March 4, 2019
The Germans have a word for it— Weltschmerz. Black people invented an entire genre of music to describe it— the bone deep weariness of being trapped in circumstances that you feel powerless to change.
Over the weekend, the news cycle was dominated by the performance of the demented clown in the center ring of the CPAC circus. While numerous journalists devoted hundreds of words to dissecting Trump’s rambling, overlong, angry screed, Black people were forced, once again to process our anger and incredulity over a decision showing just how little our lives matter.
Saturday, Sacramento prosecutor, Anne Marie Schubert, announced that the police officers who murdered Stephon Clark in his grandmother’s backyard for allegedly being guilty of vandalism, would not face charges. Despite the fact that Stephon Clark was unarmed. Despite the fact that police officers fired 20 times. Despite the fact that video shows that the cops continued to shoot him when he fell and provided no medical assistance for six minutes, (Source: “No Charges in Sacramento Police Shooting of Stephon Clark,” by Jose A. Del Real, The New York Times, 3/2/19). None of that was sufficient to dislodge the default assumption that Black people are criminals per se, so any harm we suffer at the hands of the police is deemed justified.
The case followed a numbingly familiar pattern. Protests erupted in the immediate aftermath of Clark’s murder, followed by an investigation which culminated in a decision not to prosecute, coupled with a posthumous effort to smear the victim. The character assassination that always accompanies these cowardly decisions is a callous and cynical ploy. It is calculated to cause maximum pain to the victim’s loved ones, while simultaneously reinforcing the narrative that Black people are always guilty of something, thus ensuring that the cycle repeats itself.
The depressing thing is that, for most Americans, Stephon Clark’s story will barely register. They won’t need to choke back tears of rage and sorrow, watching agents of the state, whose livelihoods they support with their tax dollars, murder their sons, brothers and husbands with impunity. They don’t have to endure living in communities that are treated like enemy war zones by police officers who always seem to capture white supremacist murderers alive, while condemning scores of Black men to death holding nothing more lethal than a wallet or a cellphone.
This is why the news that Trump’s poll numbers ticked up this week, even after the botched “summit” with a murderous dictator and the damning testimony of Michael Cohen, did not surprise us (Source: “NBC News/WSJ poll: 2020 race will be uphill for Trump, but he has strong party loyalty,” by Mark Murray, NBCNews.com, 3/3/19). This is why, while many of us cheer Jerrold Nadler’s decision to unleash a torrent of document requests on Trump and his associates to expose his myriad crimes, we are skeptical that it will make a difference (Source: “House Democrats demand documents from more than 80 people and institutions affiliated with Trump,” by Ellen Nakashima, Rachel Bade and John Wagner, The Washington Post, 3/4/19).
That is because, for nearly half of the country, Trump’s corruption, venality, stupidity and sheer laziness, is very much beside the point. As long as Trump is a racist using the power of the state to shore up their fragile egos and unearned advantages through policies grounded in white supremacy, they will support him. As long as his DOJ works to ensure that police officers like those who murdered Stephon Clark never face accountability by dismantling consent decrees covering excessively violent police departments, they will support him. As long as Trump’s Department of Housing and Urban Development overturns rules designed to dismantle residential segregation, they will support him. They will stand behind him as long as his administration works overtime to confine Black and Latinx people to the segregated neighborhoods plagued by substandard housing and underfunded schools that were explicitly designed and maintained by the federal government, (Source: “The Racist Housing Policy That Made Your Neighborhood,” by Alexis C. Madrigal, TheAtlantic.com, 5/22/14).
For Black and Latinx Americans, our disappointment is not with those who steadfastly support Trump, but with those who benefit enough from the status quo to be decidedly incurious about the basis for the tremendous wealth and opportunity gap in this country and frustratingly unwilling to make any effort to narrow it. Makes me wanna holler.