Fighting back: our only option

Our country is awash in senseless violence.  We have retreated from our pluralistic ideals at warp speed, rendering us a vulnerable collection of “discrete and insular minorities” endangered by the tyranny of the majority at every turn (Footnote 4, United States v. Carolene Products, 304 U.S. 144 (1938)).

In the 72 hours since Philando Castile’s murderer was exonerated, another Black person was killed at the hands of the police.  In Seattle, 30 year old Charleena Lyles was shot and killed in front of her children by the police that she had called to report a burglary.  Although the police say that she was brandishing a knife, the truth is that the police repeatedly demonstrate their ability to de-escalate situations when a white man brandishing an automatic weapon is involved.  We remember all too well how terrorist Dylan Roof, who murdered nine black people in a church was captured alive and treated to a meal from Burger King after his arrest.  Yet, when Black people call for help, we’re the ones who end up dead.

Yesterday, in Fairfax, Virginia, a beautiful 17 year old girl, Nabra Hassanen, was beaten to death after leaving her mosque with a group of friends.  Inexplicably, local police claim that this is not being investigated as a hate crime, but rather as “road rage,” even though the Muslim teens were walking.

There is a stubborn refusal on the part of those in power to accurately name what is happening.  Here is where we are:  Trump’s toxic rhetoric, which explicitly targets Muslims and Latino immigrants, together with his administration’s demonstrated hostility to civil rights for African Americans, as evidenced by everything from his “Voter Integrity Commission” designed to suppress votes to the policies announced by his Justice Department and the Department of Education seeks to roll back 70 years of social progress.  Trump’s strategy is designed to whip up dormant racism and strip away any legal protections enjoyed by people of color.

We must evaluate Charleena Lyles’ murder in light of the fact that the Seattle Police Department is subject to federal monitoring for excessive force, thanks to a 2012 Consent Decree. We must also view it in light of the fact that we now have an Attorney General who seeks to undo consent decrees governing police departments. Instead of focusing on police brutality, Sessions has asked Congress for explicit permission to prosecute marijuana offenses in spite of de-criminalization, desperate for ways to lock up more Black people.

The ADAMS Mosque that Jabra was leaving when she was attacked is the same mosque where a mere six months ago, then Attorney General, Loretta Lynch, spoke out against anti-Muslim hate crimes, stating, “When one of us is threatened, we all have to speak out.”  We now have a Justice Department that perverts the law to defend an unconstitutional Muslim ban.

Republicans will point to the shooting of Congressman Scalise and four other people last week as an example of violence from the left.  Violent attacks based on a person’s identity and belief are ALWAYS wrong, but the asymmetry is extreme.  The indignity suffered by people of color is that we are confronting both legal efforts to deprive us of our rights and violent attacks that will go unpunished, often by those acting under color of law.

It is understandable that we react with fear and despair, but we must heed the eloquent words of Harlem Renaissance poet, Claude McKay, who, when grappling with more hostile forces than even those we face, admonished us, in his famous sonnet, “If We Must Die,”

 

“Oh, Kinsmen! We must meet the common foe;

Though far outnumbered, let us show us brave,

And for their thousand blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open grave?

Like men we’ll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back.”