for freedom as they give “whitey” his comeuppance, but even the satisfaction gained is short-lived and, too frequently, off target.
While the crowds of protesters in Minneapolis were considerably more diverse than in earlier days and the venue could hardly be called a ghetto, once again an unarmed black man had been killed by a white policeman and outpourings of mainly unarmed and peaceful demonstrators against the brutality filled local streets alongside acts that could only been construed as counterproductive to their cause. There were similar scenarios across the country. The whole episode gave off an eerie aura of déjà vu.
After expressing pro forma sadness for George Floyd and his family on Twitter, Donald Trump kept tweeting. Casting aspersions on the “weak, radical, Democratic” mayor and seeming to blame all those denouncing the killing for the bad behavior of a few, he proceeded to repeat the infamous words of a defiant chief of police in Miami uttered more than fifty years ago, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” This was seen as a call to arms by many in the president’s base. The next day, speaking without any substantive evidence, the Attorney General William Barr went on the air to provide them targets. He accused the far-left and Antifa factions for the chaos.
Instead of calling for calm and comity, this exploitation of the situation was clearly geared to distract the public from the heartfelt and legitimate outrage that triggered the demonstrations in the first place , the overwhelming sentiment of the vast majority of marchers.
As I wrote in 1964, eleven months after the memorable – and hope inspiring -- March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, “There have been changes, but in too many instances they have been token measures, which have done little to alleviate the basic malaise.” Alas, this is still the case.
At a time when so much attention has been given to COVID-19, when will this country finally redress the grievances of African Americans who continue to suffer from the causes, manifestations, and effects of the most endemic of plagues that ravages our society: the legacy of slavery, the persistence of Jim Crow patterns of segregation, and the scourge of racism?
When will we ever learn?
Peter Rose, Sophia Smith Professor Emeritus at Smith College and currently a Visiting Scholar at the Institute for Social Science Research at Stanford, is a sociologist and writer. His latest book, Tropes of Intolerance: Pride, Prejudice and the Politics of Fear, will be published by Routledge in the fall of 2020.
