George Floyd was killed by a white police officer a mile north of my house in south Minneapolis. The protests that ensued marched north to the police department’s 3rd precinct, just blocks from the high school where I teach. Twelve hundred miles away, in New York’s Central Park, Amy Cooper, a white woman, called 911, falsely claiming that her life was being threatened by Christian Cooper, a black man who had simply asked her to leash her dog.
That these two events — both of which have momentarily wrested the nation’s eyes away from the coronavirus pandemic — occurred on the same day is no coincidence; injustices like this happen to people of color every day and in every city. But the juxtaposition evokes a long and tortured history of crimes against black Americans specifically, one that didn’t end with Eric Garner or begin with Emmett Till. Not all lynchings involve a rope.
[image_caption]Christopher Mah[/image_caption]
This year, my ninth-grade students engaged in a writing unit on social protest. Through examination and analysis of movements ranging from Colin Kaepernick’s national anthem protests to the current COVID-19 protests, they sought to approach difficult questions like To what extent is destructive protest justified? and What makes a protest effective?
One of the most common critiques of social protests, and in particular ones led by people of color, is that they lack a specific goal. Without a numbered list of legislative proposals, pundits dismiss them as ineffectual outrage. As many of my past students have pointed out, the media reinforces this idea (while perpetuating racist stereotypes) by minimizing them as “primal screams.” But make no mistake, these protesters are demanding the same things as those in Ferguson and Baltimore:
- Criminal charges against all four police officers involved in George Floyd’s death.
- The demilitarization of local law enforcement and an end to its brutality against communities of color.
- Criminal justice reform that erases the criminal records of the hundreds of thousands of people of color incarcerated for nonviolent drug offenses while predominantly white entrepreneurs stand to secure windfall profits in the burgeoning legal marijuana industry.
- Policies that end de facto housing and educational segregation based on race and income.
- Economic investments that provide living-wage jobs in working class communities of color.
- Environmental justice and public health measures that allow communities of color to enjoy clean air, drinkable water, healthy food, and affordable health care.
- A seat at the table within the social, political, and economic institutions responsible for putting these policies into action.
The most important idea I learned from my students — many of whom have been personally affected by police violence — is that rioting is the language of grief. These protests are more than catharsis; they are an imperfect expression of grief. There is anger, yes, but underneath it, people are grieving, grieving the loss of a family member, a friend, a father to a 6-year-old daughter.
Within this grief, what gives me hope (as naive as that hope may seem) is the thousands of Minnesotans who risked their safety during a global pandemic to stand at 38th and Chicago in peaceful solidarity with George Floyd; the two New Yorkers — true white allies — who identified Amy Cooper from a viral video; the countless people of all races with the courage to continue shouting in the face of white supremacy: Enough.
Christopher Mah is a language arts teacher in Minneapolis.
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Peaceful protest is what angry Americans do. The folks have every right to scream, yell, raise signs and their voices, they have no right to burn down any buildings and no justification for looting stores. This is about right versus wrong and looting is wrong… Period!
Thanks for your commentary, Christopher. It’s not difficult to accept your argument that “rioting is a language of grief” (among the various ways that grief can be expressed). But I am interested to know how you would answer one of the major questions currently being raised by the protests and riots: Is this particular language of grief one that you would encourage or discourage hurting people to use?
Every day I have intense emotions (grief, anger, frustration, etc.) in the course of my own teaching, parenting, and engagement in the community. I have to constantly assess which “language” will be most helpful to others. I have moments of anger with my own children, and I know that there are various languages I can use to express that emotion. I have consciously chosen not to use the languages of physical abuse and verbal abuse, because those languages would not be helpful to others. In my own career as a teacher, I have moments of serious frustration, and I likewise must choose which language I will use to express that emotion. I hope that I usually choose a good language.
Although this week’s rioting is certainly a language of grief, there are other languages available (protests, boycotts, get-out-the-vote campaigns, publicity, etc.), and I am not ready to say that the rioters should be using the language that they have chosen. There are many, many low-income and minority people who have been measurably harmed by these riots, in addition to many other people who did not deserve the harm inflicted. You say that the riots are an “imperfect expression of grief.” One could also say that physical abuse of another is an “imperfect expression of grief” or an “imperfect expression of anger.” Would you go farther than simply “imperfect” and say that you will encourage your students not to avoid this particular language, or do you believe that rioting is a language that we should encourage?
Yes, we are seeing an exprsesion of personal and social grief. Unfortunately we’re also seeing opportunistic looting, and unlawful violence as a personal expression for its own sake rather than in the name of justice.
But let’s try to see who was doing the fire-setting and the destruction and the looting. I saw a video of a middle-aged white man in a fairly sophisticated gas mask and protective suit go up to the auto store or the liquor store and calmly take the hammer he had brought with him and go along breaking window after window–walking down the row of them, accompanied by a shorter boack guy in a pink shirt—-before calmly walking off and brushing aside a woman who was filming him with her phone. He wasn’t a protester in any way; he was a provocateur,
We have to identify this guy. Is he, as some have proposed on line, a St. Paul cop? Did someone NOT a protester want”a scene” to develop? You know,kind of like Trump and his Russian buddies, pushing America to ever deeper divisions? Let’s clear this up!
It doesn’t matter the color of your skin, if you are looting and burning the city you are a criminal, period!
Vox just did a great article titled “What we’re missing when we condemn ‘violence’ at protests”. Basically it pointed out that the media exploits the sensationalism of violent riots and looting, by totally ignoring the peaceful protests, all for click bait journalism to make some ad revenue (well, that last part I added, because it’s well known at this point). It fits with your article, I think, showing how there’s another side to the story, and how people selectively report on things that fit an agenda.
The truth is that everyone is responding to incidents like these with base-of-the-brain tribalism. Whites and Conservatives will emphasize the rioting and looting and talk about black-on-black violence, while Blacks and SJWs will focus on the injustice done to minorities. Each side will cherry pick items to push an agenda–to further their own respective tribe’s cause.
Almost nobody is viewing or discussing any of this objectively. Why can’t we as a human species just finally admit this? Why can’t we admit that we all have issues and get over ourselves and our ape-like (not calling Black people apes, rather ALL people) tribal affiliations?