What happens after the uprisings?
The killing of George Floyd and its furious aftermath have revealed, yet again, the hostility and disrespect too many Americans have for black humanity. While this isn’t news to anyone who has even a glancing relationship with American history, it provides us with an opportunity to consider the many ways in which politics results in policies that impact people.
“Law and order” politics, advanced for more than 50 years by conservatives preying on latent racism, prejudice and civic ignorance, have resulted in public policy that has had catastrophic impacts on black people. Years of neglect and intentional targeting, put on hyperdrive by a president whose campaign and presidency bring out the worst in America, have delivered us to this place.
But tomorrow will come and we need to be clear that today’s events will impact tomorrow’s elections.
After the uprisings subside, we need to pivot from protest to politics. Political decisions have allowed police around the country to face virtually no significant consequences for killing, injuring or otherwise mistreating black people. According to research from the Police Integrity Research Group at Bowling Green State University, a total of 98 nonfederal police officers involved in fatal shootings were arrested between 2005 and 2019. According to PIRG data, police officers kill about 1,000 Americans annually. A database created by The Washington Post found that African Americans, 13% of the population, are killed at more than twice the rate of white Americans. As these numbers show, black people are over-targeted and police officers are rarely held accountable.
Political decisions have led to public policy based on the notion that the rich have too little and the poor have too much to justify defunding of communities around the country. In its wake are vast swaths of America socially and economically disenfranchised. Most whites still don’t seem to get that. Most blacks live with it every day.
So it will have to be political decisions that put us on the right path and put in stark view the vital importance of the November
elections. All the protests, peaceful and otherwise, won’t make any difference if the same decisionmakers who helped to create or make worse this mess are still in office. That is why we must be hyperfocused on what happens after the fires burn out.
While I get the anger that has led to the uprising, the destruction that has emerged does more harm than good and must stop now. Every instance of looting provides aid and comfort to those who support the status quo. It allows them to talk about looting rather than its cause. It allows them to decry lawlessness rather than police terrorism.
And worse than all that, it allows President Trump to change the subject from China taking his lunch money over Hong Kong, his historically incompetent COVID-19 response, his veto last week of a bipartisan student loan forgiveness bill designed to help veterans defrauded by for-profit schools, and his criminal cronies.
Now the uprising is front and center when the more important topic is the police brutality that led to it. It won’t be long before supporters of the status quo put “law and order” in their electoral platforms. This year looks like a remake of 1968. And Trump will play the Richard Nixon role with far less nuance and far more racism. Trump now has the perfect diversion from his own incompetence. He will use this to go to his racism comfort zone, stoke his base and try to rebuild his flagging reelection campaign.
And the cycle continues. Unless citizens think about tomorrow and what is necessary to make it right. Those protesters should be November voters. Those who look at them with contempt certainly will be. So after these uprisings subside, we need another, more targeted protest at the ballot box that will change these politics for good.
Fauntroy is associate professor of political science at Howard University and author of the forthcoming book “More than Just Partisanship: Conservatives and Black Voter Suppression.”