Minneapolis Is The New Baltimore
The violence in Minneapolis over the death of an African-American man in police custody exposes the inequalities and racism that exist in the US
BALTIMORE’S name has been invoked so much on the national stage in recent days that there ought to be a brand surcharge. But the parallels between Baltimore of 2015 and Minneapolis of today are too obvious to ignore: An African American man dies in police custody for no good reason. It happens at a time of highly publicised incidents of racism elsewhere. There’s a history of bias, inequality and police misconduct. Peaceful protests are soon upstaged by less civil behaviour. Buildings are set on fire. Looters show up. And authorities are left with a conundrum about whether to use force or patience to quell the unrest or to give ground.
Later will come the prosecution of the perpetrators, a reexamination of police-community relations as well as plans for better schools, drug treatment, decent housing and economic opportunity for the disenfranchised that (spoiler alert) won’t get very far.
Granted, there are differences. The video evidence that police crossed a line in their treatment of George Floyd, who died pleading with his captors that he wasn’t able to breathe as a police officer’s knee pressed down on his neck, makes the brutality too apparent to dispute. This time, the question centers not so much on whether police acted wrongfully, but whether they will be successfully prosecuted. And this time, there’s someone in the White House with a soft spot for white supremacists throwing brickbats at the fragile efforts to calm the city.
et for those of us who lived through the Freddie Gray unrest, it all seems scarily familiar, as if nothing had been learned in the last five years it’s just a new city, same playbook. But even that is unfair. The truth is that these circumstances have long existed, and there’s not a half-decade but a half-century of urban strife to prove it. One can just as easily draw a line from the Watts riots of 1965 in Los Angeles, which began with a traffic stop of an African American motorist, through the 1968 riots in Baltimore and elsewhere after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King Jr to the unrest in Ferguson, Mo., in 2014 to Baltimore after Freddie Gray’s death in 2015 and now Minneapolis. Racism, plus hopelessness and frustration, plus police brutality equals civil unrest. What was true 55 years ago and five years ago is just as true today.
This is the moment when we should be sharing some collective wisdom with our northern neighbors, we suppose. The television networks have already come calling on Maryland Governor Larry Hogan and former Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake on that subject. But offering advice implies that underlying problems that fueled our fire have been resolved, and they haven’t. There have been some helpful steps, such as the involvement of the Obama Justice Department and the creation of the federal consent decree to essentially police the police. Body cameras are now standard issue for officers. On the broad range of issues involving economic opportunity, housing and social justice, however Baby steps, at best. There’s been a lot of talk (and that’s helpful to some extent), but there’s a long way to go.
And let’s put some emphasis on that final point. Police misconduct can be fixed (perhaps even a lack of empathy toward human suffering can be addressed). And riots can be quelled. Too much of the Freddie Gray aftermath focused on the decision-making of the moment. Should criminal charges have been filed within 12 days of his death Should protesters have been treated more aggressively Less Even ongoing efforts to improve police-community relations are a subset, albeit an important one, of the core problems exposed by the death of Gray, a 25-year-old African American man in police custody.
What Minneapolis would be wise to focus on is the bigger picture of systemic oppression: What can be done about low-income, disenfranchised communities of color beset by problems associated with drug addiction, concentrated poverty, substandard housing, lack of jobs and historic racism These are simmering maladies too many of us chose to ignore until some spark set off a conflagration. A virus that kills 100,000 Washington, DC, will recognise an emergency and appropriate trillions. The many-times more who have die because of inequality beginning with the high US child mortality rate Crickets until the riots start.
That was the lesson of Baltimore. May Minneapolis learn from our mistakes.