On the Counterproductive Nature of Riots:

“This motherfucka” 

Now normally I give you all a few lines of disarming humor or poetry-adjacent profundity first and then ease into the Samuel L. Jackson quotes, but you should understand the way that I typically process anger. I don’t usually get mad right away. When something is said or done that provokes me to anger, my first response is not rage but numbness. I need to sit and process things, put them in their proper context. “Should I be angry about this?” “Is anger the most productive thing right now?” “Will this anger get me killed?” I suppose this is due in part to my subconscious self-designation as one of “the good ones.” When life is prone to random interactions with people who have guns and a legal mandate to eliminate perceived threats, and your existence has historically been perceived as a threat, the rational Black person's first response is to immediately present themself as non-threatening and deal with any emotions that come from that interaction on their own time. 

That shit is getting old though. The recent violence in Kenosha and Portland, where people on both sides of this generational conflict have lost their lives, has brought the conversation around peaceful protest vs riots back to the fore. And with it comes interminable admonishments from white people and a few Black people about the “right way” to protest: the completely unfounded assertion that the peaceful petition for the redress of grievances is a proven path to success while unstrategic rioting only leads to destructive backlash. 

So what does the peaceful protest advocate say when you point out to them that peaceful protests largely get ignored. That there have been peaceful protests all over the country long before George Floyd was murdered, long before Breonna Taylor was murdered, long before Tamir Rice was murdered, long before John Crawford was murdered, long before Botham Jean was murdered, long before Eric Garner was murdered, long before Freddy Gray was murdered, long before Sandra Bland was found dead in a cage for no good reason, long before Jacob Blake was shot seven times in the back while being aggressively unarmed, and no one gave a shit. 

What do they say when you point out that peaceful protests that adhere to the strict bounds set by local authorities and do not seek confrontation with police are seldom shown on the cable news networks? Or that the vast majority of violence has not been perpetrated by looters or rioters or white antifa anarchists but by the police themselves on peaceful protesters. The videos of cops in storm-trooper armor snatching people off the street and tear gassing people posing no physical threat, and the personal accounts from peaceful protesters of being beaten and shot by rubber bullets have made the news. But that’s because it involved violence. And even then, no one is doing shit about it. 

What do they say when you try to put riots and violent uprisings in their proper historical context? Violent resistance is a natural reaction to a violently unequal social order. Oppression without violence is like a terminal illness without symptoms. The only person who would admonish a cancer patient for being weak and emaciated is an asshole whose primary concern is to preserve the comfort afforded by an ignorance of mortality. 

So how do the proponents of purely peaceful protest respond? Well in a recent interaction I had with one such person, they responded by asking me if I was familiar with Martin Luther King Jr. and John Lewis and sent me a link to MLK’s Wikipedia page. 

This motherfucka….

I think I’m mad. I mean, I’m typing this at 1:00 am with a searing headache so yeah, I’m pretty sure I’m mad. When a person seeks to cherry pick the leaders and actions of a complicated, multifaceted, and most importantly unfinished movement to use as a cudgel against those forced to take up its mantle against a smug social order that pats itself on the back for delivering next to nothing in material justice, you would hope that they would come with more substantial receipts than a fucking Wikipedia page. 

By now, every leftist and BLM activist knows King’s 1966 quote about riots being the “language of the unheard.” But we should be honest and put that quote in its full context. In the 60 minutes interview with Mike Wallace in which King said that he also warned of the counterproductive nature of riots and continued to urge nonviolent action. 

“My hope is that it will be nonviolent. I would hope that we can avoid riots because riots are self-defeating and socially destructive. I would hope that we can avoid riots, but that we would be as militant and as determined next summer and through the winter as we have been this summer.”

However, if we are to be responsible for putting King's 1966 quotes in their fuller context, then those who continue to use King’s legacy to delegitimize the current uprising should consider the quotes he gave after The Long Hot Summer of 1967. A summer when riots and violence erupted across the country as the civil rights victories of 1964 and 65 were found to do little to alleviate economic and housing marginalization, and the violence inflicted on communities of color by the police continued unabated. Sound familiar? By September of that year King had been struggling to reconcile the non-violent foundation of his political project with the lack of material action on the economic and anti-imperialist priorities for his movement. He had been watching the rise of Black militancy and its capacity for rebuilding societal bonds and reconnecting atomized people with a sense of real purpose. He gave a speech to the American Psychology Association’s annual convention in Washington, DC. He said this:

“Urban riots must now be recognized as durable social phenomena. -- They may be deplored, but they are there and should be understood. Urban riots are a special form of violence. They are not insurrections. The rioters are not seeking to seize territory or to attain control of institutions. They are mainly intended to shock the white community. They are a distorted form of social protest. The looting which is their principal feature serves many functions. It enables the most enraged and deprived Negro to take hold of consumer goods with the ease the white man does by using his purse. Often the Negro does not even want what he takes; he wants the experience of taking.”

To be honest with you, I only learned about this speech recently. Like so much of King’s more radical stances and analyses, it has been whitewashed and sanitized from history. So I didn’t include it when I wrote about looting and riots earlier in this most cursed year. This is the third time this year that I’ve felt the need to say something about riots. Someone tell me why people’s need to emphasize violent protests over what caused the protests is different than people freaking out over Colin Kaepernick taking a knee. And while most liberals were able to understand why making Kaepernick's statement into a controversy about respecting the flag was just a racist proxy war, they seem unable to find their way out of the wrong foxhole at the battle of unproductive riots.

And this is where moderate liberals and conservatives throw the MLK grenade.  Not in opposition to white supremacy but in deference to it. Why else would they so reverently cite a man’s life’s work but completely ignore the conclusions that the man came to by living it? The way Martin Luther King’s legacy is bandied about like some moderate conservative pokeball is an insult to him. King continued with this:

“Let us say boldly that if the violations of law by the white man in the slums over the years were calculated and compared with the law-breaking of a few days of riots, the hardened criminal would be the white man. These are often difficult things to say but I have come to see more and more that it is necessary to utter the truth in order to deal with the great problems that we face in our society.”

Liberals and conservatives like to suggest that while racism surely does exist and is a bad thing, we have made great strides as a nation. And those gains were won by non-violent and dignified protest. The hard work of raising awareness and working within institutions and with sympathetic allies who occupy positions of power. Violent riots and looting can never hope to achieve results like that, they say.

Here is what Dr. King thought of those results:

“These partial advances were, however, limited principally to the South and progress did not automatically spread throughout the nation. There was also little depth to the changes. White America stopped murder, but that is not the same thing as ordaining brotherhood; nor is the ending of lynch rule the same thing as inaugurating justice.

After some years of Negro-white unity and partial success, white America shifted gears and went into reverse. Negroes, alive with hope and enthusiasm, ran into sharply stiffened white resistance at all levels and bitter tensions broke out in sporadic episodes of violence. New lines of hostility were drawn and the era of good feeling disappeared.

The decade of 1955 to 1965, with its constructive elements, misled us. Everyone, activists and social scientists, underestimated the amount of violence and rage Negroes were suppressing and the amount of bigotry the white majority was disguising.

Really, you should just read the entire speech. 

Of course we know what this is really about—the same thing it’s been about for the last four years. Donald Trump. Liberals are afraid of losing to Trump again. They should be. This race is much closer than it ought to be and the Biden campaign has no real way to energize voters. They have pushed their chips in on white suburban women. And this may shock you, but white suburban women don’t like riots. They don’t like the idea of violent left-wing radicals marching through their cul-de-sacs. They really don’t like the idea of abolishing the police. Trump is crude and corrupt and dumb but at least he will keep the thugs at bay. Trump and his cadre of venal liars tell the world that Biden will unleash anarchy on the streets to appease Black people. Biden will have to run to the right and condemn riots and promise to bring back law and order. (Buh Dum)

He totally said that Trump is the one who wants to defund the police. And this may be a smart electoral strategy. While there is some polling to the contrary (like when a majority of people supported burning a Minneapolis police station down), most polls show that most Americans are against protests that turn violent. Electoral politics aside though, the consensus of “most Americans” has a piss poor track record of giving a shit about Black life. 

For a lot of liberals and Democrats, beating Trump is the most important thing. Without a Biden victory, everything else is moot. But we really should be precise about what this means. For the last four years, Donald Trump has filled the average liberal with a sense of existential dread. Every time a liberal finds themself at a gas station and a man wearing a MAGA hat and a Trump face mask walks in, they tense up. They keep tabs on the Trumper, looking at him out of the corner of their eye, trying to not get caught staring. They wonder what the Trumper is thinking, as their own thoughts race: “Is he looking at me?” “Is he going to say something?” “Can he tell I’m a liberal?” “Will this get physical?” 

Congratulations. You now know how damn near every Black person feels around the police. 

Except we have been living under that existential dread for our entire history in this country. Can you imagine if Trump was immortal? If he would be president for your entire life and your kid’s life? And you had to raise your kid with a special set of rules for when they run into people wearing MAGA hats? And you lived with the fear that a Proud Boy might shoot your kid dead and not suffer any consequence? And this state of affairs was all you’ve ever known? All your parents had ever known, your parents’ parents and so on? Would you be content to choose oft-ignored polite petitions to power as the way to make change? Or would you set some shit on fire?

King put it this way:

“A profound judgment of today's riots was expressed by Victor Hugo a century ago. He said, 'If a soul is left in the darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but he who causes the darkness.' The policymakers of the white society have caused the darkness; they create discrimination; they structured slums; and they perpetuate unemployment, ignorance and poverty. It is incontestable and deplorable that Negroes have committed crimes; but they are derivative crimes. They are born of the greater crimes of the white society. When we ask Negroes to abide by the law, let us also demand that the white man abide by law in the ghettos. Day-in and day-out he violates welfare laws to deprive the poor of their meager allotments; he flagrantly violates building codes and regulations; his police make a mockery of law; and he violates laws on equal employment and education and the provisions for civic services.”

If you want to be anti-racist and proclaim Black Lives Matter to the heavens above, then you need to understand this crucial thing. When you form a take on the riots and violence erupting over police brutality and your first concern isn’t the conditions that lead to the violence….that is white supremacy. You don’t need to look any further. That is the racism, right there. Right in front of you. No don’t look at Steven Bannon, he’s in jail. It’s right there, with you. And even if you are merely concerned with the electoral strategy and beating Trump in November, just realize your tacit implication is that the rage, fear, and uncertainty you have felt under Trump for the last four years is way too important for the rage, fear, and uncertainty Black people have felt under the police for our entire existence to get in the way. 

You may even be right about the strategy, but it’s still racist as fuck. 

It just feels so stark to me. I don’t understand how it’s not obvious. Liberals have been warning about the oncoming threat of fascism since January of 2016 and yet when secret police and violent political terrorists descend on Black America for resisting state-sanctioned violence, they admonish us to be more peaceful about it. Resist fascism by not angering the fascists too much. Because that worked so well the last time. 

I don’t want to hear shit from a liberal about fascism right now. What have Black people been experiencing in America but fascism? We do not get equal treatment under the law. The law has in fact been tailored to make us criminals and remove us from participation in society. Our leaders are routinely jailed and killed. We have been herded into ghettos so that we can be easily surveilled and contained. We can be disappeared and no one will look for us. We are not equal partners in this social order and that fact is depressingly clear. This country inflicts violence on us as a matter of humdrum routine and some of us have decided to respond in equal measure. 

I am a humanist. I do not cheer death or destruction. I do not celebrate the death of that alt-right shit-heel in Portland. I mourn his death. But I’m going to be honest with you. I mourn not because I believe that all life is precious, even that of those who would see me deprived of breath. I mourn because I know what comes after. The disproportionate response that will be focused on people who look like me. And the performative outrage of the liberal, which masks a demonstrated apathy. “This is why we must all go out and vote!” they say. “For who?” I ask. 

The guy who openly hates me and wants to increase the presence of police? Or the guy who understands my pain…..and wants to increase the presence of police?

If you want to stop the violence and destruction, then your only concern should be the cause of that violence and destruction. If the conditions don’t change, then things will continue to burn. People will continue to die. This didn’t start with Donald Trump and it sure as shit won’t end with him. Either get on board or be honest about the limits of your commitment to anti-racism.

And keep Dr. King’s name out ya mouth. 

Solidarity Forever.