The violence based on racial profiling has been systemic for years, and it has the same deep roots all over. It’s bad in so many ways, and it has been bad for so long that it almost seems that there’s no way out. That’s why it’s so important that it gets our attention, although it needs to be more than just that.
What started these demonstrations in The States, with spinoffs in other nations, was said to be caused by the violent killing of a black man at the hands of police officers. It was hardly a singular event. A recent article came up, show-casing that this was just one in a string of events, even when narrowed down to the first months of 2020. The article gave insight in terms of extent, but it didn’t do much in terms of the larger narrative as to why people were all of a sudden so fed up that demonstrations flared up all over.
That narrative is vast, it’s complex and it reaches far beyond the massive social awareness against injustice based on ethnicity. What got everyone involved this time wasn’t just the brutality, because there’s no doubt about that: it was brutal.
The ‘more’ of all that has to do with the current events, mixed with what was set in motion as far back as five, ten or twenty years ago. The ‘more’ has to do with frustration about current events, about injustice of all kinds that are visible in social, economic and ethnic demographics, that are the limiting factors that are handed down to us when we’re born and put some of us at a disadvantage from that time on.
The ‘more’ is about debt, mounting costs of living, mounting costs of pursuing degrees, and the mounting impossibilities of building a better life. It’s also about what we feel that we’re entitled to and that’s just out of reach for many of us. It’s about facing uncertain times, it’s about unemployment, it’s about looming evictions, it’s about not having any substantial savings, and last and least of all: it’s about politics.
It’s all of these things, and it’s about what it’s like to be so deep in a hole that there’s no way to crawl out no matter how much you scratch and fight. But it’s also to point out that it might just happen to any of us, and that’s were it unites, and where it builds towards an understanding of what it’s like to have reached your depth, and then to be kicked down.
The message to ‘defund the police’ is a smart way to address politics and legislation: it moves the message beyond ‘right and wrong’, because that’s a non-debate (everyone knows and agrees that police violence is wrong). The ‘defund’ is actionable, and what it does, hopefully, is that it leaves the rotten elements without a job, eating the dust.
Having lived on both sides of the divide, I have seen this debate up close. I was the majority back home in The West, and I have become the minority on The Island. The debate is always there, and from time to time it’s flaring up, and it very rarely moves beyond the pointing fingers of right versus wrong, where everyone agrees on the injustice, and the unrightfulness.
As an outsider (I’m not of color) I sometimes see things more clearly, and in my mind the only way to deal with those things is by securing yourself in a good job, by working towards credentials, by building generational wealth to secure a certain position and social standing. It’s the same mechanism as ‘defund the police’, where you place yourself above pity, jealousy, xenophobia, fear and the big r. Let them eat the dust.
Of course, politics needs to do its part eventually, wrongdoers and those who are complicit need to be brought to justice, advocates towards equality need to be elected in public office, and our societies need to strive towards unity and inclusion. All of these things need to be done, but generally those are outside of our personal sphere of influence. Where it comes to our private lives, we should secure our own position, and that of our families first.
In these times we need social inclusion on all fronts, and that’s by and large what is missing on the global political stage. Obama was about that, he was able to utilize rhetoric that unites and that moves democracy forward. That’s where you put yourself above the debate. Yes, he was a black president, but most of all he was a great president.
In a recent op-ed of the New York Times, the writer made a case for Lincoln, and how he would have acted these days (because there’s also the pandemic and recession to consider):
Lincoln, in our darkest, most divisive hour, was able to dig deep into his soul and find the words “with malice toward none, with charity for all … let us strive on to finish the work we are in” and establish “a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.”
Great words have the power to unite when they are spoken from the heart, they express how all of us feel, and they paint the picture of how to move forward.
Don’t expect too much from politics these days. Biden is largely unknown and he doesn’t have that stride of a great statesman. It seems to me that people will be more likely to stick with what they got in uncertain times. That’s bleak, but it might just turn out to be the reality of things. Then the question comes up: what can you do when the demonstrations are over?
Start with yourself, your family, and those that are close to you. It seems to be the only viable way, for now. Gaze wide, aim far.
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