Populism, anti-racism and the choices we face
The Black Lives Matter protests have sparked hope that a turning-point has been reached in addressing the racism that pervades society today – yet real change will need your vote, argues Dr Cherrie Short
WHEN protests for Black Lives Matter – a grass-roots movement that emerged in the US in the mid-2010s in response to police brutality in the black community – erupted across the United States again in May, the images were not surprising.
In big cities like Los Angeles and New York, large-scale protests filled boulevards for miles in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic. Most marched peacefully, wearing masks and touting home-made signs, demanding justice.
But this time the protests spread much further to smaller, mostly white towns, where hundreds of people gathered to also chant: “Black lives matter” and “No justice, no peace”. It truly felt like a moment not seen since the Civil Rights Movement, with the potential for major change in policy and society.
The wave of protests came as a result of the killing of George Floyd, whose death was video-recorded and disseminated widely on the internet.
His cries for breath as a police officer drove his knee into the back of his neck were echoed in the protests, demanding prosecution for the police officers involved.
For many people of all backgrounds, Floyd’s death was the final straw in a long history of racially driven police brutality.
Demonstrations soon spread worldwide, both online and offline, with solidarity marches in cities like London, Paris, Berlin, Melbourne and Cape Town.
The black community, people of colour, indigenous peoples, and allies outside the United States began to echo the demand for racial equality.
They called for legal action against the police officers involved in Floyd’s death and police officers allegedly responsible for the murder of numerous other black victims.
But most important, they are demanding the restructuring of systems and institutions in government and society that have a history of racism and violence against black people, including the police.
But the backlash to this movement by the US President, some of the leaders in the Republican Party, and several state governments threatens the hopeful realisation of major, positive structural change and could even push the country further in the opposite direction.
President Trump has followed the Richard Nixon playbook of defending “law and order,” by characterising the demonstrations, including the rioters and looters, as having been orchestrated by radical left-wing terrorist groups, including international influences.
He has proposed sending army troops into major US cities to “restore order”, which violates the US constitution.
He has also seized on the Black Lives Matter rallying cry of “Defund the Police,” which means using funding for the police for social services, economic development, and jobs, as another reason to label the movement as anti-American and dangerous.
And this past holiday weekend, on which Americans were celebrating the Fourth of July Independence Day, he held a political rally at Mount Rushmore, where carved into the side of the mountain are huge sculptures of four, famous US presidents.
He used this occasion to denounce the widespread social movement that propelled the mass demonstrations instigated by the killing of black men by the police.
His speech further exploited the country’s racial and social divisions and pushed a law-and-order agenda.
He characterised the demonstrations as a “grave threat to the nation” carried out by liberals and angry mobs who want to promote a “leftwing cultural revolution” to rewrite American history and destroy our heritage.
He claimed that “a radical ideology attacking our country advances under the banner of social justice... and it will turn our country into a place of repression, domination and exclusion”, comparing the movement to totalitarianism.
Sadly, the Mount Rushmore Monument was created by Gutzon Borglum, a Ku Klux Klan sympathiser, and built on land sacred to the Dakota Native Americans.
While it is difficult to know how to capitalise on the world’s attention to anti-racism, the seven-year-old movement that strongly resurfaced in
May has had an impact.
The national debate has shifted from whether there is a problem to how do we go about solving it.
Additionally, many white Americans since the killing of George Floyd have joined in the overall debate looking at white privilege and what this means to be white in a racially divided and multicultural society.
Perhaps this self-recognition, according to Jacqueline Battalora, a Chicago-based sociologist, quoted in the LA Times recently, is that: “After three wearying months of social isolation and economic upheaval brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic, Floyd’s killing was yet another blow for many people.”
The incident sparked a movement based on the hope that this could be a turning-point in the national political agenda to recognise the pervasiveness of systematic racism in our society and the world, and finally make significant changes to address it.
Yet some in the Republican Party and the President want to use this moment to spread hate and division and define the movement as a threat to the country.
The only way forward in this debate is to hold the politicians accountable through the ballot box and defend democracy, not only in the United States, but also in the United Kingdom and other countries.
■ Dr Cherrie Short, a former Race Equality Commissioner for Wales, is a senior fellow in Global and Community Strategy at New York University’s Silver School of Social Work and The Wagner School of Public Service.