There are riots going on right now all across the country, largely in response to the death of George Floyd shortly after a Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, was filmed and photographed with his knee laying on the back of Floyd’s neck. Floyd kept trying to say that he could not breathe, but Chauvin and the other three police officers made no attempt to let up. Eventually, Floyd passed out and became non-responsive. Later on, he died.
Chauvin has now been arrested and is being charged with third degree murder. But it took a while. One wonders if a black man who would have done the same thing to a white man would have been able to go home after such an incident, or if he would have been arrested and taken into police custody right away. Of course, it is never a good idea for anyone, but especially an officer of the law, to put his knee on the neck of anyone during an arrest like this, but at the very least, once it has happened and the situation is under control, he could have let up once he realized that the guy could not breathe. But he did not, and the man lost consciousness, and then died shortly after that. I have heard that the official autopsy was that the cause of death was because of a pre-existing condition (a uniquely American term with bad connotations, frankly), and that it was an issue with his heart condition. Perhaps. But here’s a question for anyone who latches onto that: would George Floyd be dead right now if he had not been treated in the inhumane, brutal manner that those police officers treater him?
Anyway, this seems like another defining racial incident of our era. There have been so many of them in this country, just in my own memory, and I was not even around to see the race riots of the 1960’s, or the similar tensions and brutal incidents seen during the Civil Right movement, and documented in the Eyes on the Prize documentary that we have all seen over the years.
Indeed, race is always an issue in America. It always seems to be front and center, at almost every point in our history. Right from the very founding of the Americas, Christopher Columbus mentioned how the Native Americans that he came across would make good slaves. Indeed, racial slavery was instituted, as Africans were brought on slave ships, and then auctioned off as property to the highest bidder. Slavery remained the backbone of the Southern economy, and it took the brutal Civil War for it to finally end. Even then, racial laws were introduced in the Jim Crow South to preserve white supremacy, and this would continue until the mid-1960’s. Hardly ancient history. Meanwhile, the genocide of the Native Americans continued from the earliest days, and was pursued during the westward expansion, or the so-called “Manifest Destiny.”
Since then, we keep seeing racist incidents and/or race riots. There were race riots in the late 1960’s in numerous cities. There were race riots again in Los Angeles following the acquittal of the officers who beat Rodney King. There were race riots in Florida a few years later, and in Cincinnati, Oakland, and Anaheim in between that and the big race riots in Ferguson, Missouri, and in Baltimore, Maryland, in 2014 and 2015. There were riots in Milwaukee and Charlotte in 2016, following shootings there, as well. And now, of course, Minneapolis for the past few days. And those protests have spread, particularly in Atlanta.
It seems to me that Americans collectively never really came to term with the reality of this racist past, like people in other countries have. Germans were forced to come to terms with what happened during the Hitler years, particularly during the Holocaust in World War II. South Africans were forced to come to terms with what happened during the apartheid years. In both cases, racial tensions may still exist, but there were some enormous successes, as well. Former colonizing powers, particularly Britain and France, have seen large influxes of immigrants from their nations that formerly belonged to their empires. Again, tensions exist in each. But by and large, it seems that those countries seem to be able to avoid the blatantly racist shootings that we see here seemingly every few months at most, and the riots that often follow in their wake.
Not that those countries have no problems with racism. They do, of course. But it does not feel like those countries are quite as defined by their racial tensions the way that the United States seemingly is. Since we never forced racist whites to come to terms with the criminality of their actions – neither after the Civil War, nor after the Civil Rights movement and the Civil Rights legislation that formally ended official Jim Crow segregation – it then seems to have hovered ever over the country ever since. It was not always blatantly obvious, the extent of the problem, and that perhaps helped it persist as long and as strongly as it has. By and large, for the first three decades following the official end of Jim Crow segregation, it seemed that southern Africa was the focal point of the world regarding blatant racism and unfair, racist policies. Yet even there, just under the surface, there could be seen some uncomfortable issues. After all, Reagan had swept into power, sometimes at rallies where the Confederate battle flag was proudly being displayed by some in attendance, and he had a policy of “constructive engagement” with the white minority apartheid regime in South Africa. He was opposed to boycotts, and provided the regime some much-needed financial aid. A Democratic Congress was nevertheless able to reimpose sanctions on South Africa, but it remained an issue throughout the Reagan years and into the first Bush presidency. It was during those years, also, that the L.A. Riots of 1992 came about.
The 1990’s were relatively sedate in terms of huge events like that, with the possible exception of the O.J. Simpson trial, which kind of ignited the flames of racial tensions again. But race would play a prominent role once again during the second Bush years. This was particularly true when his response to Hurricane Katrina was deemed so inadequate as to be regarded as racist, as it mostly impacted impoverished, mostly non-white communities. There were huge disparities between how whites felt Bush responded, versus blacks, with whites generally approving of his response, and blacks largely feeling that he did not do nearly enough.
The rise of Barack Obama to the White House gave some the illusion that we had moved past racial tensions of the past. There were two coworkers, both older white men who had served in Vietnam, who claimed at the time that you could no longer label the United States a racist country. It seemed a bit naïve to me at the time, yet the media also talked about a “post-racial society,” seemingly wanting to put the demons of our collective past behind us. That clearly seemed premature as there were racist portrayals and criticisms of President Obama, which focused not so much on substantive policy or political differences of opinions, but which instead had a decidedly racist bent to it. Then, there were incidents, such as Trayvon Martin, and a number of other young black men being shot, which seemed to serve as a powder keg for the country and it’s racial tension. The police seemed to be shooting young, unarmed black men far too often to be mere coincidence. Already, all talk of this “post-racial society” seemed to end abruptly. Then came the rise of Donald Trump, a man with a racist history, and with the enthusiastic endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan and white supremacists across the land. Native Americans protesting the building of an oil pipeline that seemed to stall a little bit during the end of the Obama presidency were now basically forcibly moved out, while the pipeline was built. The police were advised to knock some people around during arrests, and the racist shootings seemed to be just a typical part of the reality of life in the United States.
Lately, it seems to be front and center more than ever. Trump still seems to harbor racist sentiments. His response to what is happening, dismissing all on the streets in Minneapolis as “thugs,” has not helped. We find ourselves, yet again, being polarized beyond anything that we have seen in recent decades, at the very least.
We have many problems in this country. Many, many problems, and it goes beyond the racism, either blatant racism or more hidden forms, which seem to stubbornly persist year after year, decade after decade, and now, even century after century. But racism always seems to be one of the running themes throughout American history. It is a problem, and the first thing to overcoming a major, debilitating problem is to admit that you have one.
Until we collectively acknowledge that in this country, we will continue to witness massive outbreaks of violent protest, like what we are seeing right now.
