Why Are They Rioting? Don't They Know it Doesn't Help Their Cause?

This is addressed to those of you who ask these questions. 

First of all, it’s disingenuous of you to ask, if you have no interest in “helping their cause” to begin with.

Second, MOST of the protesters have nothing to do with the violence and destruction. There are Protesters and there are Rioters. Yes, some of the protesters may tip over and join the riot, but DO NOT confuse the two. And DO NOT ignore the first group because you are dismayed by the other!

But let me address your complaint directly, about those who are very intentionally TEARING SHIT DOWN! It’s because they aren’t thinking about “helping their cause”. They are saying “Fuck YOU!” And they are saying it to a system they know is interested in everything but “helping their cause”.

But before I go on, let me ask YOU a few questions:

Don’t you know that when you support a system that forces more and more people into poverty and helplessness, they are going to be pissed off about it?

Don’t you know that when you keep slapping someone over and over, that eventually they are going to slap back?

Don’t you know that if you keep telling someone that they’re living in the Greatest Country on Earth, that they’re respected and that everything is being done to elevate and support them, when it is all an obvious lie, that after awhile they will stop listening to you, shout BULLSHIT, and damn you for the lying ass that you are?

And don’t you know that if people who are entrusted with “protecting you” repeatedly do you harm, then lie about, excuse or forgive it, that eventually you will strike back, and make no excuses, nor ask forgiveness?

Okay! Got that off my chest. So let me try and answer the legitimate part of the concern, about the violence that too often comes with protest. And how do I know it’s legitimate? Because to a substantial degree, I share it.

I’m a Black American male, born in Detroit, who was a teenager, living in Manhattan just a few blocks south of Harlem, when the waves of rioting in the Black communities in the 1960s began.

Ironically, I didn’t learn until much later that in America “race riot” used to be a term applied when a lot of White people stormed into a Black Neighborhood to raise hell. Often because some uppity nigger had “insulted” a white man or woman and the entire community had to be put in its place.

When those riots happened in the 60’s I had mixed feelings. On the one hand, it was kinda cathartic to see Black folks doing something that upset and scared the White status quo, that it felt powerless to do anything about. On the other hand, rioting was so damned STUPID! Why destroy our own neighborhoods? Why burn down the only stores that existed where you lived? Why destroy the homes and livelihoods of your own. It seemed to me that it would make a lot more sense in we went into White neighborhoods after instances of racist brutality, and raised some hell THERE.

What I didn’t yet understand was that it wasn’t possible for Black folks to protest in white neighborhoods. When White folks had stormed into Black neighborhoods, or even when they’d attacked peaceful Black & White demonstrations, they’d always had the police (and if necessary, the national guard and the military) firmly on their side, if not actually leading the way.

Note that almost all of the 60’s rioting took place in cities outside of the South, which had the largest per capita Black populations. Because in the South, even the most peaceful of demonstrations were met with unbridled violence. As regards the North, where riots did happen, one might find references to the phrase, “Give them an inch, and they want to take a yard!” Which is true, but honest only if you preface it with, “First, we stole a Mile from them! And they’ve been demanding it back ever since!”

This is an historical lesson that the Black community has learned over generations. The slave revolts of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner in the 1800’s were followed by brutal attacks and retribution being visited on both slave and free Blacks across the south, whether they were in any way connected with or expressed sympathy with the revolts or not! All through the earlier 19^th century, efforts by Blacks to organize, to protest, to gain rights were met by brutal force, as evidenced by the proliferation of lynchings, bombings and the terror campaigns of the KKK between the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement.

And then there’s the case of the revolutionary Black Panther Party, which originated just around the time the riots started, and whose members brazenly patrolled their own communities while fully armed with both automatic weapons and law books, directly confronting police violence. The Panthers were systematically wiped out in about a decade, through outright murder, incarceration, and the organized and condoned mis-application of the law by police and the courts.

In short, there’s a long history of suppression of Black protest.

So, when you look at today’s rioters, you must understand the social DNA that they spring from. And let me clearly make the point that UNDERSTANDING is not CONDONING. It is still as stupid in 2020 as it was in 1967, to burn your neighborhood convenience store and your neighbor’s car. (A police station that has been abandoned over ‘safety concerns’? That’s a different story.)

But however “unacceptable”, the violence and destruction - even to the point of self-destruction - is frequently, and very naturally, the result of on-going abuse, neglect and not being heard. And this must be understood or it will never change. You can't expect the calm, rational, result-oriented problem-solving of safe, comfortable people, who believe and trust in the process that has served them. Not from those who CAN NOT believe or trust in a process, because it HAS NOT served them. From the latter, you are going to get visceral, emotional responses.

It’s easy for me to see and to feel the senselessness of the rioting, and to wish it would simply go away, so that the focus can remain on the police violence that took the life of George Floyd and too many others. And I’m sure that most of those protesting peacefully feel the same way. But I too have the privilege of being comfortable, of feeling relatively safe where I live, even of having had overwhelmingly positive experiences with police.

Because as I said, in 1967 I lived near Harlem, not in Harlem. And I was from a working-class family, not a poor one. I had educated parents and a wonderful upbringing. I had too many opportunities to list here. And all that gave me huge advantages, including a promising future, including hope!

I’ll bet that every Black American who was born around the time I came into the world – 1954 – can remember like I can being told by any number of my elders that, “You can’t EVER trust a white man. They will do you dirt as soon as it’s to their advantage!” Or, “The system is set against you, and there’s NO WAY you will ever make it as a Black Man in America!” Or, in regards to interracial relationships, “She may say she loves you, but a time will come when she’s gonna call you a Nigger!” These were common refrains among people of my parents’ generation who had been brutalized and betrayed until cynicism had crusted over almost every hope.

But I didn’t hear these things from my parents. They too had escaped the very worst of racism, though they’d experienced way more of it than I have. They’d survived it well enough to live some of their dreams, to overcome some of their fears, to become convinced that it wouldn’t hold them back from LIVING!

One of the very best lessons I remember receiving from my father was about racism. He let us know that it was all around, that we must be aware of it, but that we needn’t fear it. He compared racism to a huge hole in the road that you come upon when aiming to get somewhere. “Don’t be stupid and walk right into it,” he’d say. “Jump over it, if you know you can make the jump. Otherwise, you just have to find a way around it. The MAIN thing, though, is to not ever let it keep you from getting to where you’re headed.”

My God, what an amazingly powerful lesson that has proven to be, through my entire life! Basically, it was a lesson in empowerment. But, it isn’t a lesson that everyone gets. I got it through privilege. And one way of defining privilege is as a benefit one has that they did not have to earn. I was able to get and retain that lesson because I wasn’t personally brutalized and impoverished by racism. But I grew up around many who weren’t so fortunate.

Yesterday, as I listened to reports of the demonstrations happening across North America, and around the world, and feeling so grateful for them, for the outrage, the demand and the hope they express, I knew that there would be burning and looting too. I was proud of Atlanta’s mayor, Keisha Lance Bottoms, for so passionately demanding an end to the violence. And I was gratified to hear so many citing the words of Dr. King, who said that violence is a natural expression of those who have not been heard. Because I know, from MY experience, that many of those who were RAGING were fueled by a sense of hopelessness about anything resembling an American Dream.

This must be understood and remembered. Because the roots of this weekend’s violence go deep. If you are one of those who say, “Slavery ended 150 years ago. Get over it!” then you are a FOOL. If you are one of those who say, “There’s no more racism! How can there be racism if we had a Black President?” then you are another FOOL.

Because every time we decide that school budgets don’t matter, or that all those people on welfare are just lazy, or that investor profits are more important than workers’ rights, or that aboriginal Americans and Canadians have so many privileges that the rest of us are paying for, or that all that rioting just proves that they are all thugs and they should all be arrested or shot… all of that is just contributing to the development of more future rioters, who would rather throw a brick at a cop than vote, because they legitimately feel, “What the Fuck has voting done for us anyway!”

If you doubt this truth, look into the personal histories of those who fill our prisons, our group homes, our mental institutions and our shelters for confirmation. Overwhelmingly, their childhood stories are chronicles of abuse, neglect, violence and poverty. It's a truth that our societies (US and Canada) continue to ignore.

Re-Discovering Roots

I finally got around to reading Alex Haley’s Roots, and I wonder why it took me 44 years. I was aware of it when it was published and intended to read it. But then the mini-series came out, and it was such an event and was so hyped that I moved the book from my “Read Soon” list to my “One of these Days” list.

A really stupid reaction, that was. It would have done me a world of good to read it at the time. That was so long ago that I can acknowledge that I was afflicted with a kind of arrogance. Roots was hailed for reawakening America to the reality of slavery. But I thought myself already well aware and well-informed on the subject (I wasn’t, really). So I didn’t want to lump myself in with late-comers to the reality. I was doubly arrogant in that I moved away from anything in direct proportion to how popular it was, something I probably still suffer from, though hopefully to a lesser degree.

But anyway, I was tremendously moved by the book. Even granting all the criticism that has come over the decades about faulty scholarship, plagiarism and false representations, the book remains a powerful testament to the corrupt foundations of American society and the poisonous legacy that continues to this day. But it is also a testament to the enlightened, progressive and ever-hopeful America that also endures.

One of the most painful aspects of the story that Haley tells is the abject powerlessness that slaves must have felt, when any assertion of right or dignity or anger could be met not only by personal debasement, torture and/or death, but also with that same treatment extended to family and fellow-sufferers. Haley recounts the terror campaigns that followed the revolts of Denmark Vesey and Nat Turner. This ever present “backlash” is with us still and has become an entrenched part of American society and politics, as elaborated in this powerful piece by Lawrence Glickman from a recent issue of The Atlantic. (https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/white-backlash-nothing-new/611914/?fbclid=IwAR26Q-e_Bv6f2Y9wmRK-LvkTaa4F2SFz1cUGYLkzqmk49PvAd2Z8bA3q_Sw)

But what moved me most in reading Roots was the last few chapters, with Haley’s account of hearing the story of the ancestral “African” who called himself “Kin-tay”. This, when he was a child, crawling amongst his grandmother and her sisters as they sat on the front porch, sharing the bits of his language and personal story that they retained. And then, writing of the long, arduous search he undertook decades later, to trace these bits of information backward, all the way to the 1750’s, to Juffure, a village in The Gambia.

The beauty and the blessing of that moved me to tears. And they reminded me of my own family’s tidbits of personal history. In 1974, when I’d just turned twenty, I sat with my Great-Aunt Audrey in Detroit, my hometown, and she told me that one of my ancestors was said to have been brought into slavery from Madagascar. I’d never heard that before. And I’d never heard of slavery in relation to that huge Indian Ocean island. Aunt Audrey also told me that one of our ancestors was a Native American, but she couldn’t remember to what nation he belonged. I wasn’t forward thinking enough to make notes of our conversation, and it turned out to be my last visit with Aunt Audrey. She passed away a year of two later. During my next visits to Detroit, I asked other aunts and uncles and cousins about these ancestors, but was shocked to learn that none of them remembered ever having heard what I’d heard.

I’ve never made the effort that Haley did, to mine those few details for treasure. Reading Roots certainly nudges me to do so. Or maybe I can interest one of my nieces or nephews in doing so. Wouldn’t that be something!

Another thought is that – however moving and impressive his feat – even Haley didn’t truly capture his ancestry. Because he counted himself the eighth generation from Kunta Kinte, who was therefore only one of one-hundred-twenty-eight direct ancestors of his. Kunta’s wife, Belle, was another. But what of the other one-hundred-twenty-six? Haley tells of a white slave-owner and of a half Native American in his own genetic mix. What other myriad, genetic strands contributed to his lineage. And who are the 128 forebears of mine that walked the earth approximately two hundred and fifty years ago? I can’t name a single one!

How about you?

The Limits of Knowing in MAGA-land

I’m thinking a lot these days about knowledge and its limits. Of course, this has always been a problem, and it will always be a problem. Scientists and philosophers and theologians and artists have wrangled forever over the problems of knowing.

But it seems to be a heightened problem these days, because political, social, religious and cultural rifts mean that there are very few things that are widely agreed upon. And even moreso because knowledge has become so weaponized that even when it isn’t, there is suspicion that it is. There is hardly anything of importance that you can assert nowadays that won’t be challenged if you say it loudly and beyond your immediate circle.

When I think about it, the splintering of what used to be called “common knowledge” into partisan factoids isn’t entirely without a bright side. Because there is always some part of common knowledge that is false. And it’s so much harder to challenge established lies when they are uniformly agreed upon. To cite what may be the most obvious example, two hundred years ago (Do I hear a hundred? Do I hear fifty? Do I hear twenty?) it was common knowledge that women simply weren’t equipped to reason, to problem-solve or to lead like men were. Imagine trying to argue otherwise in America in 1820. And this, despite the fact that everyone must have known at least a few really intelligent, forceful, dynamic women and a few really stupid, weak and ineffectual men.

These days, because of the fracturing of the monolith of truth – and the ethics of free speech and of multiculturalism play a role in this – one can probably find fellow travelers and have some of the comfort of numbers, no matter what idiotic nonsense one believes, even that the Earth is flat. So this is one of those two-sided coins, both a blessing and a curse.

A piece of the problem is that having the right answers doesn’t necessarily correspond to intelligence. All sides of just about any good argument are going to have intelligent proponents as well as its fools. Which means that there will be plenty of circumstances in which an idiot, representing the truth, with horrible arguments, flawed evidence and no skill at presenting them, will face off against a genius who represents the falsehood, but armed with great arguments, overwhelming data and the gift of eloquence. The ‘winner’ of the argument will never be in doubt. And yet….

It's obvious that there were plenty of early adapters of the notions that the Earth is round, that germs exist, that mechanical flight is possible, that Blacks are equal to Whites, etc. who weren’t equipped to argue these propositions very effectively, and who had their metaphorical asses handed to them on platters when they tried to argue these positions against the most highly educated and eloquent members of their societies. And when they were up against the authority of the status quo, many of them had their asses handed to them literally!

So can we be so secure and smug when the experts align and tell us that something is so? There may be a consensus on the point now, but in 1960, there sure wasn’t a consensus that global warming was real.  It probably seemed a pretty cuckoo notion at the time. I wonder what the consensus will be about UFO’s and ESP in another hundred years?

But coming back to today, how do we convince anyone of anything anymore?

I’ve had to realize that despite my very strong feelings about quite a few things – such as, that Trump is a witless Fool! - there is hardly a single fact about anything outside of my immediate world that I can verify directly through my own experience and research. That includes COVID-19, the Federal budget, whether eating meat is healthy, if the people of Afghanistan want a continued US presence, and whether that exercise machine guaranteed to “melt off the pounds” really work. I don’t personally have the facts or the experience of any of these things. 

Yes, I could research it all, but even then I’d have to trust my sources (Wikipedia, anyone?). And I could actually buy the exercise machine and try it out. Then, I would know!

But I’m not going to buy the exercise machine. Why not? Because though the occasional risky purchase has met my expectations (yes, I admit to buying the odd such ‘miracle’ gadget/herb/self-improvement program over the years) most of them have disappointed. And I’ll never have the time or the money to invest in everything I’d like to believe is legit, even if I wanted to. And I’m also not going to research all of the dozens of questions that arise everyday about events and conditions around the world, or right under my nose. Because I’m lazy, I don’t like doing research. And there would never be enough time anyway.

And so, I’m left to trusting my sources. But because I’m lazy and don’t like to do research, I’ll choose most of my sources with very little vetting. I’ll accept that the New York Times got it right because…well because of its impressive appearance, and the intellectual quality of the writing, and because it’s cited by other sources I respect (for the same reasons) and… out of habit. And because the sum total of what I know and accept and believe supports the world I live in and – to a large extent – the stability and ease of my life. Because, when we no longer know, accept and believe the common knowledge truths in our lives, it presents us with huge challenges. Because then – if we pretend to any integrity – we have to challenge and resist and work for change.

One of the very best things about having been born Black in America is that it provided me with a constant experience of dissonance which served as an antidote to this easy belief and acceptance that I refer to. It was clear to me from childhood – as it must be, overwhelmingly, to most minorities around the world – that the common knowledge was very flawed, that my schools, the New York Times, and the President all presented very skewed and partial realities, at best. At worst, they presented outright lies and deceptions and fabrications.

Of course, as a child, I was in no position to become a revolutionary – not then, anyway. And so I learned that path of compromise that most of us learn (Most who don't wind up dead, incarcerated or psychotic). How much of the lie do we accept, simply to be able to get on and get along. And what personal lines do we draw and hope never to cross.

I didn’t expect this little piece of writing to get anywhere near this deep. What started me on this progression is the problem of truth in Trump’s America. Because I believe that one of the greatest misdeeds of Trump is that he’s put America as a whole into this position of mistrusting common knowledge. From the start, he has nudged the entire country toward distrust of the media, of the judiciary, of the government as a whole, and of science. He’s made us all, on both sides of the Red State – Blue State divide, incredibly suspicious of what we read and see and hear, except what comes from our personally trusted sources.

How can I say this is such a bad thing, when in this essay I’ve been attacking the sanctity of the known, the accepted, the believed? Well, it isn’t entirely a bad thing. Americans as a whole could stand to be more cynical and less gullible about many things - including how great America is. What I so detest about Trump is that he’s nourished this cynicism in support of such a narrow and short-term self interest, and that there is no morality behind it, and that he doesn’t seem in the least concerned about the costs. Even the Black and Native American revolutionaries of the past, after all, despite being full of bitterness about how their people had been oppressed and degraded, maintained some awareness of the cost – to their own people and others – of tearing it all down. They were driven by concern for more than themselves. Many of them recognized – despite the gross hypocrisy of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – that they contained values that were capable of more than what had so-far been achieved, and they looked toward a future of betterment in which they knew Community would be essential.

I’ve rambled here, and I’m rambling again. Where I’m coming from is my despair about the state of the United States and what it’s allowing itself to become. I despair over the difficulty in knowing, naming and championing the truth, in a way that isn’t just about getting what we want. I detest Trump, but it’s his followers who frustrate me. There will always be fools, but fools don’t have to have followers. And I wonder why the hordes in their MAGA hats cannot see what is so plain. (And yes, I must remind myself that, to at least some of them, they hold truths that I refuse to see!) Is it possible in America anymore to identify truths that no side can deny, and to build from there?