A conservative friend sent me an article about the rioting and violence at some of the current Black Lives Matter rallies. This is my reply.
First, while I do not approve of the violence that has sometimes broken out, I do understand the depth of anger and frustration that has led some black and Hispanic people to express their anger in violence. If you also disapprove of violence you should try to understand why it occurs and think about how we can defuse it before it explodes.
Second, I would note that unfortunately history shows that racial prejudice and white supremacy can rarely be toppled without violence. We fought a bloody civil war to end slavery. It took the Civil Rights movement of the ‘60s and ‘70s to put an end to the lynch mobs and Jim Crow laws that oppressed black people in the south. Having failed to follow up with ways to protect the rights of people of color we now are being faced with yet another wave of violence. How many times will we have to go through this until we become a country that protects the right of all people to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Third I would note that when violence erupts on the left, it is almost always precipitated by violence from the right. The first shots of the Civil War were fired by the South against Fort Sumter. The civil rights movement of the ‘60’s started with peaceful protests, a woman sitting in the front of a bus, people sitting in at restaurants that would not serve them because of the color of their skin,people exercising their first amendment right to freely assemble to petition the government for redress of grievances. Things turned violent after the police waded in with dogs and clubs.
Violence broke out after MLK was assassinated, after Rodney King was beaten by police,and after George Floyd was murdered by a white policeman who was kneeling on his neck while he was lying on the ground in handcuffs.
On May 30 police in Minneapolis went through a parking lot used by press and some protesters slashing all four tires of most cars. The officers strategically deflated the tires to “stop behaviors such as vehicles driving dangerously and at high speeds in and around protesters and law enforcement,” said Minnesota Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bruce Gordon. I can only remember two times when someone drove a car into a group of people at a protest. One was the Neo-Nazi who killed Heather Heyer in Charlotte. The other was a NYC police car.
And fourth, I would note that President Trump, instead of urging calm and asking people to find ways to resolve their differences peacefully, is encouraging the police and others who are supposed to keep the peace, to use more and more violence. This is of course,consistent with his desire to turn our democracy into a Fascist Oligarchy like those presided over by his friends Putin, Kim, Erdoğan and Bolsonaro.
Referring to the recent wave of violence the author writes, "Something horrifying is happening to the American moral sense." Looking at what caused the violence I would say, “Something horrifying has been part of the American moral sense for a long time and it is high time find a way to fix it.