Category: Fighting Systemic Racism

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MLK’s Legacy

January 15, 2024

     Today marks the celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King’s birthday.  In the years since his assasination, his words have been twisted by cynical opportunists to mean the opposite of what he believed.  His legacy has been flattened such that the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. who exists in the public imagination bears little resemblance to the real man, who decried racism, capitalism and militarism as the three evils at the root of what sickened the American soul.

     Fifty-six years after Dr. King’s murder, the legal framework that the United States was pressured into passing thanks to the work of Dr. King and other civil rights activists from Bayard Rustin to Ella Baker to Fannie Lou Hamer is under attack. The gains of that movement are being dismantled piece by piece by piece by a mob of mediocre white men, aided by their accomplices in the mainstream media who either secretly believe the propaganda that Black people are intellectually inferior or are so focused on chasing a dollar that they will welcome fascism with open arms if it boosts their stock price.

     The people seeking to destroy Dr. King’s legacy are not subtle.  The fate of the first Black President of Harvard University is a case in point.  Christoper Rufo announced his game plan to take down Dr. Claudine Gay on X and the media cluelessly played along, with The New York Times publishing an astonishing number of articles on the firestorm surrounding Dr. Gay, replicating the dispiriting pattern where the qualifications of Black people are always in doubt, (Source:  “The Persecution of Harvard’s Claudine Gay,” by Charles Blow, The New York Times, 1/3/24).  There was no way that Dr. Gay could survive the barrage of racist and misogynistic attacks.  On January 2nd, she resigned from Harvard’s presidency.

       Congressional backbencher Elise Stefanik and Harvard Extension School grad, Christopher Rufo wasted no time in taking a victory lap.(Source:  “‘Victory’:  Claudine Gay’s Resignation From the Harvard Presidency Comes as a Win for Her Critics,” by Madelyn A. Hung and Joyce E. Kim., The Harvard Crimson, 1/3/24).

      Flush with victory, Rufo announced that he plans to stop at nothing less than dismantling DEI in every facet of American life.  Let’s be clear, the opposite of diversity, equity and inclusion is homogeneity, inequality and exclusion.  That is the America that Rufo, Stefanik and their financier Bill Ackman seek to re-establish.

       Their playbook is gallingly transparent:  1) Dismantle all ladders to erasing inequality by attacking diversity measures as “reverse discrimination,” (Source: “DEI backlash has companies quietly changing their programs to avoid wave of lawsuits alleging discrimination,” by Alexandra Olson, Haleluya Hadero, Anne D’Innocenzio and The Associated Press, Fortune.com, 1/15/24); 2) Ban the teaching of accurate American History that details the myriad obstacles to advancement placed in the  paths of Black, Indigenous and other people of color and ban books about the achievements of Black people or anyone from a marginalized group, (Source:  “Blocking Black History is an attempt to counter Black Power,” by Kate Aguilar, The Washington Post,2/1/23); and 3) Erect legal barriers to political participation by BIPOC Americans and their progressive allies, robbing them of a voice in who holds power in this country, (Source:  “Redistricting fights across South put the Voting 

Rights Act in the spotlight once again,” by Fredreka Schouten, CNN.com, 12/21/23).

This hydra-headed legal and political attack on civil rights has been aided by the ever present threat of political violence, as evidenced by the recent swatting attacks on Judges Tanya Chutkan and Arthur Engoron. If we don’t want these fascistic forces to run the table in 2024, we will need to overcome our fear and exhaustion and resist the urge to turn away from conflict and chaos because we want “peace.” Remember the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, “True peace is not merely the absence of tension: it is the presence of justice.” Let’s really honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and get to work!

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Justice for Tyre

January 29, 2023

    Like Groundhog Day in Hell, we braced Friday night for the release of another snuff film of a young Black man being brutally murdered by the police.  Tyre Nichols— a gifted photographer, a skilled skateboarder, a father, a son— died needlessly  at the hands of five sadistic Memphis officers.  The fact that the officers were Black doesn’t matter, because as cops say themselves, the only color that matters is blue.

     We have reasoned, pleaded and protested, to no avail.  George Floyd’s murder in 2020 was supposed to have produced a “reckoning.”  That was supposed to be the moment when the scales were lifted from America’s eyes, when they finally saw what Black Americans had been trying to tell them, literally for decades. The video was irrefutable, the anguish too palpable.  That was supposed to be the moment when we collectively cried, “Enough!”

    But then, the pandemic receded and people were able to go outside for something other than protests… and then the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act failed to pass in Congress…and then the murder rate increased and Democratic officials not only retreated from police reform, but called for more funding for the police.  The appeals for a radical new approach to public safety disappeared.

     The results were predictable. In 2021, the number of people killed by the police barely budged, and in 2022, police killed 1176 people, more than in any other year on record, (Source:  “‘What Are We Doing Wrong?’:  US Police Killed Record Number of People in 2022,” by Julia Conley, CommonDreams.org, 1/6/23).  Of those, only 31% involved an alleged violent crime and 11% did not involve any offense at all (ibid).

      By all accounts, Tyre Nichols was a “gentle soul,” who never had so much as a “parking ticket,” (Source: “Tyre Nichols remembered as a wonderful son who loved skating and sunsets,” by Victoria Bisset, Hadley Green and Robert Klemko, The Washington Post, 1/28/23).  Yet, even if he had a record and was engaged in criminal activity, we tell ourselves that the police are not supposed to serve as judge, jury and executioner, in the span of minutes!

      The truth though, is far darker.  As Jill Lepore details here, American policing began as slave patrols.  In the early 20th century, American policing was organized and deployed to conduct “a war against the enemies of society,” who were defined as “[m]obsters, bootleggers, socialist agitators, strikers, union organizers, immigrants and Black people,” (Source:  “The Invention of the Police,” by Jill Lepore, The New Yorker, 7/13/20).

   Is it any wonder that such a system dehumanizes and kills unarmed Black people at alarming rates?   Is it any surprise that Black and Brown officers who become part of that system often display the same brutality towards Black and Brown citizens?  We should understand by now that it is not the color of the police, but the color of those policed, that dictates the outcome.

    So when we call for justice for Tyre Nichols, we need to understand what that means.  It doesn’t just mean prosecuting the officers who killed Tyre.  That is accountability, which is a prerequisite, but not a substitute, for justice. It doesn’t just mean disbanding the SCORPION program in Memphis, or even every program like it around the country, which treats Black and Brown communities like war zones and positions the police as a hostile occupying force with unchecked power to violently control, rather than protect, residents.  Justice for Tyre Nichols will be impossible until we face the fact many Americans define “safety” as the absence of Black people from their neighborhoods, their classrooms, their places of leisure and labor, and consider our deaths an acceptable price to pay.