George Floyd’s death at the hands of a Minneapolis police officer this past Monday was a modern-day lynching. That’s how Philonise Floyd, George’s brother, described it yesterday on MSNBC, and he was right. By now, nearly everyone in America has seen the horrendous video of Floyd’s arrest and killing. The protests which followed are not only in reaction to George Floyd’s murder but also to the persistent pattern of police violence against African Americans in this country.
What lies behind this brutality? It seems clear that under the veneer of (sometimes) justified law enforcement are layers of fear and hate directed at some bent archetypal concept of a black person. Sometimes this warped concept rises to the surface in the heat of an arrest and results in the killing of a fellow human. The killing isn’t usually a reaction to a specific offense. It flows from 400 years of deeply-embedded prejudice initiated by our own institution of slavery. We (white people) artificially and cruelly placed black people in a position of servitude and have worked ever since, sometimes overtly, sometimes covertly, and sometimes even unconsciously, to keep them there. We are racists, whether we admit it or not.
What then, can we do? Ibram X. Kendi, in his recent book, “How to be an Antiracist,” suggests a new perspective. First, he suggests recognition — recognition of the pervasiveness and internalization of racism in all of us (himself included). Then, Kendi makes the point — in multiple ways — that being non-racist is not the same as being anti-racist. The former is largely passive while the latter is decidedly active. Recognition should be followed by specific actions to counter racist attitudes and racist policies.
I admit to struggling with this, partly because actions are so much harder than neutrality and require personal investment and risk; and partly because I don’t know where to begin or how to make a difference. The problem seems so enormous and so systemic.
An African American friend and the founder of The Kindness Corps provided some valuable insight last year when she was consulting with me on the creation of Bending the Arc. She encouraged me to think about actions in terms of personal relationships and not just vague position-taking or policy-advocating (or blog-writing, for that matter!). Personal relationships are key. I suppose an analogy might be made to the old adage about thinking globally but acting locally.
At the same time, my friend would probably be one of the first to point out that, while personal relationships are the key to real progress, political action is also important and cannot be ignored. And from my reading of Kendi’s work, he would probably agree. He argues that one can’t effectively fight a vague “System.” Since system policies are ultimately created and enforced by individuals, change still depends upon us personally helping others to see the world differently; and, just as importantly, allowing others to help us change.