We’ve had this lesson in racism before. Will we get it this time?
We hope history will mark the heartbreaking death of George Floyd in Minneapolis as a turning point, a time when America came to grips with its 400-year history of brutality, enslavement, disenfranchisement, lynching, redlining, exclusion, incarceration and humiliation.
But we’ve felt this way before. The civil rights movement of the 1960s inspired that feeling, but we let the Reagan-era backlash rob us of some of its gains. We thought the election of President Barack Obama meant we’d changed too. But when he left office, Mr. Backlash himself became our president.
Our steps forward have been followed by relapses into white denial and disregard. But when you look at the faces of the protesters these past two weeks, there is evidence that more white denial is shattering, and that we can hope that this time we will move further, deeper, and faster towards righting our history’s wrongs.
The violence and looting have been huge distractions. The focus should be on the hundreds of thousands of peaceful protesters in all 50 states who have been making history.
Since Trump has been in office, anti-racist movements such as Showing Up for Racial Justice (SURJ) have mushroomed. SURJ calls for “an inclusive, open-hearted approach to organizing.” It’s not about shaming or white guilt; rather, it’s an effort to mobilize white people to become active allies of black and brown communities seeking full equality. SURJ Olympia turned out a huge crowd of peaceful, mostly white protesters in Olympia last Tuesday.
These activists are making history because many have been studying history. Last year, The New York Times published the widely read 1619 Project on the 400th anniversary of the first enslaved Africans coming to America. PBS aired a series on the history of Reconstruction and its betrayal, hosted by the historian Henry Louis Gates. Both have had readership and ratings that Trump would envy.
The Trump administration has brought the ugliness of the white supremacist impulse into the light of day. COVID-19 has shown us how low-wage, high-risk jobs and generations of deprivation and stress play into the higher death rates for African-Americans and other people of color.
And the horrific death of George Floyd illustrated the brutal reality that black lives have not mattered to far too many of the police we pay to protect us. We can’t un-see the horror of his slow death under the knee of a police officer. And we can no longer bear to be complicit in the conditions that led to it.
Now it’s time to move from protest to deep cultural and systemic change. We want all black people to feel safe in their communities. We want more black families to be able to buy houses. We want all black kids to have teachers who appreciate their culture and their needs. We want to upend all the institutions, traditions and beliefs that have held African-American people back.
This is the work of fulfilling America’s purpose and promise of equality for all.
Right now, we feel a special sense of urgency about changing the culture of policing. We have done a little of this already in Olympia, in the wake of the 2015 police shooting of two young African-American men, one now paralyzed as a result, over an incident that started with their attempt to shoplift some beer. The controversy that followed led to protests too, and engaged a lot of people in heartfelt conversations with the police.
Since then there has been more police training in recognizing implicit bias, understanding mental illness, and de-escalating conflicts. The Olympia Police Department has, without a doubt, improved. But there is much more to do.
Mayor Cheryl Selby wants to revisit that earlier work, and take it further. It’s up to all Olympians to ensure that this results in significant, lasting changes, including a system of ongoing, independent citizen oversight, and the hiring of a police chief committed to fresh thinking.
The Thurston County Sheriff’s Office and the police departments of other local cities also should have a closer level of public examination – and self-examination. All of them have more work to do too.
The best in our American nature is to keep coming back to our purpose and promise, to overcome racist backlash, and to move further forward. Peaceful protesters have made a great start. In doing so, they’ve shown America’s capacity for global leadership. Protesters in countries around the world have been roused to action against not only George Floyd’s death, but also their own colonial and racist heritage.
Peaceful protests have bent the arc of the universe a little further towards justice. Now it’s up to all of us to keep bending it.