February 21, 2022
These are demoralizing days. For the last several weeks, we have been living with the threat of impending World War, as Putin escalates the number of troops surrounding Ukraine and lies about it. Black History Month has been marked by book bans and the prohibition of the very teaching of Black History. Then, on Friday, we received a stark reminder that the quickest way to prove your “patriotism” in this country is to display utter contempt for Black people.
How else can we explain the appalling performance of Judge Regina Chu in the sentencing of Kim Potter. Potter, a Brooklyn Center, Minnesota veteran police officer was convicted of first and second degree manslaughter in the killing of 20 year old Daunte Wright over a traffic stop. Judge Chu sentenced Potter to a mere two years, one third of the minimum recommended sentence for the crime that she committed. The Judge choked up while delivering a slap on the wrist to the officer who recklessly took Daunte Wright’s life. Clearly Judge Chu was more pained by the thought of imposing any accountability on Potter for killing Daunte Wright, than by the loss suffered by Daunte’s mother, father and child, (Source: “Family: Judge in Potter case swayed by ‘white woman tears,’” by Steve Karnowski, Associated Press, abcnewsgo.com, 2/19/22).
Potter’s light sentence can be seen as just the latest example of privileging white comfort over Black lives, but in truth, it is evidence of a much darker fact of American history. For most of this country’s history there was simply no consequence for the taking of a Black person’s life. For our first 244 years on this continent, we were considered property with no rights of our own. After the Civil War, the brief glimmer of hope that we might flourish as equal citizens thanks to the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments was extinguished by the withdrawal of federal troops from the South in 1877 and the passage of Jim Crow laws throughout the former Confederacy.
It took nearly 100 years and murder of Black people and their white allies for Black people to gain the most basic of civil rights. The Voting Rights Act of 1965 was only passed after the brutal assaults on the Edmund Pettus Bridge were broadcast on the evening news, (Source: “How Selma’s Bloody Sunday Became A Turning Point in the Civil Rights Movement,” by Christopher Klein, History.com, 3/6/15, updated 7/18/20). It took the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King to pass the Fair Housing Act in 1968, (Source: “The Fair Housing Act was languishing in Congress. Then Martin Luther King, Jr. was killed,” by DeNeen L. Brown, The Washington Post, 4/11/18).
Despite purchasing a modest measure of equality through bloodshed, the backlash was immediate. In 1968, Richard Nixon harnessed white fear and resentment to capture the presidency. Nixon understood that many white Americans viewed civil rights for Black Americans as a “zero-sum equation, with African-American gains translating into white losses,” (Source: “How Richard Nixon captured white rage— and laid the groundwork for Donald Trump,” by Scott Laderman, The Washington Post, 11/3/19).
Republicans have used this strategy to secure electoral victory ever since, eroding more and more of the gains won in the movements for equal rights with each successive administration. They know that the success of this approach depends upon keeping white Americans in a constant state of fear, anger and ignorance. The erasure of actual American history is a linchpin of their strategy. The summer of 2020 showed that exposure to the truth of how this country has treated its Black, indigenous, Latinx and Asian citizens galvanized a majority of Americans to take action to push for a more egalitarian society.
The propaganda campaign we have witnessed in the last two years is the direct result. It began with Trump’s Executive Order establishing a “1776 Commission” to rebut The 1619 Project, continued with Christopher Rufo’s assault on Critical Race Theory and has reached its crescendo in the proliferation of laws seeking to ban teaching about racism and bias. The truth is, in the fight for a multicultural democracy, knowledge is our greatest weapon. We can’t afford not to use it.
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