America’s Unbridged Racial Divide
Last week’s killings of two black men by white police and the killing of five
Dallas police officers by a black sniper exacerbated America’s racial tensions
which have roots going back generations, recalls Michael Winship.
By Michael Winship
Philando Castile and I share birthdays in July. This year, I celebrated mine
with friends and family. But Castile’s friends and family are mourning his
death, killed by a police officer in the St. Paul, Minnesota, suburbs after he
was pulled over for a broken taillight.
He would have been 33. I am decades older — older now, in fact, than my own
father when he died. And I am white.
My mother was from central Texas and my father from western New York, about 115
miles southwest of the small upstate town where I grew up. Their geographically
disparate marriage was a product of the World War II disruptions that found men
and women marrying people they met from far away instead of the boy or girl next
door.
Part of my Texas grandfather’s family had come there from Alabama and I’m sure
that if I dug deep enough into the genealogy, I would find Confederate veterans
and very possibly slaveholders. My mother occasionally claimed that at least one
family member had been in the KKK, but I have no idea whether it was true or
simply said to shock her damn Yankee children.
Visiting relatives in Texas as a boy in the early 1960s, I remember seeing
whites-only drinking fountains and restrooms in a local department store. I
watched the civil rights struggle of the ‘60s on TV and in the papers: George
Wallace standing in the door at the University of Alabama to keep two AfricanAmerican students from enrolling; three young men disappearing during the
Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1963; the 1965 march from Selma to Montgomery; the
passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, the assassinations of Medgar
Evers, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr. and Jack and Bobby Kennedy.
Growing up in rural New York State, there was none of the overt public
segregation I’d seen in Texas. Tolerance was taught at home, church and school.
We even read Richard Wright’s Native Son and Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man in
English class. But for the kids in my hometown, “The Talk” you had with your
parents was about the birds and bees, not about how to behave when stopped by a
policeman.
Subdued Racism
And discrimination was there, all right. Racial stereotypes too often flourished
and crude jokes were told. The very few black families were middle-class; many,
if not most, of them were professionals at the veterans’ hospital there,
successful and upwardly mobile. Even so, there were whispers of efforts to keep
African-American families from moving into certain white neighborhoods, whispers
loud enough that even a youngster like me could hear.
I moved to Washington, DC, to go to school a year and a half after riots had
burned the city in the wake of the King assassination. The capital was majority
African-American then, but still I lived in white neighborhoods and contact and
communication were rarer than they should have been.
I moved to New York and worked as publicist on the public affairs show Black
Journal and handled press for such African-American filmmakers as Bill Miles.
When I got into television production, I worked with many men and women of
color. Friendships were formed.
None of it has been enough, for there are two things I know. First, as hard as I
might try, I can never ever understand what it is like to be black in America,
can never know what it’s like to be discriminated against or abused or pulled
over and hassled, maybe even killed, just because of the color of my skin.
Writing in The Atlantic about last week’s murders of Philando Castile, Alton
Sterling and five white Dallas police officers, Ta-Nehisi Coates notes:
“Wanton discrimination is definitional to the black experience, and very often
it is law enforcement which implements that discrimination with violence. A
community consistently subjected to violent discrimination under the law will
lose respect for it, and act beyond it. When such actions stretch to mass murder
it is horrific. But it is also predictable.”
So I can condemn the murder of innocent black men and white police officers but
have damn little, if any, right to pass judgment on or criticize those peaceably
struggling to overcome centuries of racism, except to be supportive and try when
I can or when I’m asked to do what I can to help.
Second, I know that no matter how liberal or progressive I profess to be, no
matter how successfully, how diligently I seek to be enlightened and nuanced in
my understanding of the world and those around me, I know that there still is a
tiny, virulent nugget, a germ of prejudice that exists deep within me — the
product of those stereotypes and awful jokes of childhood and adolescence, and
that it must always be powerfully held at bay by reason, understanding and love.
Trump’s Allies
That is why it is so frightening to see how in others that vein of hatred has
been exposed and encouraged to grow strong again by the candidacy of Donald
Trump and far too many of his supporters. Nicholas Confessore reports in The New
York Times:
“In countless collisions of color and creed, Donald J. Trump’s name evokes an
easily understood message of racial hostility … passions aroused and channeled
by Mr. Trump take many forms, from earnest if muddled rebellion to deeper and
more elaborate bigotry. …
“[O]n the flatlands of social media, the border between Mr. Trump and white
supremacists easily blurs. He has retweeted supportive messages from racist or
nationalist Twitter accounts to his 9 million followers… In fact, Mr. Trump’s
Twitter presence is tightly interwoven with hordes of mostly anonymous accounts
trafficking in racist and anti-Semitic attacks. When Little Bird, a social media
data mining company, analyzed a week of Mr. Trump’s Twitter activity, it found
that almost 30 percent of the accounts Mr. Trump retweeted in turn followed one
or more of 50 popular self-identified white nationalist accounts.”
And now Trump makes the outrageous and completely unfounded claim that Black
Lives Matter and other activists held a moment of silence for Micah Johnson, the
murderer of the Dallas policemen.
“The other night you had 11 cities potentially in a blow-up stage,” Trump lied
to an Indiana rally on Wednesday. “Marches all over the United States — and
tough marches. Anger. Hatred. Hatred! Started by a maniac! And some people ask
for a moment of silence for him. For the killer!”
Trump’s demagoguery, appeal to white fear and not-so-subtle incitement to
violence at its worst.
The mind reels, the heart and soul cry out. Events of the last few days have
brought to the forefront a mix of issues both profound and perplexing, from race
in America and extremist politics to the nature of law and order, the
militarization of the police and the gun violence that kills both police and
innocent bystanders of every color and creed.
What I do know is this: to quote former President George W. Bush, of all people,
when he spoke at Tuesday’s interfaith service for the slain Dallas policemen,
“Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples while judging ourselves
by our best intentions, and this has strained our bonds of understanding and
common purpose.”
And I think I know a big reason why Black Lives Matter: because for far too long
they have mattered too little or not at all. Amends must be made and attention
must be paid. Now.
Michael Winship is the Emmy Award-winning senior writer of Moyers & Company and
BillMoyers.com, and a former senior writing fellow at the policy and advocacy
group Demos. Follow him on Twitter at @MichaelWinship. [This story originally
appeared at http://billmoyers.com/story/dont-know-much-know-black-lives-matter/]
Which Democrat Stood for Civil Rights?
The conventional wisdom is that Hillary Clinton is more committed to the
African-American community than Bernie Sanders and thus deserves the black vote
but Clinton supported the drive toward mass incarceration, vowing to bring young
“super-predators to heel,” as Marjorie Cohn recalls.
By Marjorie Cohn
Twenty years after the so-called “trial of the century,” FX is presenting the
miniseries “The People v. O.J. Simpson.” Like 100 million other people across
the country, I watched the 1995 murder trial on television. I also was a legal
commentator for CBS News and Court TV.
Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of Justice, a book I coauthored with veteran CBS News correspondent David Dow, was based largely on the
Simpson case. I use transcripts and examples from the trial in my evidence and
criminal procedure classes at Thomas Jefferson School of Law in San Diego. I am
still convinced that race played a major role in the not-guilty verdict.
It is no surprise that the miniseries begins with the vicious 1991 beating of
Rodney King and the riots that ensued after the 1992 acquittal of the four Los
Angeles Police Department officers who assaulted King. The incident, which had
been recorded on videotape, went viral.
The jurors in the Simpson trial were well aware of the King case. Nine of the
jurors were African-American, and one was Latino. The case was tried in downtown
Los Angeles. These jurors knew the LAPD was notorious for committing misconduct,
especially against blacks, and they could well believe that the police had
framed Simpson The prosecution made several strategic errors that enabled the
jury to find reasonable doubt. Since the jurors were sequestered for nine
months, they became a tight unit. It didn’t take them long to agree on the notguilty verdict.
During the preliminary hearing, LAPD Detective Mark Fuhrman denied that he had
used the N-word in the previous 10 years. At trial, the defense presented two
witnesses who testified that Fuhrman had recently used the expletive. Since the
preliminary hearing was televised, these defense witnesses came forward after
seeing Fuhrman’s testimony on TV. The issue shifted from Simpson’s guilt to
Fuhrman’s racism.
As prosecutor Marcia Clark intoned during the trial, there was “a mountain of
evidence” against Simpson. His blood was discovered at the crime scene in
Brentwood, an affluent neighborhood of Los Angeles, and blood matching the
victims, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman, was found on a glove. Three
different laboratories analyzed the DNA, but Simpson’s “dream team” of top
lawyers challenged the collection of the blood evidence and raised the issue of
possible contamination. The jury apparently believed that Fuhrman, a racist,
could have planted the bloody glove on Simpson’s property.
Blacks and whites, by and large, reacted differently to the not-guilty verdict,
according to a Los Angeles Times poll. While most white people thought Simpson
was guilty, many African-Americans felt vindicated by the verdict. For blacks,
Columbia professor John McWhorter wrote in The New York Times, “it was about the
centrality of police brutality to black Americans’ very sense of self.”
Viewing the verdict 20 years later through the prism of the Black Lives Matter
movement, it is not difficult to understand. We see unjustified killings of
black men all too often. Trayvon Martin, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray, Michael
Brown and many others come to mind. “Talk to most black people about racism,”
McWhorter noted, “and you need only count the seconds before the cops come up.”
The country’s polarization between “black lives matter” and “all lives matter”
and the pundits’ divergent opinions on Beyoncé’s Super Bowl halftime
performance parallel the racial divide we saw in the aftermath of the Simpson
trial.
Many white people have tried to dilute the critical slogan “black lives matter”
by saying, well, “all lives matter.” Of course they do, but the history of this
country is permeated with institutional racism and prejudice. Beyoncé’s dancers
were dressed as Black Panthers, and in her video for her newest single,
“Formation,” released the day before the Super Bowl, she dramatized the racist
response to the Katrina tragedy by lying on a New Orleans police car as it sank
into floodwaters.
We have come a long way since the days of slavery and Jim Crow, and we do have a
black president. But institutional racism is unfortunately alive and well in the
United States. Mass incarceration, racial profiling, infant mortality and lack
of access to quality education and health care all disproportionately affect
African-Americans.
As we ponder whom to support in the presidential primaries, let us ask ourselves
which candidate will passionately and tirelessly fight racism on the
institutional level. That means creating jobs, implementing universal health
care, ending the militarism of the police and advocating legislation to reduce
the draconian sentences that disproportionately impact African-Americans.
It is commonly thought that Hillary Clinton is more committed to the black
community than Bernie Sanders is. But in the 1980s, when Clinton was the first
lady of Arkansas, she vilified public school teachers and their union. Many or
most of them were African-American, and as legal scholar and The New Jim Crow
author Michelle Alexander has pointed out, the U.S. prison population increased
more under Bill Clinton than any other president. He supported racial disparity
in sentencing and the heavy-handed “three strikes.”
When Hillary Clinton advocated for the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law
Enforcement Act, which created 60 new death penalty offenses, provided $9.7
billion for prisons and eliminated inmate education programs, “she used racially
coded rhetoric to cast black children as animals,” Alexander wrote in The
Nation.
Clinton said at the time, “They are not just gangs of kids anymore. They are
often the kinds of kids that are called ‘super-predators.’ No conscience, no
empathy. We can talk about why they ended that way, but first we have bring them
to heel.” Bring them to heel. …
When civil rights icon John Lewis announced that the political action committee
of the Congressional Black Caucus was endorsing Hillary Clinton in the 2016
presidential election, he said he had never encountered Bernie Sanders during
the civil rights movement. But as Tim Murphy points out in Mother Jones, Sanders
was very active in the movement at the University of Chicago. As president of
the University of Chicago’s Congress of Racial Equality, Sanders organized
pickets and sit-ins. He was arrested for resisting arrest when he protested
segregation.
As Democrats make their choice for presidential nominee, all of us must ask
which candidate would better serve the interests of all of us and work to end
racism in every possible way.
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, criminal defense
attorney, and former president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is co-author
(with David Dow) of “Cameras in the Courtroom: Television and the Pursuit of
Justice.” See http://marjoriecohn.com/. You can follow her on Twitter at
@marjoriecohn. [This article first appeared on Truthdig
[http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/lessons_from_the_oj_simpson_case_for_the_pr
esidential_race_20160217]
The Battle over Dr. King’s Message
From the Archive: Martin Luther King Day is a rare moment in American life when
people reflect on the ideals that guided Dr. King’s life and led to his death.
Thus, the struggle over his message is intense, pitting a bland conventional
view against a radical call for profound change, said Brian J. Trautman in 2014.
By Brian J. Trautman (Originally published on Jan. 20, 2014)
Most Americans know Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as one of the Twentieth
Century’s most revered voices for racial equality, the charismatic leader of the
American Civil Rights movement, who gave the famous “I Have A Dream” speech at
the Lincoln Memorial. Perhaps they even know a thing or two about his role in
the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Birmingham Campaign.
This knowledge, by and large, derives from compulsory education and mainstream
media. It is significantly less likely, however, that very many Americans know
much at all, if anything, about King’s radical and controversial activities
related to the issues of poverty and militarism, particularly the latter.
King highlighted three primary forms of violence, oppression and injustice in
American society and across the world: poverty, racism and militarism. He
referred to these as the “triple evils,” and considered them to be interrelated
problems, existing in a vicious and intractable cycle, and standing as
formidable barriers to achieving the Beloved Community, a brotherly society
built upon and nurtured by love, nonviolence, peace and justice. King posited
that when we resisted any one evil, we in turn weakened all evils, but that a
measurable and lasting impact would require us to address all three.
King’s work to educate about and eradicate poverty was among his greatest
passions. In “The Octopus of Poverty,” a statement appearing in The Mennonite in
1965, King observed, “There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however,
is that we now have the resources to get rid of it.” Accordingly, “the time has
come for an all-out world war against poverty.”
He strongly believed “the rich nations,” namely the United States, had a moral
responsibility to care for its most vulnerable populations, noting that such
“nations must use their vast resources of wealth to develop the underdeveloped,
school the unschooled, and feed the unfed.” King held, “ultimately a great
nation is a compassionate nation,” and maintained that “no individual or nation
can be great if it does not have a concern for ‘the least of these.”
In late 1967, King announced the Poor People’s Campaign, an innovative effort
designed to educate Americans on poverty issues and recruit both poor people and
antipoverty activists for nonviolent social change. The priority of the project
was to march on, and to occupy, if you will, Washington and to demand the
Congress pass meaningful legislation to improve the social and economic status
of the poor, through directed measures such as jobs, unemployment insurance,
health care, decent homes, a fair minimum wage, and education.
Alas, Dr. King was assassinated only weeks before the actual march took place.
And while the march went ahead as planned in May of 1968, it is thought that the
lack of substantive change to result was due in large part to King’s absence.
Still, a positive outcome of the initiative was a heightened public awareness of
the nation’s growing poor population.
Perhaps most controversial were King’s positions on militarism and U.S. foreign
policy. In “Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?” published in 1967,
King said of war and its consequences: “A true revolution of values will lay
hands on the world order and say of war- ‘This way of settling differences is
not just.’ This way of burning human beings with napalm, of filling our nation’s
homes with orphans and widows, of injecting poisonous drugs of hate into the
veins of peoples normally humane, of sending men home from dark and bloody
battlefields physically handicapped, psychologically deranged, cannot be
reconciled with wisdom, justice and love.” He cautioned that “a nation that
continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on
programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
King’s most pointed speech against militarism was “Beyond Vietnam: A Time to
Break Silence,” delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967,
a year to the day before he was assassinated. While King’s popularity among
political allies and his inner circle was already beginning to wane because of
his increasing public criticism of U.S. foreign policy and the growing war in
Vietnam, the Beyond Vietnam speech was to become his most public dissent of the
war to date, a war still largely unopposed by the majority.
To speak out in opposition to the war, he acknowledged, was personally
necessitated, asserting, “because my conscience leaves me no other choice.” With
such a call to conscience, “a time comes when silence is betrayal.” And in the
present day, argued King, “that time has come for us in relation to Vietnam.”
In the speech King calls the United States “the greatest purveyor of violence in
the world today” and questions why money is being spent to wage war on foreign
lands against foreign people while the war on poverty at home was being
neglected, financially and otherwise. The major media of the time denounced the
speech and King lost a great deal of support among his colleagues and the
American people for it.
We owe it ourselves and our children and grandchildren, as well as our
communities and nation to learn and teach about and take up King’s efforts
focused not only on ending racism but all three of the evils against which he
untiringly stood. Only then will we find ourselves closer to achieving King’s
dream of the Beloved Community.
A small but important step toward this goal is to volunteer, as my family and I
do, with a charitable and progressive cause on the Martin Luther King, Jr.
holiday, a national day of service.
Brian J. Trautman writes for PeaceVoice, is a military veteran, an instructor of
peace studies at Berkshire Community College in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, and a
peace activist. On Twitter @TrautBri.
MLK and the Curse of ‘Moderation’
From the Archive: When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. went to jail to focus
national attention on the injustice of segregation, he was stung by criticism
from Christian clergy who feared upsetting the status quo and urged
“moderation,” prompting his historic rejoinder from the Birmingham jail, as Rev.
Howard Bess recalled in 2014.
By Rev. Howard Bess (Originally published on Jan. 24, 2014)
Martin Luther King Jr. was my contemporary, a person whom I supported in his
demand for full inclusion of people of color in the life of America. Yet, as
that history played out, I did not fully realize the greatness of King and the
significance of the events of the late Fifties and the early Sixties.
As we look back on those events, there are an endless number of reasons why Dr.
King’s statue stands on the Tidal Basin across from the Jefferson Memorial in
Washington DC, and why King’s birthday is a national holiday.
I have read his writings, and his “I Have a Dream” speech is etched on my heart
and mind. But I believe his letter to clergy, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is
his greatest communication articulating his cause and one of the great documents
of American history.
I marvel at the document because it was written from a jail cell where King had
no access to reference materials. The date of the letter was April 16, 1963,
when the modern civil rights movement for people of color was still relatively
young, but the movement was becoming stronger and the opposition was becoming
more entrenched.
The letter came from what was stored in King’s maturing mind. He wrote on
whatever scraps of paper he could find, addressing the letter to “My Dear Fellow
Clergymen,” a group of clergy who had written a letter to King to discourage his
coming to Birmingham. These clergy counseled patience and moderation and
questioned why King, as an “outsider” had come to their Alabama community.
In the letter, King wrote, “While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I
came across your recent statement calling my present activities ‘unwise and
untimely.’” Then, he responded by saying that Negroes had waited long enough and
that “moderation” was not useful in righting wrongs of segregation that had been
inflicted on African-Americans over generations:
“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the
eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’
far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left
his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners
of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom
beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian
call for aid.”
In the letter, King called not for moderation or patience but for non-violent
and peaceful extremism, arguing that clergymen , the very people who should be
at the forefront calling for justice in the name of Jesus, were betraying the
Christian gospel by calling for moderation and gradualism. King wrote:
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by
the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to
engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those
who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I
have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing
familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’
We have waited for
more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights.”
Disappointing Churches
King’s letter moves on to express his “disappointment with the churches.” King
was an ordained Baptist minister, the son and grandson of Baptist ministers. He
had been nurtured and educated by churches and their institutions. He loved the
churches, knew church history, and knew that movements to reform society and to
deliver society from injustice many times had come from churches and clergy. He
wrote:
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely
disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable
conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom
is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white
moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative
peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence
of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I
cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes
he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical
concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more
convenient season.’
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than
absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much
more bewildering than outright rejection.
“I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do
not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something
wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the
church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual
blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall
lengthen.
“When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in
Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white
church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would
be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents,
refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all
too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent
behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
“In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the
white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause
and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just
grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would
understand. But again I have been disappointed.
“I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the
other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I
have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing
heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious
education buildings.
“Over and over I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of people worship here?
Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett
dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when
Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their
voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise
from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?’
“Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept
over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of
love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
Pinnacle of a Message
Most reviewers of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. see his “I Have a Dream”
speech as the high point of his career. I beg to differ. Birmingham and the
letter may have been the pinnacle of his career as he confronted not simply
society but Christian churches and their clergy.
The Letter from Birmingham Jail was published in leading Christian publications
and in the nation’s most read newspapers. His confrontation with moderation was
blunt yet gracious. Segregation and injustice were not his primary targets,
rather he turned his searchlight of truth-telling on all those who took refuge
in moderation.
Not many of those clergy in Birmingham may have understood the significance of
King’s rejoinder, but a large part of the nation took note. Many believe that it
was the Letter from Birmingham Jail that pushed President John F. Kennedy to
initiate civil rights legislation.
Moderation in the face of injustice has been the great disease of Christian
churches. The vast majority of Christian clergy are hiding behind the mission of
saving souls while ignoring the social teachings of Jesus, the one they claim to
serve as their Lord. These clergymen play the game of advocating the cause of
social justice but only with great moderation.
Justice was a centerpiece of the life work of Jesus. As Americans we confess
that justice is for all, even in the NFL. Yet, “moderates” will never make the
dream of justice-for-all a reality. It turns out that the path to hell is not
paved with good intentions; it is paved with moderation.
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in
Palmer, Alaska.
His email address is [email protected].
Is Police Brutality Color-Blind?
The Missouri police shooting death of Michael Brown has spotlighted police
brutality toward blacks but many other Americans, including whites, are finding
themselves the targets of harsher and harsher police tactics, notes Nat Parry.
By Nat Parry
A survey released this week by the Pew Research Center has revealed glaring
differences of views among blacks and whites when it comes to the death of
Michael Brown, an unarmed African-American youth killed by a white police
officer in Ferguson, Missouri, on Aug. 9, and the protests that have followed.
Unfortunately though, the wording of the survey leaves some pertinent questions
unaddressed, focusing on the racial aspect of the controversy while overlooking
the public’s general perception about the problem of police brutality in
America.
Nevertheless, the survey significantly found that blacks are about twice as
likely as whites to say that Brown’s shooting “raises important issues about
race that need to be discussed,” with about 80 percent of African-Americans
agreeing with that statement and whites saying by a 47 percent to 37 percent
margin that the issue of race is getting more attention than it deserves.
Although the Pew survey neglected to ask, it’s possible that at least some of
the white respondents objected to the focus on race because they feel that the
epidemic of police violence cuts across racial lines. As anyone who regularly
follows news pertaining to police brutality knows, the police are generally out
of control across the country and the victims of their brutishness are not just
African-Americans but in fact, Latinos, Asians, and yes, even white people.
In one recent case that received some national attention, police shot and killed
a homeless white man in Albuquerque, New Mexico, sparking a wave of
demonstrations in the city. Police officers gunned down 38-year-old James Boyd
on March 16 in the Sandia foothills following a standoff and after he allegedly
brandished a small knife, authorities said. But a helmet-camera video showed
Boyd agreeing to walk down the mountain, gathering his things and taking a step
toward officers just before they opened fire.
Amid the popular uproar that ensued, the U.S. Justice Department issued a report
on April 10 documenting that the Albuquerque Police Department (APD) has for
years engaged in a pattern of excessive force that violates the U.S.
Constitution and federal law.
The investigation, launched in November 2012, specifically identified three
general patterns of police abuse in Albuquerque:
–APD officers too frequently use deadly force against people who pose a minimal
threat;
–APD officers use “less lethal” force, including tasers, on people who are nonthreatening or unable to comply with orders; and
–Encounters between APD officers and persons with mental illness and in crisis
too frequently result in a use of force or a higher level of force than
necessary.
While these findings specifically pertained to law enforcement practices in
Albuquerque, largely vindicating the grievances of demonstrators protesting the
shooting death of James Boyd, they could just as easily apply to any number of
police departments across the country that engage in similar practices of
excessive force.
United Nations’ Criticism
The national epidemic of police violence has even caught the attention of the
United Nations Human Rights Committee, which earlier this year issued a scathing
report raising serious concerns about human rights abuses in the United States,
including police brutality.
In a section on “Excessive use of force by law enforcement officials,” the UN
found that across the country, there is an unacceptably “high number of fatal
shootings by certain police forces,” as well as “reports of excessive use of
force by certain law enforcement officers including the deadly use of tasers.”
In order to bring U.S. practices in line with international norms on law
enforcement, the UN recommended that the U.S. government should “step up its
efforts to prevent the excessive use of force by law enforcement officers by
ensuring compliance with the 1990 UN Basic Principles on the Use of Force and
Firearms by Law Enforcement Officers” and “ensure that reported cases of
excessive use of force are effectively investigated, alleged perpetrators are
prosecuted and, if convicted, punished with appropriate sanctions.”
This is one area that is severely lacking in the U.S., with killer cops rarely
if ever held accountable for their actions. It is also another major difference
in the perceptions of whites and blacks, according to the Pew survey. In fact,
whites are nearly three times as likely as blacks to express confidence in the
official investigations into the shooting of Michael Brown, with about half of
whites saying they have a great deal or fair amount of confidence in the
investigations, compared to just 18 percent of blacks.
Whites are also less likely than blacks to view the highly militarized and
aggressive police response to the Ferguson street protests a response that has
been widely condemned, including by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and Amnesty
International as problematic, with fully 65 percent of African-Americans saying
the police have gone too far but only 33 percent of whites agreeing. (According
to the Pew survey, 32 percent of whites say the police response has been about
right, while 35 percent offered no response.)
While the framing of the Pew survey may in some ways be lacking, failing to
consider for example the possibility that whites view race as receiving too much
attention because they also feel victimized by police, when combined with the
findings on the police response to the protests and the viability of the
official investigation of Brown’s death, it does appear that there may be some
naiveté on the part of white people when it comes to these issues.
Racial Disparities
Indeed, although police violence to a certain degree does cut across racial and
demographic lines, the reality is, if you are black you are far more likely die
at the hands of a police officer than you would if you are white. A 2007
investigation by ColorLines and the Chicago Reporter found for example that in
ten major cities, there was a disproportionately high number of AfricanAmericans among police shooting victims, particularly in New York, San Diego,
and Las Vegas.
An investigation of the NAACP into police shootings in Oakland,
California, found that out of 45 officer-involved shootings in the city between
2004 and 2008, 37 of those shot were black and none were white. Although onethird of the shootings resulted in fatalities and despite the fact that weapons
were not found in 40 percent of cases, no officers were ever brought up on
criminal charges.
Considering these statistics, the black-white perception divide on the Ferguson
situation may indeed be a cause for concern. While there could be other
unaddressed dynamics at play, including a general ignorance and apathy as it
pertains to the racial disparities in law enforcement, it seems likely that the
concept of white privilege is also playing a significant role.
White privilege, as defined by sociologists, is a system of unearned benefits
granted to white people, providing them with an advantage based on their race,
which enables them to maintain an elevated status in society. As Frances
Kendall describes the concept in Understanding White Privilege, it is “an
institutional, rather than personal, set of benefits granted to those of us,
who, by race, resemble the people who hold the power positions in our
institutions.”
One of those benefits, it is assumed, is the right not to be shot, beaten or
even harassed by police. And by maintaining relative silence over the routine
police brutality that disproportionately affects African-Americans and
expressing general support to cops who are “just doing their jobs,” whites may
think that they can maintain this privilege and hold on to their perceived
immunity from police violence.
If this is the assumption, it is a foolish one indeed. Emboldened by decades of
martial rhetoric emanating from the war on drugs, the war on crime and the war
on terror, and lavished by the Defense Department with advanced military combat
gear through a program authorized by Congress in the 1990s, local police forces
around the country have been militarized to a degree never seen before in the
United States.
The Warrior Cop
Radley Balko, author of the book Rise of the Warrior Cop: The Militarization of
America’s Police Forces, explained the phenomenon in a recent interview on
Democracy Now.
“The transfers from the Pentagon of surplus military equipment we’re talking
tanks, armored personnel carriers, grenade launchers, helicopters that began
early in the Reagan administration informally and then was formalized by
Congress in the 1990s,” he said. “We’ve had millions literally millions of
pieces of military equipment have been exchanged this way. And then, after
September 11th, the Department of Homeland Security started sending out checks
to buy new military-grade equipment from companies that have now sprung up to
build that equipment.”
Balko pointed out that the body responsible for administering these transfers,
the Law Enforcement Support Office, which is part of the Defense Logistics
Agency, boasts the motto, “from warfighter to crimefighter.”
“So, you know,” Balko said, “their very motto sort of portrays a
misunderstanding of the role of soldiers versus the role of police officers. I
think these are two very different jobs. The soldier’s job is to annihilate a
foreign enemy; it’s to kill people and break things. A police officer’s job is
to keep the peace and to protect our constitutional rights.”
In a report released in June, “War Comes Home: The Excessive Militarization of
American Policing,” the American Civil Liberties Union investigated more than
800 SWAT raids conducted by law enforcement agencies in 20 states and the
agencies’ acquisition of military weaponry, vehicles, and equipment.
“We found that police overwhelmingly use SWAT raids not for extreme emergencies
like hostage situations but to carry out such basic police work as serving
warrants or searching for a small amount of drugs,” said Kara Dansky, Senior
Counsel with the ACLU’s Center for Justice.
Wounding a Baby
In one tragic case the ACLU examined, police in Habersham County, Georgia,
carrying out a “no-knock” search warrant for someone suspected of having made a
$50 drug sale, threw a flash-bang grenade into the house that landed in a crib
where a 19-month-old boy was sleeping.
“Just before 3:00 am on a night in May of 2014, a team of SWAT officers armed
with assault rifles burst into the room where the family was sleeping,” the ACLU
explained. “Some of the kids’ toys were in the front yard, but the Habersham
County and Cornelia police officers claimed they had no way of knowing children
might be present. One of the officers threw a flashbang grenade into the room.
It landed in Baby Bou Bou’s crib.”
When the grenade exploded, it blew a hole in the toddler’s face and chest,
exposing his ribs. The blast covered his body in third degree burns and left him
disfigured. The boy’s mother, Alecia Phonesavanh, who is white, told the ACLU,
“This is all about race and class. You don’t see SWAT teams going into a white
collar community, throwing grenades into their homes.”
Despite costing the family $800,000 for the toddler’s medical bills, officials
from Habersham County are now refusing to pay. The cops have defended their
actions, with Police Chief Rick Darby claiming that since there was “nothing to
indicate that there was children present in the home,” throwing a grenade into
someone’s house in the middle of the night was perfectly reasonable.
“If there had been [indications of children present] then we’d have done
something different,” Darby said. An investigation is underway into the handling
of the case, but no arrests of police officers for criminal negligence have been
made.
Cases such as these make one wonder about the mentality of modern-day police
officers, specifically whether they possess anything resembling a conscience or
human empathy. Do they recognize inherent human rights in others, or do they
simply view people as potential threats or as subjects with whom they must
establish their authority at any cost?
Don’t’ Resist
In a Washington Post op-ed on Tuesday, Sunil Dutta of the Los Angeles Police
Department provided some insight into this question, offering practical advice
to civilians on how to avoid being brutalized or killed by cops.
“If you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or
thrown to the ground,” he wrote, “just do what I tell you. Don’t argue with me,
don’t call me names, don’t tell me that I can’t stop you, don’t say I’m a racist
pig, don’t threaten that you’ll sue me and take away my badge.”
Acknowledging that police “field stops” can sometimes amount to unlawful and
unconstitutional harassment, Dutta nevertheless advised civilians to never
question the police about why they are being hassled, and above all, never
contest cops’ authority in any way.
“I know it is scary for people to be stopped by cops,” he wrote. “I also
understand the anger and frustration if people believe they have been stopped
unjustly or without a reason,” adding that he is well aware that “corrupt and
bully cops exist.”
However, “if you believe (or know) that the cop stopping you is violating your
rights or is acting like a bully, I guarantee that the situation will not become
easier if you show your anger and resentment,” he said. Instead of challenging
the cop on the spot or questioning the legitimacy of his or her “field stop,”
Dutta advises that you “Save your anger for later, and channel it appropriately.
Do what the officer tells you to and it will end safely for both of you.”
“Feel free to sue the police,” he says. “Just don’t challenge a cop during a
stop.”
Of course, this is often more easily said than done. While many people have long
ago internalized Dutta’s advice, having learned at an early age that to avoid
being brutalized or thrown in jail, it is always best to demonstrate the utmost
respect during run-ins with the law, at times, this is not always realistic.
Particularly when it comes to individuals who endure police harassment on a
daily basis such as African-American youths living in the ghetto or homeless
people of any color living on the streets there is always a breaking point at
which civilians might on occasion talk back to police or, heaven forbid, fail to
immediately comply with what they feel are unfair or disrespectful police
orders.
At other times, police orders might be confusing or contradictory, such as the
incident last week in Ferguson in which Washington Post reporter Wesley Lowery
was arrested after failing to obey the conflicting commands of two different
police officers who were demanding that he leave a McDonald’s restaurant where
he was filing a story.
“One instructed me to exit to my left,” Lowery explained. “As I turned left,
another officer emerged, blocking my path.” ‘Go another way,’ he said.” At that
point, Lowery, who is white, was slammed against a soda machine and handcuffed.
A Beating Death
Or, consider the tragic case of Kelly Thomas, a white 37-year-old homeless man
who was savagely beaten to death by police in California in July 2011. The full
video of the altercation, which was made public for the first time in May 2012,
demonstrated for all to see that the episode started as routine harassment of a
homeless person, with questioning about where he sleeps at night and requests to
search his belongings.
Police officer Manuel Anthony Ramos then began making contradictory demands of
Thomas, instructing him to sit down, to extend his legs and simultaneously put
his hands on his knees. When Thomas, who suffered from schizophrenia, failed to
immediately comply with the confusing instructions, Ramos held out his fists and
warned Thomas that “they’re getting ready to fuck you up.”
Ramos then proceeded to viciously beat and taser Thomas for about ten minutes,
assisted by several other officers who subsequently joined the assault. Thomas
repeatedly cried out “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” and “Daddy, help me!” as the
officers continued to torture him. He died several days later in a hospital.
After a lengthy legal battle, Ramos was ultimately acquitted of second-degree
murder and involuntary manslaughter. His partner, Jay Cicinelli, who assisted in
the beating of Kelly, was acquitted of involuntary manslaughter and excessive
use of force. As the Associated Press noted, “It was a rare case in which police
officers were charged in a death involving actions on duty. Jurors took less
than two days to reach their verdicts.”
Incidents such as these reveal that, perhaps, police brutality is really more
about power than it is about race. In the U.S., of course, race and power are
historically linked, but then again so too are wealth and power. It is therefore
unwise for whites to think that their racial status their white privilege will
protect them from out-of-control, militarized police forces around the country.
Power, of course, is also intrinsically tied to violence, or what political
scientists call the “monopoly of legitimate physical force.”
Max Weber, one of the most influential political theorists of the Twentieth
Century, defined not just state power but the state itself in terms of the means
that is specific to it, namely, violence.
“Violence,” he wrote, “is not the normal or sole means of the state, but it is
what is specific to the state.” The state “is the sole source of the ‘right’ to
exercise violence,” and must maintain its monopoly over violence in order to
“force those who are ruled to comply with the claimed authority of those
actually ruling.”
This may help explain why police brutality is generally on the rise across the
country, and also more specifically why the police in Ferguson are now employing
such harsh and draconian means to quell the uprising that has taken hold there.
What police despise more than anything is when their authority is challenged,
whether it is by whites, blacks, Asians or Latinos. When they feel the need to
establish authority is when they lash out, which can be either by throwing you
in jail or through excessive force.
And when they do lash out, be advised: white privilege is no protection.
Nat Parry is the co-author of Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W.
Bush.
MLK and the Curse of ‘Moderation’
When Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. went to jail to focus national attention on the
injustice of segregation, he was stung by criticism from Christian clergy who
feared upsetting the status quo and urged “moderation,” prompting his historic
rejoinder from the Birmingham jail, as Rev. Howard Bess recalls.
By Rev. Howard Bess
Martin Luther King Jr. was my contemporary, a person whom I supported in his
demand for full inclusion of people of color in the life of America. Yet, as
that history played out, I did not fully realize the greatness of King and the
significance of the events of the late Fifties and the early Sixties.
As we look back on those events, there are an endless number of reasons why Dr.
King’s statue stands on the Tidal Basin across from the Jefferson Memorial in
Washington DC — and why King’s birthday is a national holiday.
I have read his writings, and his “I Have a Dream” speech is etched on my heart
and mind. But I believe his letter to clergy, “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” is
his greatest communication articulating his cause and one of the great documents
of American history.
I marvel at the document because it was written from a jail cell where King had
no access to reference materials. The date of the letter was April 16, 1963,
when the modern civil rights movement for people of color was still relatively
young, but the movement was becoming stronger and the opposition was becoming
more entrenched.
The letter came from what was stored in King’s maturing mind. He wrote on
whatever scraps of paper he could find, addressing the letter to “My Dear Fellow
Clergymen,” a group of clergy who had written a letter to King to discourage his
coming to Birmingham. These clergy counseled patience and moderation and
questioned why King, as an “outsider” had come to their Alabama community.
In the letter, King wrote, “While confined here in the Birmingham city jail, I
came across your recent statement calling my present activities ‘unwise and
untimely.’” Then, he responded by saying that Negroes had waited long enough and
that “moderation” was not useful in righting wrongs of segregation that had been
inflicted on African-Americans over generations:
“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here. Just as the prophets of the
eighth century B.C. left their villages and carried their ‘thus saith the Lord’
far beyond the boundaries of their home towns, and just as the Apostle Paul left
his village of Tarsus and carried the gospel of Jesus Christ to the far corners
of the Greco Roman world, so am I compelled to carry the gospel of freedom
beyond my own home town. Like Paul, I must constantly respond to the Macedonian
call for aid.”
In the letter, King called not for moderation or patience but for non-violent
and peaceful extremism, arguing that clergymen — the very people who should be
at the forefront calling for justice in the name of Jesus — were betraying the
Christian gospel by calling for moderation and gradualism. King wrote:
“We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by
the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Frankly, I have yet to
engage in a direct action campaign that was ‘well timed’ in the view of those
who have not suffered unduly from the disease of segregation. For years now I
have heard the word ‘Wait!’ It rings in the ear of every Negro with piercing
familiarity. This ‘Wait’ has almost always meant ‘Never.’
We have waited for
more than 340 years for our constitutional and God given rights.”
Disappointing Churches
King’s letter moves on to express his “disappointment with the churches.” King
was an ordained Baptist minister, the son and grandson of Baptist ministers. He
had been nurtured and educated by churches and their institutions. He loved the
churches, knew church history, and knew that movements to reform society and to
deliver society from injustice many times had come from churches and clergy. He
wrote:
“I must make two honest confessions to you, my Christian and Jewish brothers.
First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely
disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable
conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom
is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white
moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative
peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence
of justice; who constantly says: ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I
cannot agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically believes
he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical
concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a ‘more
convenient season.’
“Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than
absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much
more bewildering than outright rejection.
“I must honestly reiterate that I have been disappointed with the church. I do
not say this as one of those negative critics who can always find something
wrong with the church. I say this as a minister of the gospel, who loves the
church; who was nurtured in its bosom; who has been sustained by its spiritual
blessings and who will remain true to it as long as the cord of life shall
lengthen.
“When I was suddenly catapulted into the leadership of the bus protest in
Montgomery, Alabama, a few years ago, I felt we would be supported by the white
church. I felt that the white ministers, priests and rabbis of the South would
be among our strongest allies. Instead, some have been outright opponents,
refusing to understand the freedom movement and misrepresenting its leaders; all
too many others have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent
behind the anesthetizing security of stained glass windows.
“In spite of my shattered dreams, I came to Birmingham with the hope that the
white religious leadership of this community would see the justice of our cause
and, with deep moral concern, would serve as the channel through which our just
grievances could reach the power structure. I had hoped that each of you would
understand. But again I have been disappointed.
“I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the
other southern states. On sweltering summer days and crisp autumn mornings I
have looked at the South’s beautiful churches with their lofty spires pointing
heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlines of her massive religious
education buildings.
“Over and over I have found myself asking: ‘What kind of people worship here?
Who is their God? Where were their voices when the lips of Governor Barnett
dripped with words of interposition and nullification? Where were they when
Governor Wallace gave a clarion call for defiance and hatred? Where were their
voices of support when bruised and weary Negro men and women decided to rise
from the dark dungeons of complacency to the bright hills of creative protest?’
“Yes, these questions are still in my mind. In deep disappointment I have wept
over the laxity of the church. But be assured that my tears have been tears of
love. There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love.”
Pinnacle of a Message
Most reviewers of the life of Martin Luther King Jr. see his “I Have a Dream”
speech as the high point of his career. I beg to differ. Birmingham and the
letter may have been the pinnacle of his career as he confronted not simply
society but Christian churches and their clergy.
The Letter from Birmingham Jail was published in leading Christian publications
and in the nation’s most read newspapers. His confrontation with moderation was
blunt yet gracious. Segregation and injustice were not his primary targets,
rather he turned his searchlight of truth-telling on all those who took refuge
in moderation.
Not many of those clergy in Birmingham may have understood the significance of
King’s rejoinder, but a large part of the nation took note. Many believe that it
was the Letter from Birmingham Jail that pushed President John F. Kennedy to
initiate civil rights legislation.
Moderation in the face of injustice has been the great disease of Christian
churches. The vast majority of Christian clergy are hiding behind the mission of
saving souls while ignoring the social teachings of Jesus, the one they claim to
serve as their Lord. These clergymen play the game of advocating the cause of
social justice but only with great moderation.
On a related front, I have been involved in the struggle for full acceptance of
people who are gay for over 40 years. I have taken my lumps because of my
outspoken insistence that gay people be fully accepted in the life of our
churches and in American society.
I have been shunned, had employment disrupted and was dis-fellowshipped, not
because I am gay but for speaking out about injustice toward gays. In recent
years, however, full acceptance of gay people in America has made great
progress, though we still have a long way to go.
Kind, loving, peaceful extremists for justice are in short supply in our nation
and especially in our Christian churches.
In the Jan. 13 edition of Sports Illustrated, columnist Phil Taylor took on the
National Football League for its tolerance of homophobia in the league. He cited
the case of punter Chris Kluwe, formerly of the Minnesota Vikings. No one was
suggesting that Kluwe is gay. He is, however, a vocal advocate of gay marriage
and full rights for LGBT persons. His coach counseled him toward moderation.
Even though he was identified as one of the league’s best punters, Kluwe is now
unemployed, a free agent.
Taylor’s column makes the case that the National Football League is homophobic
from headquarters to owners, to coaches, to the locker room. Gay players (there
are believed to be many) in the NFL will remain tightly closeted.
Justice was a centerpiece of the life work of Jesus. As Americans we confess
that justice is for all, even in the NFL. Yet, “moderates” will never make the
dream of justice-for-all a reality. It turns out that the path to hell is not
paved with good intentions; it is paved with moderation.
The Rev. Howard Bess is a retired American Baptist minister, who lives in
Palmer, Alaska.
His email address is [email protected].
A Civil Rights Battle over a Streetcar
Even after the Emancipation Proclamation freed African-American slaves in the
Confederacy on Jan. 1, 1863, racial bias was common even far from the rebellious
South. Later that year, blacks fought to get access to horse-drawn streetcars in
San Francisco, writes William Loren Katz.
By William Loren Katz
April 17 is the 150th anniversary of a civil Rights milestone. During the Civil
War, just months after San Francisco’s horse-powered street-car companies
dispatched their street cars with orders to accept only white passengers
African-American citizens began to directly challenge this discrimination.
On April 17, 1863, Charlotte Brown, a young African-American woman from a
prominent family, boarded a street car and was forced off. Determined to assert
her rights, Ms. Brown boarded street cars twice more during 1863 and twice more
was ejected. Each time she began a legal suit against the company.
In May 1863, William Bowen, another African-American, was stopped from boarding
a street car. He brought a civil suit and a criminal assault suit.
Their legal actions came after the African-American community’s successful
campaign to remove the state’s ban on court testimony by African-Americans.
Lifting this ban opened the legal system to challenges by African-American men
and women in the state.
After several years of more direct efforts and legal challenges by the AfricanAmerican women and men of the city, the campaign against street-car segregation
was also successful.
William Loren Katz is the author of Black Women of the Old West and 40 other
history books. His website is: williamlkatz.com
Dulling Down Dr. King’s Message
In life, Martin Luther King Jr. was often demeaned for his radical vision of
peace and justice and not just by crude racists and warmongers but by wellspoken members of the elite. Then, in death, King became a national icon but
with his sharpest criticisms dulled down or forgotten, writes Gary G. Kohls.
By Gary G. Kohls
Where did Martin Luther King draw his courage to risk martyrdom for the cause of
black liberation, to keep on going despite the daily death threats against him
and his family? King was motivated by his unshakable faith in the practicality
of the non-violent gospel ethics of Jesus of Nazareth, teachings that had also
inspired a multitude of similarly silenced courageous and embattled prophets.
Those prophets include such inspirations as Hindu Mohandas Gandhi of India and
Russian Leo Tolstoy, both anti-imperialist and anti-war activists. But such
whistle-blowers always get marginalized, demonized or disappeared by the
Principalities and Powers.
Those shadowy-elite One Percenter groups are usually very adept at censoring
out, via their media empires, the unwanted truths that hinder the agendas of
state, corporate and even church elites, most or all of whom utilize the
violence of racism, militarism, poverty, brain-washing, fear, ignorance and
suspicion to keep the increasingly impoverished and brain-washed masses under
control.
The anti-Vietnam war stance of King, when combined with his leadership efforts
demanding the liberation of blacks, minorities and poor people, was so
intolerable to the powers-that-be that he and his radical left-wing message had
to be eliminated.
The suspicion that King’s gospel-based nonviolent message has been effectively
scrubbed from our consciousness a view widely held in the Christian faith-based
peace-and-justice movement was reinforced for me a few years back when my wife
came back from a trip that included Atlanta’s King Center and all I got out of
the trip was an official tee shirt that had printed on it the “seven steps to
social change.”
That tee shirt was the most radical one available at the center, and it totally
ignored King’s oft-repeated message about the ethics of Jesus. Any non-religious
social justice advocate could have authored the quote. Clearly something is
going on behind the scenes to silence the real voice of the prophet.
As black poet Carl Wendell Hines wrote:
Now that he is safely dead let us praise him
build monuments to his glory
sing hosannas to his name.
Dead men make such convenient heroes:
They cannot rise to challenge the images
we would fashion from their lives.
And besides, it is easier to build monuments
than to make a better world.
So, in support of the assertions above, I submit some quotes from King’s
writings. Most of them won’t even get honorable mention in the media reports
about this Monday’s National Holiday celebrations “honoring” King. We can only
hope that some of the events will talk about King’s and Jesus’s disappearing
truths about Christian nonviolence, the reality that is perhaps the last and
only hope for real peace on earth.
“We have power, a power that cannot be found in bullets and guns, but we have
power. It is a power as old as the insights of Jesus of Nazareth and as modern
as the techniques of Mahatma Gandhi. … The Christian doctrine of love operating
through the Gandhian method of nonviolence is one of the most potent weapons
available.”
“Evil may so shape events that Caesar may occupy a palace and Christ a cross,
but one day that same Christ will rise up and split history into AD and BC so
that even the life of Caesar must be dated by His name … God is more fundamental
than sin or evil. Good Friday must give way to Easter Sunday.”
“I have traveled the length and breadth of Alabama, Mississippi and all the
other southern states. I have looked at her beautiful churches with their lofty
spires pointing heavenward. I have beheld the impressive outlay of her massive
religious education buildings. Over and over again I have found myself asking:
‘What kind of people worship here? Who is their God?'”
“The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the
state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the
critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its
prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or
spiritual authority.”
“In recent months several people have said to me: ‘Since violence is the new
cry, isn’t there a danger you will lose touch with the people and be out of step
with the times if you don’t change your views on nonviolence?’ My answer is
always the same. Occasionally in life one develops a conviction so precious and
meaningful that he will stand on it till the end. That is what I have found in
nonviolence.
“I have decided I am going to do battle for my philosophy. You ought to believe
something in life, believe that thing so fervently that you will stand up with
it until the end of your days. I can’t believe that God wants us to hate. I am
tired of violence. What kind of nation is it that applauds nonviolence whenever
Negroes face white people in the streets of the United States but applauds
violence and burning and death when these same Negroes are sent to the fields of
Vietnam?”
“A time comes when silence is betrayal but the calling to speak is often a
vocation of agony.”
“A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense
than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death.”
“We must pursue peaceful ends by peaceful means. Many people cry, ‘Peace, Peace’
but they refuse to do the things that make for peace. … The stage of history is
replete with the chants and choruses of the conquerors of old who came killing
in pursuit of peace.”
“We shall match your capacity to inflict suffering by our capacity to endure
suffering. We will meet your physical force with soul force. Do to us what you
will; we will still love you. We cannot in conscience obey your unjust laws.
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as cooperation with
good.”
“We must pursue peaceful ends by peaceful means. I’m committed to nonviolence
absolutely, I am just not going to kill anybody, whether it’s in Vietnam or here
at home. … If nonviolent protest fails this summer, I will continue to preach
and teach it. … I plan to stand by nonviolence (because) only a refusal to hate
or kill can put an end to the chain of violence in the world and lead toward
community where people live together without fear.”
“Violence and nonviolence agree that suffering can be a very powerful social
force. But there is a difference. Violence says suffering can be a powerful
social force by inflicting it on somebody else, so this is what we do in war. …
The nonviolent say that suffering becomes a powerful social force when you
willingly accept the violence on yourself, so that self-suffering stands at the
center of the nonviolent movement. …
“There is no easy way to create a world where people can live together … but if
such a world is created … it will be accomplished by persons who have the
language to put an end to suffering by willingly suffering themselves rather
than inflicting suffering on others. … Unearned suffering is redemptive.”
“Those who adhere to or follow the philosophy of nonviolence must follow a
consistent principle of non-injury. They must consistently refuse to inflict
injury upon another.”
“Humanity is waiting for something other than blind imitation of the past. … If
we want truly to advance a step further, if we want to turn over a new leaf and
really set a new man afoot, we must begin to turn humanity away from the long
and desolate night of violence. May it not be that the new person that the world
needs is the nonviolent person. … A dark, desperate, sin-sick world waits for
this new kind of person, this new kind of power.”
“I am in eternal opposition to poverty, racism and militarism and committed to
nonviolence absolutely.”
“What is the summum bonum of life? I think I have discovered the highest good.
It is love. This principle stands at the center of the cosmos. As John says,
‘God is love.’ He who loves is a participant in the being of God. He who hates
does not know God.”
“There is no graded scale of essential worth (among people); there is no divine
right of another. Every human being has etched in his or her personality the
indelible stamp of the Creator. Every person must be respected because God loves
him or her. The worth of an individual does not lie in the measure of his
intellect, his racial origin or his social position. Human worth lies in
relatedness to God. An individual has value because he or she has value to God.”
“The greatest purveyor of violence in the world today is my own government.”
“If America’s soul becomes totally poisoned part of the autopsy must read
Vietnam. It can never be saved so long as it destroys the deepest hopes of men
the world over.”
“War is not the answer. We still have a choice today; nonviolent coexistence or
violent co-annihilation. We must move past indecision to action. We must find
new ways to speak for peace and justice throughout the developing world a world
that borders on our doors. If we do not act we shall surely be dragged down the
long dark and shameful corridors of time reserved for those who possess power
without compassion, might without morality and strength without sight.”
“Now let us begin. Now let us rededicate ourselves to the long and bitter but
beautiful struggle for a new world. This is the calling of the sons (and
daughters) of God, and our brothers (and sisters) wait eagerly for our
response.”
Gary G. Kohls is a retired physician, a co-founder of Every Church A Peace
Church, and an anti-war activist from Duluth, Minnesota.
National Outrage over Trayvon Case
Despite attempts in the right-wing media to smear 17-year-old Trayvon Martin
with references to minor school disciplinary problems, the overall reaction
across the United States has been outrage over his slaying and the lack of an
arrest, what Sherwood Ross calls a positive change in a nation with a long
history of racism.
By Sherwood Ross
The tragic killing of Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Florida, has provoked national
outrage and is also the subject of a Justice Department probe. This is a far
different response from the virulent racist America of a century ago, when white
America and Washington were indifferent to such episodes.
The outrage sweeping the country today over the young man’s slaying suggests
something very important has changed for the better.
Back in the 1920s, when the Ku Klux Klan was at the pinnacle of its sadistic
influence, as many as 1,000 lynchings of black men took place in a typical year
and any national outcries against them were muted. Klansmen could murder in cold
blood and go to work the next morning as if nothing had happened.
White Americans, generally, did not get upset over lynchings. Ku Klux Klan
members often held posts of influence in their communities, particularly in the
South. The murdered blacks had few, if any, allies in the white communities.
Presidents such as Woodrow Wilson were themselves racist.
Not far from where Trayvon Martin was shot down, some six decades earlier on
Christmas Eve, 1951, the NAACP’s Rev. Harry T. Moore and his wife were murdered
by KKK dynamiters with a bomb planted under their bedroom.
I remember walking in a small, largely African-American protest march in Rev.
Moore’s memory the following New Year’s Day through the streets of downtown
Miami. Perhaps there were some sympathetic white onlookers, but I do not recall
any.
Only four years later, though, the murder of 14-year-old Chicagoan Emmett Till
in Money, Mississippi, for allegedly whistling at a white woman, created huge
street demonstrations on Chicago’s South Side. Listening to the orators
addressing the crowds, I had the welcome feeling the black community, at the
least, was not going to stand for it any more.
Too many African-American veterans from World War II were asking, “What did we
fight for to be treated this way?” The outrage was fierce as Till’s killers were
acquitted of his torture and murder. Till’s Mother insisted on an open casket
funeral so the public could witness how the killers had brutalized her son.
Protected by laws against double jeopardy, after their acquittal, the killers
casually admitted their guilt and walked free.
It has been said that Till’s murder was the spark that ignited the civil rights
movement. In that struggle, still unfinished, the introduction of the nonviolent response by Rev. Martin Luther King created vast sympathy for oppressed
black citizens.
The Montgomery bus boycott impressed the nation with their courage and
determination and their struggle for equal rights and opportunities. By 1963,
the climate had so changed that King’s “I Have a Dream” speech at the Lincoln
Memorial generated an overwhelming positive national response.
Following this remarkable address, the civil rights cause accelerated rapidly.
The continued sacrifices of both blacks and whites alike had put a large segment
of America’s white population on the side of social justice.
In June, 1966, when James Meredith was shot and wounded in Mississippi, the
shooter was apprehended within minutes by the local sheriff and put on trial and
convicted an outcome that would have been unthinkable a decade earlier.
The day after the shooting, in my capacity as Meredith’s press coordinator, I
told an NBC “Today Show” audience that his several companions planned to finish
his March Against Fear, and invited people of good will to join us. Thousands
from all races responded over the next few weeks so that the renewed march
became, literally, a turning point and victory celebration over Jim Crow in
Mississippi. (Meredith recovered sufficiently from his wounds to rejoin the
march as well.)
Voting rolls were opened to blacks and we received the support of many white
Mississippi residents who had been waiting for an opportunity to step forward
and speak up for racial equality but had been afraid to do so.
In spite of all the civil rights movement has achieved, a descriptive term that
can still be applied to black communities today, unfortunately, remains
“plight.” The statistics on black-white disparities in income, housing, justice
and education remain profound.
Administration after administration, including the present one, has failed to
make amends for what is now four centuries of historic racism. Trayvon Martin’s
death should serve to remind us of the long road that has already been traveled
just as it informs us of how far we as a nation have to go.
Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public relations consultant who was news director
for a major civil rights organization in the Sixties and press coordinator for
James Meredith’s March Against Fear in Mississippi in 1966. Reach him at
sherwoodross10@ gmail.com