These protests feel different, but we have to be realistic. There's a long road ahead

There is an emerging sense that this time is different. It is not only that the protests surrounding George Floyd’s murder are unlike past protests against police brutality and racism – the racial and class composition of protesters alone make this moment different. It is also that this effort, orchestrated perhaps by far more sophisticated organizers aided by equally sophisticated technology, might very well force real, long-lasting change: change that undermines structures of racial domination, including but not limited to the penal system, while also necessarily challenging the deep and enduring belief systems that support them.

More and more of the alienated feel seen and heard, and this has bred a sense of optimism. Even Ta-Nehisi Coates, usually sober and cynical about possibilities for real racial progress, has recently expressed hope that this time is different.

History, however, preaches caution. Despite some apparent differences, we have been here before. With the certainty that the sun will rise, we will probably be here again in the not-toodistant future.

Over 50 years ago, the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, also known as the Kerner Commission, investigated the causes of the 1967 racial uprisings and produced a report documenting their findings and recommendations. The Kerner Report was courageous and bold. Not only did the commission recommend that we dismantle various institutions of racial domination that helped to create and maintain Black Americans’ social, economic, and political exclusion, but its members also recommended that we proactively work toward inclusion through unfettered access to high quality education; good jobs; safe and affordable housing; and a fair, compassionate, and responsive welfare system.

Despite some early signs of progress, however, political elites put aside the commission’s recommendations and instead responded with a stunning expansion of its penal state. Over the next three decades, law enforcement’s budgets and personnel grew exponentially, while expenditures on education, housing, and other forms of public assistance declined in almost equal measure.

US history informs us that institutions of racial domination never really die. They evolve or are given new life in other forms. Slavery’s abolition gave birth to the Jim Crow south. When Black southerners migrated north en masse to escape Jim Crow’s horrors, institutional ghettos of the north-east and midwest emerged to confine and subjugate. In the mid-to-late 1960s, the deplorable social and economic conditions that characterized northern ghettos fueled the civil unrest that gave impetus to an unprecedented expansion of a highly punitive and dehumanizing penal state. This new and improved penal apparatus was specifically designed to control and confine large numbers of restless and frustrated Blacks, especially young men. Ironically, mass incarceration has obscured just how little relative progress Black Americans have actually made since the civil rights movement.

At each of these inflection points, the United States could have taken a different path, towards racial equity, justice and inclusion – in other words, a path towards full citizenship. Yet each time after implementing minor reforms (and, with Reconstruction, major reforms), political and economic elites doubled-down and committed anew to institutions of racial domination.

If the past is prologue, this time will likely be no different. Indeed, powerful forces within the law enforcement community, including police unions, have already promised to deploy their resources to fight proposed reforms and maintain the status quo; the president promises to uphold law and order,

by any means necessary; his attorney general denies that systemic racism is a problem in law enforcement; and white supremacists from all walks of life have become emboldened to act with impunity. Making matters worse, not better, are the empty platitudes of solidarity that organizations and corporations offer, many with their own problematic policies and practices that have contributed to the reproduction of racial/ethnic and class inequalities. Indeed, their platitudes only work to obscure and further prolong longstanding social and economic injuries.

In a country where the norm of whiteness prevails and whites’ inherent superiority and entitlement are assumed, and where the extraordinary wealth of a few hinges on the exploitation of many, progress towards racial equity, justice, and inclusion, the hallmarks of full citizenship, will always beget various forms of backlash. This time will only be different if we keep history close, if sympathetic whites commit to change even when it threatens