The current scene: After 3 months of the COVID 19 pandemic in late May 2020, people having been locked away from each other, peaceful protesters who are angry, fearful, and distressed spill out into the streets, begging police to decrease their brutality. Those on the extremes throw bottles and rocks, starting fires in immigrant, African American-owned and other businesses, police precincts, and Nashville’s city hall. Some destruction and looting occurs. The police respond in some places with rubber bullets, tear gas and arrests. Other police join the protesters.
What is happening in our nation?
Throughout time, peaceful, nonviolent protesters have tried to change American systems that perpetuate injustice and inequality. Change has not come quickly enough although some changes gradually occur. America and Americans perpetrate racism every day. How can we change this tragedy?
People are publicly grieving and are angry about the senseless numbers of black and brown men, women, and children being murdered by white police. Civilian white men armed with heavy artillery can storm and threaten government buildings without police intervention while at the same time, black people are being murdered while sleeping in their beds, walking, jogging, playing on playgrounds, doing nothing out of the ordinary much of the time.
Today, we are angry and mourning over the recent murder of George Floyd, an African American man murdered by white policemen. People observed and videotaped his last gasps, trying to breathe with a white policeman’s knee on his neck - a physical and symbolic image for how African Americans have been treated by white people for hundreds of years.
Some violent protesters seem to want to start a class war, a culture war, a civil war. These white supremacists represent a vile part of America which seems to be increasing in numbers, reinforced by our president. This country was founded on genocide and racism with white people taking from, enslaving, and killing all sorts of people, creating rigid hierarchies of power still true today.
Is there any good news?
Not yet. Not until those who have not been heard get heard along with real action to change our systems. Not yet. Not until our leaders and each American find ways to stem the blood falling all over our streets. Not yet. Not until black and brown babies, children, adults, and immigrants get treated as if they are white, all people having inalienable rights and privileges for the first time in American history.
It is time to stand up, speak out, and then change structural and systematic racism that has lasted so many hundreds of years. There is no quick fix but each American white person needs to figure out how we each contribute to this terrible tragedy. Each of us is complicit and accountable, and we need to make necessary changes.
As Tim Wise, activist and antiracism speaker and writer says, “...when the law becomes lawless, there is no order, and so here we are.” Time for white people and current policing practices to change.
