don't give up, part 2: the movement is still non-violent
/To watch or listen to Dr. Kellett read this essay, visit the Expand Your Us YouTube Channel here https://youtu.be/fi00yPvbcoA
In 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson established a National Commission on Civil Disorders and asked them to investigate, explain, and help prevent the protests, police and National Guard reactions, violence and widespread arrests that occurred in the summer of 1965. The Commission was chaired by Governor Kerner, of Illinois, and he was charged with explaining why the US Government’s effort to recognize and ensure Civil Rights was neither trusted nor considered enough by the people in the streets.
We find ourselves in a similar moment. I think many Americans are wondering why protests are still happening. What do they want? What will satisfy them? People who were leaning in, listening and learning, participating in their first protest only a month ago are now wondering why they were sympathetic. It seems to have gone on too long, and while many are all in, others are turning away in skepticism. It’s helpful to contextualize our moment with the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s; what do we know about how white Americans often respond to moments of Black protest?
There is a long history of powerful folks saying they want to be allies in the fight against systemic injustice, and then almost immediately criticizing the way victims respond to injustice. We say we want to help, but then pretty quickly demonstrate that we only want to help if we can be In Charge and do it our way. We act like we know how to bring about change, letting our comfort level determine the pace (instead of the level of threat or desperation they experience). Rather than appreciating the fact that a wounded person might be the expert on how to stop the system that wounds them, we assume we know best, relying on cultural norms that give powerful white people unquestioned authority in brown spaces. Learning from the past, allies today need to ask themselves what role their need for comfort or control plays in their willingness to change our unjust status quo. Part of the work before us now is to learn that we don’t have all the answers, and we might need to quietly stand under, behind, or with a hurting person. If we believe that our society has problematic racialized thinking, and that we can play a role in reforming it, we can neither dictate their methods or strategies for reform, nor explain how to appropriately express their grief.
Looking further into our past, we see how often new partners leave racial reform movements because they don’t like the intensity or they fear violence. Of course there are folks who say now and then, “King [read, non-violence] didn’t work, we need to follow Malcolm or Garvey;” however, then and now, intentional anarchy and violence is an incredibly rare position. Nevertheless, as we see this month in Portland and other cities, sometimes oppression leads to rage that results in violence (perpetrated or provoked by a variety of stakeholders). Violence and looting are destructive, and rarely lead to lasting or positive reform; in fact they more frequently serve as excuses for the status quo to remain.
America has a rich history of white folks exacerbating black violence in order to resist change. Then and now, when “hearts and minds” change and conversations begin, folks find a reason to bail, dismissing the whole movement as violent. Below the surface of this characterization is a worn out stereotype that people of color are violent, like animals. The reality is that white men with power have inflicted more violence on people in America than any other group. When white men rape women, commit fraud, start fires , vandalize or perpetrate mass shootings, we respond to them as individual incidents, making personal exceptions without condemning the whole race or gender. When millions of Black and white people peacefully protest, and a few hundred react violently, we feel justified to wash our hands of them because they are ‘always so violent.’
I expose these patterns to explain why folks feel dismissed or betrayed when white people say, “I’m with you, but feel weird about your looting/violence/shouting/causing a scene” (King’s letter from the Birmingham Jail is pretty helpful here, too). When we lead with concerns about rare looting or violence, we evoke a history in which underlying issues were erased or ignored. A brief period of violence is used to silence outrage about centuries of wrong and racialized hatred.
As allies, we have to advocate BOTH for non-violent resistance, and disrupt norms until structures actually change. We can’t say, “my entrance fee is for you to make me feel better about condemning the looting/violence...THEN I’ll stick around to hear about systemic racialized oppression.”
We can’t say, “I’m with you, but don’t be rude. Or impatient. Or violent. Slow down and it will change.” Instead of asking people of color to pay what I call an ‘entrance fee’ to keep you involved, put your energy, body, money, influence, prayers and votes behind clear policy changes that expose injustice, reduce harmful bias and expand opportunity.
There are many reasons to give up.
Rocking the boat and challenging powerful status quos is hard work. Making normalized behaviors uncomfortable is very effective in affecting change, but let’s be honest: It is wildly uncomfortable! We live in an age of Cancelling. While it is reasonable to fear being cancelled, don’t let that fear lead you to give up in the righteous fight to increase equity and to stop racial injustice. Those who like the status quo as it is will tell you if you are sympathetic, or support the movement, you must absolutely support every single word ever uttered or action committed by any member of the movement. Not so. Reject that binary and welcome instead the nuance required for complicated, high stakes collaboration. With nearly every single affiliation in my life, there are some aspects that I adore, and others I could do without (or actively oppose). You can’t be married for as long as I have if you pretend that one concerning habit is a reason to bail. If you think our country largely rewards and punishes along racial lines, and if you think we have some toxic habits in our structures and institutions, then don’t give up on our moment to improve the way we treat each other—in neighborhoods, schools, jails, around water coolers, the halls of Congress and the Oval Office.
In August I’m back to posting every other week. First up, we’ll learn what we can from President Johnson’s Kerner Report on the Civil Rights Movement.
