Dear Readers,
Feeling despair over police brutality, racism, and the unequal treatment of our black neighbors and friends, we spoke this week to a race relations historian. He gave us some context for the long history of racism in our country as a way to make sense of what is happening today, and what needs to happen tomorrow. Perhaps it might help you, too.
Here are some thoughts from Leonard Steinhorn, Professor of Communications and Historian at American University:
Thinking about the Black Lives Matter movement and protests, it can be disheartening to think we have not made more progress, and that black people are still frequently treated as less than human by police and others in our country.
But even though not enough has changed, it is important to remember that much has. Civil rights transformed the United States in fundamental ways -- in laws, in practices, in norms -- and it's important to honor those gains even if we're far from where we need to be.
People back then sacrificed lives, livelihoods, and futures to secure voting rights, to fight discrimination, to reshape institutions, to change attitudes. And things did change, in some important ways. One of the great untold stories of the last fifty years is the rise of the black middle-class -- in terms of jobs, housing, education gains. That's meaningful and shouldn't be diminished. Nor should we overlook the political gains blacks have made. We now have black mayors and police chiefs in, of all places, Mississippi.
That said, the same middle-class blacks whose rise we celebrate have merely a sliver of the wealth held by whites. We continue to live with the legacy of the redlining and housing discrimination from the post-World War II era, which affects housing and education. Access to health care and capital all remain more of a reach for blacks than whites. There's discrimination in medical research and treatment.
During the last recession we saw the impact of loan sharks preying on blacks with subprime mortgages, and the result was a foreclosure crisis that devastated black communities. And it reaches deep into the lives of African Americans. As a recent article noted in the New York Times, "Black children face harsher punishments and more frequent disciplinary actions against them than any other race in a school setting. Black children are 18 times more likely to be tried as an adult than white children are for similar crimes. And according to the American Psychology Association, black boys as young as 10 are viewed as older and less innocent than white boys."
It's a powerful burden black Americans face, too often a daily death by a thousand cuts, one that eats away at human dignity and agency. Every day white Americans judge blacks through the lens of unflattering stereotypes, often consciously and more often unconsciously, all the while proclaiming they're not racists. It all amounts to a psychological layer of power on top of the social and economic power that whites exert.
Now take this baseline of disadvantage today, but then eliminate the gains of the last five decades, and then imagine what it was like living under Jim Crow and segregation and blatant discrimination and second-class citizenship and the absolute denial of voting and so many other rights. We do not want a return to that America. Civil rights did change America, and yes, things have improved, greatly so. But we're far, far from where we need to be.
With the police, what we're seeing today isn't new. The only difference is the mobile phone's ability to capture it. Harlem blew up in 1964 after a police officer killed an unarmed 15-year old boy. Watts, Newark, Detroit in the 1960s ... all triggered by police force and arrests. Then you have cops who worked with the Klan throughout the South. Just look at this image of Sheriffs Rainey and Price when they were being arraigned for the 1964 Freedom Summer murder of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner:
Their contempt was no different from the chilling, unbothered indifference of the cop who had his hands in his pocket as his knee crushed the life out of George Floyd.
And it's not just the police. It's the judicial system, which for years let off whites who committed murder -- note the case of Emmett Till -- but imprisoned blacks for the smallest of crimes. And that continues today in states like Mississippi -- what they call the school to prison pipeline. See my article on Mississippi, The Real Forgotten Americans. The crack epidemic was a crime; the opioid epidemic is a health concern. The difference? Crack was seen as a black drug, opioids are largely hitting whites.
The reason MLK went to Memphis in 1968, where he was gunned down, was to march with sanitation workers who had no rights and who faced such disregard for their lives that one was crushed to death in a malfunctioning truck. But to protesters, it was more than better work conditions that they sought. Their message was simple on the placards they held high: "I Am A Man."
Fast forward 52 years. Like then, yes, it's about police and jobs and ending discrimination. But it's also about much more -- about human dignity, about ending the dehumanization of fellow Americans simply because of the color of their skin. "I Am A Man." Dehumanize someone and it's easy to deny them a job or their children a future. Dehumanize them and it's easy to think your kid shouldn't go to school with them. Dehumanize someone and it's easy to end their life with a knee as the police officer barely notices he's killing someone.
In his 1963 Letter from A Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King wrote about tension and justice. "I must confess," he said, "that I am not afraid of the word 'tension.' I have earnestly opposed violent tension, but there is a type of constructive, nonviolent tension which is necessary for growth. Just as Socrates felt that it was necessary to create a tension in the mind so that individuals could rise from the bondage of myths and half truths to the unfettered realm of creative analysis and objective appraisal, so must we see the need for nonviolent gadflies to create the kind of tension in society that will help men rise from the dark depths of prejudice and racism to the majestic heights of understanding and brotherhood."
To King, it would be wrong to prefer "a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice." We need not fear tension if it leads to justice. The civil rights era proved that. True, we've seen too many periods of tension lead to lip service and good intentions but not to results or change. But we cannot take the risk of staying silent.
(P.S. the author of this piece is also Ariella’s dad)
What we’re reading this week...
Here’s a question of the week: who said the following?
"While no one condones looting, one can understand the pent-up feelings that may result from decades of repression and people who have had members of their family killed by that regime, for them to be taking their feelings out on that regime, and I don't think there's anyone in any of those pictures ... (who wouldn't) accept it as part of the price of getting from a repressed regime to freedom."
If you guessed a prominent Republican leader you’d be right (bet you didn’t).
This week, as always, there are the helpers. Last night in D.C. a man let approximately 70 protesters stay the night at his home after they were boxed in by police. Without this gesture of hospitality, the protesters would have been arrested for violating curfew. Let’s help more of these stories of kindness and care get out there - if you see a kind act in the midst of a protest, reply to this email and we’ll help you get in touch with the media.
That’s our newsletter for this week - with one last housekeeping note. Ariella and Amber are cooking up Lioness’s first podcast episodes for you, to launch later this summer, so stay tuned for that!
We look forward to hearing from all of you, with any reader responses, tips, or unsung stories of your own to share - reply to this email to share them with us. Stay safe, and keep up the good trouble.
And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn for more up to the minute stories.