Approximately one week ago, I attended the Black Lives Matter march here in Chicago. Young black, brown, and white folks marched together on that Saturday afternoon, exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to protest police thuggery and brutality against people of color. Their intelligence and passion were admirable. As I wrote elsewhere, the young folks may in fact save us all.
The old lefties in the march were worthy of admiration as well. These brothers and sisters had likely marched with groups like the Black Panthers and Young Lords several decades ago. If the young folks are providing the energy and momentum of the people’s movement known as Black Lives Matter, then the older and more experienced activists are the ballast. A balance between the two is essential if the ongoing struggle for the full and equal human rights of all peoples in the United States is to be successful.
As we marched around downtown Chicago, dodging the police and trying to stay one step ahead of their bicycles, cars, and horses, Howard Zinn’s genius observation that “history is a moving train” kept coming to mind. Black Lives Matter is another chapter in the long Black Freedom Struggle. The problem of the 20th century was the color line, and the color line continues to be one of the defining problems of the 21st century as well.
Protests are an opportunity for strangers to interact with one another, and these interactions may be positive or negative. They can involve mutual aid and support, but these interactions can also involve argument and disagreement. The worst moments can devolve into violence.
And in some instances, people who were once strangers can unite together under shared bonds of common interest and mutual respect as they exercise their rights as democratic citizens. The following is one such moment.
On Saturday, I watched a white woman in her thirties, a bystander, engage in a spirited argument with three young black men about the meaning of the phrase “All Lives Matter.” With enthusiasm, she told them that “all lives matter,” and that her belief does not mitigate the particular ways that the lives of black people are being imperiled at present (and since before the founding of the United States). To prove her point about how “all lives matter,” this woman then said that “she loves her dog like a member of the family” and “his life matters too.” This was a cringe-worthy comment. The young men quite reasonably responded that, “the life of a dog is apparently as valuable as that of a black person’s.”
She stammered with embarrassment, offering a “that’s not what I meant.” I intervened and asked her to explain her logic. She told me she is a humanist who values all life equally. I challenged her a bit more about the specifics of her objections to the phrase “black lives matter.”
What transpired was almost the exact type of moment recently spoken to by philosopher Chris Lebron in The New York Times:
When I claim that black lives don’t matter in America, I mean to say something that to my mind is abundantly clear. Here’s how it works. We live in a liberal democracy that is founded on the sanctity of liberty. This implies that fairness is essential; indeed, that proposition is often explicitly at the heart of many democratic debates. The very idea of democracy reaches back to ancient Greece and is the foundation for our deepest principles concerning human rights. We believe that democracies are superior to other systems of government largely because they intrinsically respect the rights of the men and women who live in them.
I must then take into account the history of racial dominance in this country — the centuries of slavery; the decades of Jim Crow; the continuation of systemic racial inequality in wealth, jobs, education and public services. Then there are the deaths — the body count at the hands of the police that ticks these days almost as regularly as a national clock. I take all of these basic observations together and my considered position is that the claim that black lives don’t matter in America corresponds to the facts…
The direction I was looking toward was the internal life of a black person in America. The very real anxieties and fears we have in whether our ambitions are as secure as any other American’s. Whether our opportunities are equal. Whether our health care is of sufficient quality. Whether our college degrees are of equal worth. Whether our spouses will make it home from the grocery store. Whether our children will one day counsel a parent that everything will be O.K. while someone is slumped over in the car seat in front of her, bleeding to death after being shot by a police officer.
You were looking in an altogether different direction. You were looking in the direction of your own innocence. Though you bought a house in an entirely segregated neighborhood, it’s not your fault the schools are better where you live. Though you have only one black friend, it’s not your fault because your friends are your co-workers and your company or university is doing poorly on diversity. Though it’s a shame that this black man or woman died (pick one, any one), it’s not your fault that the police officer you pay with your tax dollars and who is sworn to protect you did so at the expense of an unnecessary killing.
We chatted for a moment, and she admitted that she believed that the police were racist and classist. There was another moment of comprehension as well, as she realized that she did in fact support the goals of the march. She paused and then decided to stand up for Black Lives Matter by joining the protest.
But this moment of hope and progress would be balanced by another encounter one week later, which reminded me of how deep and persistent white racial animus and hostility toward black people remains in America.
On a Monday night, I went to see the wonderful movie Finding Dory and decided to have several beers at a nearby bar while listening to Marc Maron’s podcast and reading one of Harry Turtledove’s new books about World War III. My night would end with the indulgence of a taxi or Uber ride home.
This is one of my favorite late night routines: the solitude, the people watching, and drinking good beer when it is on special. As a child of the working class, I enjoy the small pleasures of life. The bar area was busy, so I sat in the only available seat, far away from the entrance and in the corner.
There were three white men next to me. They ranged in age from their late thirties to mid sixties. The oldest man was particularly loud and boisterous. The other two were his audience. He rambled on about his real estate business, his new boat, and some meetings at a trade show. It was the all too-common banal late night conversation of businessmen who are visiting Chicago: exaggeration, posturing, and a desperate effort to sound important.
[These behaviors are usually the hallmarks of the weak and the not very powerful. The people of substantial power and influence I have met have tended to be quiet, humble, and confident in their success. I have had dinner with presidential advisers and Nobel Prize winners, never realizing it at the time because they never mentioned such accomplishments. They asked many questions of the people sitting around them. Said people also listened more than they talked, and had no interest in unnecessary signaling. Perhaps they are outliers? It’s clear that Donald Trump shares their comportment.]
The loud man who was seated next to me then began to talk about the recent documentary series O.J.: Made in America. I knew what his subsequent comments were going to be before he made them. Racism is often telegraphed like the lazy overhand right-hand punch of a sub par boxer. To see this blow coming before it is even thrown is a survival skill for black and brown people in America.
He ranted about O.J. being guilty, the Los Angeles rebellion, and how Rodney King deserved his vicious, almost lethal beating, by the Los Angeles police.
He drank more beer and said that black people need to learn to “obey” the police and how many black “criminals” are just “scumbags” who should be beaten and killed. I made eye contact with his drinking buddy. He looked afraid and nervous. He chose not to silence his friend or tell him to stop talking so loudly. This was but one more experience where as a black person in a predominantly white space, I am both hyper-visible while also being simultaneously invisible.
The man continued to posture and perform from his bar stool as he then talked about why the cops had no choice but to kill people like Eric Garner in New York, a man who “shouldn’t have been selling cigarettes anyway,” and of course how, “Black Lives Matter” are a bunch of “thugs” who should be shot and beaten by the cops.
I made eye contact with his friend again. He looked very uncomfortable. This was one of the moments when white privilege and white supremacy are facilitated by the silence and complicity of white people who may not actively engage in racist behavior, but who look away and refuse to intervene against it. They are complicit.
The three white men went on to laugh and discuss why they are voting for Donald Trump. The loudest and oldest one said, “He is going to make America great again,” build a wall to stop the “illegals,” and let the cops do “their jobs.” The Latino bartender and kitchen staff looked upset and annoyed. Professionalism and fear of losing their jobs silenced them.
It’s doubtful there are any words, logic, or truthful claims that would have dissuaded the white, bigoted, racist, authoritarian Donald Trump supporter whose gleeful defense of violence against black people and the Black Lives Matter movement almost moved me to make a less than gentlemanly intervention against him.
Ultimately, I will not surrender the slogan “Black Lives Matter” in order to create a feeling of comfort for those people who are unwilling to confront white privilege and white supremacy. My mental health and personal integrity will not allow me to bend my knee in supplication to white racial fragility.
But perhaps there is some wisdom in the following suggestion from Ian Olasov in Slate:
What are we to make of this? After all, slogans are useful things. “Black Lives Matter”, for one, has been enormously successful as a rallying cry for social change. And calls for national unity are often disguised attempts to prevent oppressed groups from expressing their specific grievances. But perhaps at this point, at least when we’re talking to the unconverted, slogans unnecessarily deepen disagreement. Perhaps the moral is that, if we want to reach greater agreement on the problems of racial discrimination facing us today—to the extent that that’s possible—we should move away from sloganeering and toward substantive dialogue.
My recent encounters with “All Lives Matter” reminded me that creating social change is not always about winning over the extremes, but rather about capturing the persuadable middle, the true “silent majority.” If America’s out of control police are to be truly reformed, that is the battlefield of public opinion that must first be won.