The conversation on race we’ve been waiting for
If you happen to be monitoring the world from a satellite in low-Earth orbit and turn your attention to our nation’s capital, you’re going to see something that would’ve been unthinkable just a few years ago.
You’re going to see the words “Black Lives Matter” in illuminated letters spanning the length of two blocks on 16th Street. The words are pointing directly at the White House just a few blocks away.
It grew organically from two weeks of nationwide protests against police brutality. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, who makes the droogs in the dystopian satire “A Clockwork Orange” look like paragons of humanity, triggered an unexpected response from a cross section of Americans unprecedented in recent times.
Instead of consigning Floyd’s death to a shelf titled “isolated incident” or “there’s two sides to every atrocity,” America took a long, hard look at a lynching that took place under the color of authority.
America didn’t see a “scary” muscular black man resisting arrest, an image that usually triggers the reptilian brains of those inclined to give cops the benefit of the doubt.
Instead, we all saw a violation of not only George Floyd’s civil rights but his humanity. We saw and heard Floyd plead for each breath while a very sadistic human being, who happened to be a white cop with 18 prior complaints against him, pressed his left knee into his victim’s neck with no regard for whether he lived or died.
Three Minneapolis cops lacking any moral agency or imagination whatsoever enabled their colleague’s murderous deed with silence or acts of complicity. They weren’t innocent bystanders — they were simply amoral. They ignored their obligations as cops. It was more important to them to fit into the culture of policing in Minneapolis than to be self-aware enough to stop a murder happening in front of them.
In taking on the moral responsibility of watching the execution of George Floyd on the streets of Minneapolis in real time, America was forced to ask itself important questions:
Why does so much racism pervade the American criminal justice system? Is it true that this racism is structural and not just the result of a few “bad apples”? Is it time to reconsider how much immunity cops are granted after fatally exerting their authority? Why do the most outrageous killings and violations of civil liberties happen almost exclusively to minorities? Are police unions that get bad cops reinstated after they’re fired hurting America? If justice isn’t really colorblind, what is it?
When Jonny Gammage was the victim of an illegal police chokehold on Route 51 near Brentwood in 1995, such public skepticism was unimaginable. The assumption, in those pre-camera-phone days, was that the victims of police violence had to be primarily responsible for their own demise. This was reflected in the unbroken string of “not guilty” verdicts in the rare cases when cops were prosecuted.
After the George Zimmerman “stand your ground” trial for the killing of Trayvon Martin and the official foot-dragging that characterized the killing of Eric Garner on Staten Island by a police officer who used an illegal chokehold, Black Lives Matter became shorthand for a liberal attack on law and order, if not Western civilization itself.
The Black Lives Matter movement was demonized as an anarchic, fringe grievance sect, even in much of the mainstream press. “Black Lives Matter? — “All Lives Matter, especially Blue Lives” was America’s response.
Meanwhile, each BLM demonstration forced Americans to think a little deeper about our moral predicament. Every time a BLM march interrupted traffic or called attention to some injustice, a few more eyes and ears were opened even as the rhetoric against the movement became more unhinged and openly racist.
When former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick took a knee during the national anthem to protest police violence against black people, the national consensus was overwhelmingly against him. His protest was presented in such a distorted fashion that even intelligent white people parroted the most bigoted responses by claiming it was an affront to veterans. It was America at its most morally obtuse.
President Donald Trump successfully intimidated the NFL into blackballing Mr. Kaepernick, thus ending his career. Until recently, kneeling, despite being nonviolent, was both unthinkable and unpatriotic if you wanted a career in the NFL.
Last week, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell apologized for the league’s prior treatment of players who protested the criminal justice system by taking a knee. Mr.
Goodell said that the NFL would join the effort to fight racism and no longer allow itself to be an obstruction. He claimed the NFL was now listening and learning.
What changed? America was finally listening to the voices of the oppressed. More important, integrated crowds of peaceful but angry protesters took over the main streets of over 200 cities spread across all 50 states. Criminal justice reform was no longer the exclusive concern of black people. It was now a priority of the majority of Americans who had seen video of police abuses in the past two weeks with their own eyes. Cops were beating white Americans on camera, too, so it was no longer a liberal abstraction.
There were more than 10,000 arrests nationally, but the demonstrations only grew in intensity. America was finally having its long threatened “conversation about race,” but it is happening on the streets, not on op-ed pages or on cable news.
On Sunday, Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, joined thousands of American evangelicals in Washington, D.C., marching and chanting “Black Lives Matter.” When NASCAR eventually jumps on board, that will officially signal a new chapter in American life.
This is happening at light speed before we can fully absorb its implications. Fortunately, providence has provided us a president so antithetical to the ideals of racial justice that we at least have a benchmark about how far we’ve come since Jonny Gammage, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner ...