Daily Archives: June 6, 2020

But the death toll only tells one side of the story. The other side is the anger of being unable to see or touch your deceased loved one for the last time. Its a different type of grief, says Carolyn Whigham, my mothers longtime partner and co-owner of Whigham Funeral Home in Newark, N.J. This is where you snot. Cry. Stomp. Shout. Cuss. Spit.

I asked Carolyn and my mom, Terry Whigham, about their experiences as Black undertakers during the coronavirus outbreak. The stories they shared speak to the scandalous nature of the pandemic. Were not only grieving our dead. Were grieving the inability to properly grieve.

This is not our new normal. This is the death of normal.

THERE WAS NEVER a dull moment growing up in a Black funeral home. After school, my brother and I played hide-and-seek between and inside caskets. Our chores included rolling old Star-Ledger newspapers used to prop up bodies for wakes. In the summers, when I wasnt at basketball camp, I passed out peppermints and tissues to family members of the deceased. I knew I didnt want to make a living burying the dead. But I was spellbound by the way we mourn.

Service after service I witnessed the electricity and elegance of Black grief. The adorned body laid out in an open casket. Elders dressed in their Sunday best tarrying and telling stories of the good ol days. Teenagers with a classmates face emblazoned on R.I.P. T-shirts. A spirited eulogy followed by a festive repast where soul food is served and family drama unfolds.

Its a ritual of death transformed into a celebration of life.

For Black communities, who have been disproportionately affected by the coronavirus, bans on funerals have been particularly devastating. I understand why. Not only did I grow up in a Black funeral home, but Im currently finishing my dissertation on African American mourning.

Burial traditions have long animated African American culture, politics, and resistance. During slavery, insurrectionists like Gabriel Prosser and Nat Turner plotted rebellions at slave funerals. A year before the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Mamie Till held an open-casket service for her slain son so the world could see what they did to my baby. The publication of the images of Emmett Tills mutilated body, many historians argue, was the match that sparked the civil rights movement.

Three years ago, white supremacist Dylann Roof walked into Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., and slaughtered nine black parishioners. The day after President Barack Obama eulogized pastor and state senator Clementa Pinckney, activist Bree Newsome scaled a 30-foot pole at the South Carolina State House and removed the Confederate flag. I was hoping that somehow they would have the dignity to take the flag down before his casket passed by, she said in an interview after her arrest.

What does this have to do with the coronavirus? Black grief does not begin or end at the funeral procession regardless of how someone has died. Our dead live on in the food we eat, the songs we sing, the children we raise, the ballots we cast, the movements we build, and the dreams we struggle to make real. But how can African Americans work through the psychological wage of unfathomable grief without the sound of a Hammond B-3 organ, or tender touch of an auntie, or the smell of cornbread and candied yams, or the sight of our loved ones beautified body?

Could your big mama cook? Did you save any of her recipes? Carolyn asks a family friend whose grandmother, who was known for her peach cobbler, passed away from COVID-19. No, because it was all in how big mama did the crust, the granddaughter explained.

Well, maybe grandma couldnt write down how to do the crust but did you stand over her shoulder and watch how she kneaded that flour? Carolyn asks. She wants to make sure that what remains in the wake of loss doesnt pass away with grandma.

The great poet and activist Amiri Baraka, whom my family funeralized in jazzy splendor, spoke to this in his book Eulogies: I want to help pass on what needs to live on not just in the archive but on the sidewalk of Afro-America itself.

How do we keep that tradition alive amid deserted sidewalks and overcrowded morgues? Hell, how do we keep ourselves alive as we witness, once again, Black death go viral?

I HEARD ABOUT the killing of Ahmaud Arbery the day after my friends father died of COVID-19. Then I heard about the killing of Breonna Taylor by police officers who burst into the wrong home to look for a suspect who was already in custody in Louisville, Ky. Then 21-year-old Dreasjon Reed and 19-year-old McHale Rose, two Black men killed by Indianapolis police within an eight-hour stretch. Then, before I could finish writing this story, George Floyd, another Black man, was killed by a white police officer, who pinned him to the ground for eight minutes as he pleaded for his deceased mother and yelled I cant breathe, echoing Eric Garners last words.

I refuse to watch the videos of the killings of Ahmaud, Dreasjon, or George. Ive seen the reel too many times. Different city, different cop, different circumstances. Same horror story. But when I heard that a detective in Indianapolis said its going to be a closed casket, homie, evidently referring to Dreasjons funeral, I lost it.

Unfortunately, Im used to police playing judge, jury, and executioner. But this officer had the audacity to assume the role of an undertaker, too. Its nauseating.

Black people are not only dying at alarming rates from the virus. Were still dying from pre-existing conditions of racial injustice. There is no ban on police brutality during this pandemic. We are losing jobs and loved ones. Police are dragging us off buses for not wearing masks, while prison officials are withholding personal protective equipment to our loved ones behind bars.

Truth is: The pandemic is unprecedented but all too familiar. The endless grief hits close to home. In one year, my family buried my brother, father, and grandmother. My mom visits my brothers crypt almost every day. Between funerals, she steals away and sits with his remains. For Thanksgiving she brings him pork chops smothered in gravy. His favorite. On the anniversary of his transition, as she likes to call it, she gives his shrine a makeover and sings Sam Cookes A Change Gon Come. Chad had an old soul.

I last saw my brother on his 32nd birthday, four days before a heart attack took his last breath away. My memory of his funeral comes in shards. I remember the sound of the drums and the look on my moms face and me laughing quietly to myself at the idea that he had won our final game of hide-and-seek.

In the midst of our own grief, my family has provided dignified memorial services to Black people in New Jersey, including Sarah Vaughan, Amiri Baraka, Whitney Houston, and the countless beautiful lives whose names and stories dont make national headlines. Like the daughter of the woman who banged on the funeral home window. A week later, the woman held her shirt still as my mom, standing a short distance away in personal protective equipment, pinned a brooch that contained a photo of her daughter whod just been cremated.

The woman wept and said, Its the little things that mean so much.

Shes right. A spirit of care and compassion sits at the heart of our heroic efforts to stay alive, too.

In the midst of all of the death and violence, Black people continue to fight back, risking our lives to save others. I witnessed hundreds of protesters wearing face masks chanting Whose streets? Our streets! at the intersection of West 62nd Street and Michigan Road in Indianapolis, where Dreasjon was shot and killed. I thought about the residents of Canfield Drive in Ferguson, Mo., who, before Mike Browns blood had dried, planted flowers between teddy bears and empty liquor bottles to commemorate his death. I pictured Bree bringing down the Confederate flag, and the heartaches and heartbeats of Black joggers as they ran with Ahmaud. Today, I marvel at the bravery of people across the country protesting Georges killing and resisting patterns of police violence amidst the deadliest pandemic in over a century.

Even Carolyn and my mother who dont consider themselves activists provided a hearse for a funeral procession protest honoring the memory of the 45 inmates who have died from the virus in New Jersey prisons.

My familys funeral home embodies the incredibly essential work before us all today: burying our dead while refusing to let death have the last word.

Nyle Fort is a minister, activist, and Ph.D. candidate at Princeton University. Follow him on Twitter @nylefort.

Excerpt from:

Refusing to give death the last word - The Boston Globe

Like white-collar professionals across the nation, I have had to fumble through my fair share of mind-numbing Zoom meetings over the past two and a half months. But last week, a friend and colleague put together what proved to be a particularly enjoyable and constructive meeting for black faculty.

The meeting began, as they often do, with a round of introductions. But because this was a check-in meeting, the organizer asked that attendees share a word that best described our feelings at the moment.

Unnerved by both the murder of George Floyd and the uncertainties COVID-19 has created for higher education, a number of my coworkers used words like anxious and cynical to describe their state of mind.

I shared my colleagues frustrations and anxieties; however, when it was my turn to take the virtual mic, the first word that came to mind was validated. Validation might seem an odd choice in a moment punctuated by yet another painful example of police brutality and President Donald Trumps dictatorial posturing. But since this was a meeting of tenured and tenure-track black professors a group that, by definition, works in a world of well-educated and purportedly enlightened people I wasnt reflecting on the brutal and senseless murder of George Floyd in that moment. My thoughts centered on black bird-watching enthusiast Christian Coopers recent encounter in New York Citys Central Park with white investment banker Amy Cooper (no relation).

Amy Cooper, as everyone knows at this point, attempted to have Christian Cooper arrested, if not swatted by the NYPD, because he had the temerity to insist that she leash her dog in compliance with park rules. If Mr Cooper had not recorded the incident on his smartphone, who knows what tragedy Amy Coopers despicable behavior might have wrought? But thanks to the video evidence, Ms Cooper has not only been fired from her job, but the New York City Commission on Human Rights has announced that it is launching a probe into her actions.

As a leftist, I cant rejoice in the termination of workers even a racist investment banker who engage in off-the-clock behavior their employers frown upon, because of the chilling implications, for all of us, of granting our bosses this kind of power. Nevertheless, I have derived a sense of affirmation from this event as it has unfolded to date. Why?

Well, as an African American who is fortunate enough to have a fulfilling career, I have had many encounters with Amy Coopers over the years one of which instantly came to mind when I saw the video.

My first year in a tenure-track academic job, I was ABD (all but dissertation) on an active tenure clock. For those who are not familiar with academia, this meant that I had yet to complete my doctoral thesis when I was hired. It also meant that there were simply not enough hours in the day during my first year on the job.

I loved my job. But after a few months, I started to pick up on an uncomfortable vibe from some in and around my department. Specifically, I was frequently subjected to questions about how I was spending my time away from the office. In fact, one coworker regularly greeted me with, What are you doing here? Youre never around.

I wasnt sure what to make of the refrain, since I was always in the office when I needed to be. I taught my classes and held my office hours, but at the end of each workday, I went straight home to write the remaining chapter of my dissertation and a semesters worth of lectures. So the characterization was not only perplexing, but the frequency of the claim made clear that something was amiss.

I eventually learned, at the start of my second year (think about how long this was going on), that a more senior colleague a white woman with whom I had rarely spoken had taken to telling colleagues I was never around the office because I was too busy enjoying the single life.

I was shocked and, frankly, deeply hurt that a colleague would have attempted to undermine me in this way. I had resisted the urge to confront her for a couple of weeks, until two of my students asked me one day after class, Dr Reed [obviously, I finished my dissertation on schedule], are you okay? Apparently, I seemed so sad and deflated that they thought I was in mourning.

Since the situation was beginning to undermine my job performance, I knew I had to speak with my coworker. But I was afraid to confront her. I was afraid because I had already witnessed this person successfully cast a colleague who was also a man of color as the aggressor in a conflict that she had not only initiated but in which she was actually the aggressor.

Simply put, my fear was rooted in the fact that I had already seen my colleague Amy Cooper a male colleague of color.

I spent days crafting and rehearsing a carefully constructed opening, as well as talking points that would discourage her from casting me as an aggressor. In the absence of witnesses smartphones did not yet exist only her account and mine would serve as the record of our exchange, and I knew from both recent and not-so-recent experiences which one of us was likely to get the benefit of the doubt in the trial of public opinion.

Thankfully, the situation resolved favorably. My now former colleague was contrite and, ultimately, dialed back. Still, she did damage to me in the workplace, as her characterization followed me even after my (tor)mentor left the university.

Although I am not a fan of the constant surveillance we live with today, I am grateful that Christian Coopers video has impressed upon many white Americans something that I, and other black people, have long known. Racists and racial opportunists come in many packages.

Indeed, Ms Cooper is the antithesis of what many people would think of as a racist. She is a well-educated, cosmopolitan, white-collar professional who supported President Barack Obama and the presidential ambitions of Mayor Pete Buttigeig. She is, moreover, polished enough that even at the height of her anger, she called the black man she falsely identified as a threat an African American rather than using a racial slur.

Since the incident went viral, Ms Cooper has indicated that she is both mortified by her actions and does not understand herself to be a racist. I have no reason to doubt either the sincerity of Ms Coopers apology or the depth of the shame that informs it. Still, I also know that when it comes to racism, peoples stated beliefs, attitudes, and behavior often occupy different planes.

Americans tend to think of racists as ignorant and/or hateful people. This is probably why so many equate noncollege educated whites with racists. But since only the most self-loathing among us would describe ourselves as ignorant or hateful, even racists tend not to identify as such hence the perennial paradoxical disclaimer: Im not a racist, but Ms Cooper is, of course, neither ignorant nor is there reason to presume her to be a fundamentally hateful person. Still, her treatment of Christian Cooper revealed her commitment, conscious or not, to a racialist understanding of the world one in which black men are predators and white women are their prey.

There were no doubt many factors condensed in this encounter that Ms Cooper sought to use to her advantage. Women, of whatever race or class, can be subject to aggressive or dangerous male behavior in public settings. A class and cultural context that fosters a popular understanding of microaggression that can blur the distinction between hurt feelings and criminal assault may have also helped Ms Cooper convince herself at least enough to sound persuasive to a 911 dispatcher that her life was in danger. Finally, broken windows stress policing normalized in the 1990s by the Giuliani administration has long encouraged individuals of Ms Coopers race and class to expect the NYPD to protect them from generic threats, or even annoyances, posed by mainly black and brown social and economic inferiors.

This approach to law enforcement which is common in cities characterized by neoliberalisms stark inequities has not only contributed to the militarization of municipal police forces, but it has likely reinforced the inclinations of police officers such as Derek Chauvin to take on the additional roles of judge, jury, and executioner.

Amy Cooper attempted to take advantage of a toxic, potentially deadly racial stereotype for an ephemeral gain (not being held accountable for her violation of park rules).

Worse yet, she knew as evinced by the fact that she forewarned Christian Cooper of her intention to falsely accuse an African American man of threatening her just how dangerous the possible outcome of her lie could have been.

If Ms Coopers actions represent an extreme example of racially informed and self-serving behavior, they also offer a window onto the quotidian experiences of black and brown men in the United States that not only makes plain the problems with characterizing African American men as a privileged class, but also highlights the enduring importance of affirmative action and other anti-discrimination policies.

As I have argued elsewhere, policies like affirmative action are important not as a form of reparations for past wrongs, but as a check on the prejudicial actions of individuals and the discriminatory effects of institutional practices in the present.

I stress this point because I am among a group of left black and brown scholars who are sometimes erroneously cast as class reductionists because we insist on following through on the full implications of the social constructiveness of race.

Race is not a useful biological category, if only because the continental groupings that comprise the races are far too large and fluid to share meaningful genetic commonalities. Instead, laws and customs informed by demographic, political, and economic developments determine the parameters of so-called racial groups. Simply, race is a two-centuries-old ideological project that insists on treating inequities that are the product of human endeavors slavery, colonialism, and inequities organic to capital accumulation as if they were hatched by natural processes.

Racism is thus not about ignorance or even hatred, though racists can be guilty of both, of course, but is, at its core, an attachment to the existence of biological or quasi-biological races.

If racism is an unambivalent or even vague belief in the existence of races, then to suggest that race is not real is not to deny the existence of racism. Since we are social animals, peoples commitment to a belief system ensures an ideologys influence its realness in the realm of social interactions.

For example, by definition, Christians believe that Christ was the son of God. The fact that billions of Jews, Muslims, and atheists necessarily reject this belief does not change the fact that billions of Christians embrace it. Likewise, the fact that more than half the worlds population rejects this fundamental tenet of Christianity is inconsequential to Christianitys influence over political and social movements ranging from colonialism to the modern civil rights movement.

To cut to the quick, racism the belief in races is unquestionably real, even if races are not.

By demonstrating the potential deadly implications of racial discourse that casts black men as dangerous predators, Christian Coopers video validates long-standing complaints about racism and shines harsh light on a chronic source of anxiety felt by African Americans across class lines. Indeed, Christian Coopers video amplifies the realness of racism and offers a glimpse onto its consequences.

Since racial discrimination can have a devastating effect on peoples lives, anti-discrimination policies are necessary. But to insist on the necessity of policies like affirmative action is not to imply that they are sufficient.

Anti-discrimination legislation such as the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 has mitigated racial inequities by opening pathways, principally, at this point, for well-educated blacks to the middle and upper classes. But these and other anti-discrimination policies have failed to eliminate disparities, because earning power for all but top wage earners has been on a fifty-year decline.

According to sociologist Robert Manduca, median black household income increased, between 1968 and 2016, from the 25th percentile to the 35th percentile, while median white household income moved from the 54th to the 57th percentile. Despite the relative gains blacks have made with the aid of anti-discrimination policies the wage and wealth gap has barely budged since 1968 because automation, the slow death of the union movement, and public-sector retrenchment have contributed to a decline in real income for the bottom 80 percent of American workers.

The good news is that the relative gains blacks have made over the past few decades have prevented the racial income gap from worsening. Indeed, according to Manduca, had blacks not made any relative progress over a period in which income gains have been confined to the top 20 percent of wage earners, the ratio of median black to white household income would have fallen from 57 percent to 44 percent between 1968 and 2016.

But had wages remained constant over the past fifty years, black-white family income ratio would have risen from 57 percent to 70 percent.

Its not unreasonable to attribute neoliberalisms disproportionate impact on blacks, in part, to the historic legacy of racism. But it is important to situate African Americans historic and contemporary experiences within the broader currents of American political economy.

The Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were enacted more than a decade into what would eventually be known as deindustrialization. Practically, this meant that the pathways working-class whites had traveled from the tenements to the suburbs a trail blazed by a strong union movement and robust public expenditures for housing and education had already narrowed by the time the civil rights movements greatest legislative victories cleared the formal barriers to black upward mobility.

Had this legislation been passed a generation earlier, it is likely the racial wealth gap either would not exist or would be far less pronounced.

So those of us who insist that the elimination of racial disparities requires social-democratic policies a right to a job at a living wage, taxpayer-funded (free) higher education, and national health care are not denying the existence of racism, even if race is only about as real as the Easter Bunny. Nor are we suggesting that there is no longer a need for anti-discrimination policies far from it. I may not know Amy Cooper personally, but I am very familiar with her modus operandi.

We do insist, however, that narrow demands for policies intended to redress disparities, at the expense of policies centered on downward redistribution of wealth, are the equivalent of demands for berths on a higher deck on a sinking ship.

Link:

Why I'm Still Thinking About the Amy Cooper Black Birder Episode in Central Park - Jacobin magazine

The events of the past week in the United States, beginning with the death of Afro-American George Floyd by police abuse in Minneapolis, are generating concern and analysis throughout the country, and in the rest of the world. Beyond demanding justice in the Floyd case, the protests express rejection of a system with various levels of citizenry and inequalities regarding their protection and the application of justice.

In the midst of so many social network contesters in which Tyrians and Trojans use police violence and that of the protesters to fuel their ideologies, it is convenient to reiterate a set of convictions at the center of the traditions that have made the United States advance, like the great country it is. Those convictions are central to the republican and democratic culture to which it is convenient to return:

1- Discriminatory treatment of minorities as an institutional pattern constitutes a structural injustice that denies the citizen equality enshrined in amendment XIV of the constitution. The policemans knee on George Floyds neck was not an accident by an official, nor was it by chance. Addressing the structural causes where this institutional discrimination originates must be a matter of citizen integrity and decency. Returning to order cannot be returning to that normality. The rejection of police violence and its patterns of racial discrimination need to be at the center of the electoral campaign that is beginning.

2- The right to civil protest is an essential component of the United States republican and democratic order. Expressing dissent in the face of abuses by the government or its representatives has been an American tradition since the declaration of independence. That said, democracy is not based on the disturbance of the crowd in the streets or squares, but on their orderly participation in political institutions. All the respect that peaceful protest deserves does not justify violence against order, property and people. Condemning that violence, and the radical agitators and provocateurs, right and left, who encourage it, is also a matter of citizen integrity.

3 To demand as citizen culture the condemnation of violence by radical protesters as well as that of the police does not imply addressing the issues as equivalent. Police violence is structural, institutionalized. It is directed against the life of a segment of the citizenry and permanently limits their freedom. In the second case, it begins with attacks on property, which, important as it is, to live civilly in a state of law, is not the same as an institutional attack on life.

There is considerable statistical evidence on the institutional nature of violence and discrimination. Randy Balko endorses in The Washington Post several studies with marked differences against minorities in terms of police persecution. If seven out of ten white people believe that the police authorities exercise force with justice, only one of three Afro-Americans think so.

In the book Suspect Citizens, political scientists Baumgartner, Epp, and Shoub study how the police treat their citizens, using data from 20 million stops for traffic violations in North Carolina. Traffic violations are the most frequent interaction between police authorities and citizens. The study found that Afro-Americans are twice as likely to be stopped for this than whites, despite the fact that, on average, the latter drive more. Once stopped by the police, Afro-American cars are searched four times more. Although Hispanics in North Carolina are stopped as much as whites, once stopped, the probability of being checked increases significantly. These disparities increase with gender (men more than women) and age (the younger, more stops and checks).

The rest of the social, economic, prison population and political participation indicators show that racial inequality between whites and minorities is overwhelming. In the wake of the current COVID-19 pandemic, it is also evident that Afro-American and Latino minorities have been the hardest hit in numbers of deaths, illness, loss of income and employment. In Chicago, a city that is thirty percent Afro-American, that groups deaths from the pandemic have been seventy percent. The unemployment rate among Afro-Americans was twice that of whites before the pandemic, with no hope that it will change. A third of Afro-American children are born into poverty, while (just as unfortunate) twelve percent of white children, in the richest country in the world.

The fact that notable progress has been made in a country that has already elected its first Afro-American president and that such discrimination is not legal as it was at the time of racial segregation does not make it any less real. It must be addressed.

Police abuse is the ultimate expression of that discrimination, with clear historical origins. Discussions on TV by experts, even when addressing foreign policy issues, assume a policy of giving crumbs in addressing the legacy of slavery and the Anglo-Saxon occupation of the southwest after the 1948 Mexican-American War. The knee on George Floyds neck is not an individual act, it is the weight of a political system in which Afro-Americans, in addition to being poor and discriminated against, first appear as a criminal suspect than as a good citizen to protect.

Lets recall that Colin Kappernicks gesture, going down on one knee, peacefully, not on anyones neck, but on the ground of American football stadiums, was precisely against police violence. What was the governments response? President Trump carried out a campaign in which, far from recognizing the merits of the protest, what he tried to do was mobilize club owners against the players, describing them as unpatriotic. What was the NFLs response? Leaving Kappernick without a contract. What was the attitude of the public? The opponents of Kappernick returned to the stadiums, when he was expelled. Those who supported his protest kept going. Those winds of indolence sowed these storms of protest.

A riot is the language of the unheard, said Martin Luther King. Repeating the mantra of the supposed equality of opportunities is not going to make it real if policies and resources are not dedicated to creating a platform of equivalent access to health, education and a minimum wage. Isnt it time to speak in a country as developed as the United States, for example, of a universal minimum wage, an idea proposed in the 1970s even by Richard Nixon? Isnt it time to have a sensible discussion about the need for equal access to health and education as an essential condition for full citizenship? Why continue to stigmatize as radical and utopian the search for a system of universal health coverage, which has clearly produced better results at lower costs in most developed countries? Of course, that costs taxes and budgets. Its also hard to cope today with the disgraceful cost of lives due to the pandemic, job losses, political, institutional and protesters violence.

None of the above, however, implies an uncritical attitude towards the excesses of a minority of the protesters. Those behave like criminals, sometimes of their own free will, others under the influence of agitators and provocateurs. The cause of progress and civil rights are not served with acts of destruction that, in the first place, harm communities where there is violence. The solutions to the problems of racism are not found in the blindness of destruction but in the construction of a new normality.

The advance against inequality is not the fruit of the hopes of the impatient radical, but of the use of protest and negotiation based on historical experience. Isnt there already enough evidence to understand the psychology of President Trump, and how he has always won in the blowing ill winds of polarization? Isnt there enough evidence of the Republican Partys so-called southern strategy victoriously invoking law and order, with well-calibrated racist whistles from Nixon to Trump, and from Bush and his campaign manager Lee Atwater? Isnt it already evident that the Republican Partys strategy is to present Democrats and their candidates as the branch in the United States of left-wing radicalism, with no room to discuss the experiences of the welfare state even with its own European allies? The unabashed condemnation of those who have turned peaceful protests into violent ones is not only a matter of citizen ethics but also instrumental reason.

Why are the two condemnations not the same? Because the levels of citizen responsibility are different. An objective and reasonable policy is not equivalent to a diagonal in a parallelogram, half distributing responsibilities. The violence of radical protesters against property and wreaking havoc in our cities is their sole responsibility. They have not received any mandate from society. These provocateurs and professional agitators of an unfair opposition seek to make the United States do poorly so they can do well, at their own risk.

That is not the case with institutional violence. Thats by the government, by law enforcement, its in a certain sense ours. Most Americans have not elected white supremacists or anti-capitalist radicals. They dont have our mandate. Another is the case of racial inequality in opportunities, deaths from the pandemic, and police abuse. Citizens have given a certain level of consent for the actions of the authorities that reproduce and exacerbate these problems. Police officers who abuse minorities collect their wages from our taxes. The elected officials or delegates who establish social welfare plans or even police behavior in an arrest situation are not vigilantes implementing their own ideas, they are our representatives.

President Trump doesnt do justice to the dignity of his office, setting fire with rhetoric to a handsome neighborhood. To speak of vicious dogs and that the looting will be answered with shots, is an insult to the countrys highest magistracy. In the United States, the president is the head of government, but in times of crisis he is, first of all, the head of state. The institutional leader of all citizens, not just those who voted for him. The president has chosen to escalate the confrontation, creating more problems for everyone, even for law enforcement, who are mostly worthy professionals, wanting harmony in their communities.

The first lesson from these riots in an election year is citizens importance in the functioning of democratic institutions. A republic, if you can defend it, was Ben Franklins answer to those who at the gates of a constitutional convention asked him in Philadelphia about the type of government they had created. Several of the Afro-Americans deaths and the disasters of the protests could have been avoided had those who, for months, have peacefully denounced the issue of police violence and racial discrimination been paid attention to.

A line of responsibility can be drawn from ignorance and punishment to Kappernicks kneeling on the ground, to the abuse of the police officers knee on Floyds neck. Indolence in the face of others pain, and the deaf ear in the face of the peaceful protest, has ended in a loss for the republic, for all.

Original post:

Three ideas on the death of George Floyd and the protests in the United States - OnCubaNews