By Zach Norris, executive director of the Ella Baker Center
When I heard the news that a white gunman had killed eight people in Georgia, six of whom were Asian, my heart went out to the victims and their families. As media reports grew, I couldn’t help but remember an interview I had done just a day ago with a reporter from a national news outlet about “tensions between Black and Asian folks” following recent acts of violence committed by Black individuals that resulted in the deaths of two Asian elders.
I wonder if mainstream media will frame this most recent atrocity committed by a white man with the same broad brush they have used recently to form a narrative of widespread antagonism between Black and Asian communities. A narrative that ignores the long history of Black/Asian solidarity in the face of white supremacy and facilitates the ongoing collective punishment of communities of color that has been so common in the US.
During his term as president, Trump acted as an architect of anxiety using the same tactics over the last 4 years that are 400 years old in this country: divide, distract, and blame. One of his last acts was blaming Asian folks for coronavirus and that is having ramifications in terms of escalating violence against Asian people. That escalation isn’t about Black people particularly, except insofar as Black people are also susceptible to racist rhetoric just like any other group. And like every other community (and in many ways more than other communities), Black people are suffering from Covid-19.
Covid-19 exposed a lack of public health infrastructure that impacts communities of color first and worst. It’s a sort of double whammy for Black people because the lack of public health infrastructure is partly due to how much politicians poured money into prisons and policing over the past 40 years, as Black, Latinx, and Southeast Asian communities were scapegoated. Rather than addressing massive loss of quality jobs and widening inequality, politicians increasingly criminalized drug use and abuse, homelessness, school discipline, and violence in communities, problems which were all worsened by an environment of insecurity and despair. All Americans needed public health solutions to public health issues, we got prisons. We never got the solutions or the infrastructure. Consequently, Covid-19, a quintessential public health issue, came along and kicked our ass.
Asian folks were the easiest scapegoat given Trump’s lack of leadership and commitment to fearmongering. Unfortunately, even though a decent portion of the mainstream media recognize the racist rhetoric of the Trump administration, they don’t always see how their own reporting contributes to a kind of musical chairs of oppression that people of color experience in this country. It is a race to the bottom that has no bottom. More communities of color blamed for violence leads to more laws, policies and funding for the criminal court system. A group that finds its chair today may lose it tomorrow, and all the while the tune of racism plays on.
Black, indigenous, Asian, Latinx communities just want the same individualized treatment that white people get. When a single white person commits an act of violence, there is typically some humanizing examination of what might have led that person to engage in that act.
Instead and often without provocation, Black and Asian people have repeatedly been victims of collective punishment, from the 1871 Chinese Massacre in Los Angeles to the Tulsa Race Massacre of Black people in 1921. These are just the first examples that came to mind. Violence against people of color cannot be addressed through the same systems (policing and prisons) that are still stamped by the enslavement of Black people, and the genocide of indigenous people. Getting to real safety in this country, will require that white supremacy be named and its tragic outcomes addressed; it will require funding a meaningful social safety net that includes universal basic income, living wages, and dignified housing; and it will require funding community-centered safety solutions.
These solutions range from the dispatch of first responders that are trained to deal with people suffering from mental health crises to the violence prevention programs proven to work better than more cops on the street. Funding these initiatives will help to build the public health infrastructure that will help us better prepare for the next pandemic and prove that we learned our lesson from this one. If we take care of the public, we will also take care of public safety.
Zach Norris is the Executive Director of the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, author of Defund Fear: Safety Without Policing, Prisons, and Punishment, and co-founder of Restore Oakland, a community advocacy and training center that empowers Bay Area community members to transform local economic and justice systems and make a safe and secure future possible for themselves and for their families.