I’m supposed to write what I’m thinking about so today I’ll write about the murder of George Floyd and the aftermath even though I’m loathe to enter the fray. Everybody is writing about it, why should I? Why should I invite blowback? Because it feels intellectually dishonest for me to avoid it. WQXR is broadcasting Verdi’s Requiem. That should keep me in the proper mindset. It already stopped me from starting off talking about food, my usual MO.
When I look at my Facebook feed I see two people raging against the riots, and scores of people raging against those that rage against the riots. My feed is not a representative cross-section of America. Like most of us I live in a social bubble surrounded by like-minded people. I don’t unfriend or unfollow the people that see the issue as the rioters not the murder because it’s important to see the larger reality. Dividing ourselves into tribes is exactly what led to both the murder and the riots.
I’m brought back to 1968 when I was ten years old and one of my heroes, Martin Luther King was murdered. First I was horrified that anyone would murder a man of peace; then I was upset that people reacted to the murder of an apostle of nonviolence with violence. MLK and Mahatma Gandhi were my heroes to a ten-year-old living in during the Vietnam War and domestic strife because they preached not just peace but non-violent resistance. MLK made a point that non-violence resistance is anything but passive, it is active. What I didn’t understand as a ten-year-old, is how people could protest his murder, or the violence of the Vietnam War, with violence, isn’t that totally irrational? What I have learned in the intervening half a century is that it’s not rational, but it is human. Anger is not just anger at someone or something but a force within our minds; it lets our limbic system override our forebrain. Has anyone not experienced being angry at one person and lashing out at another? When angry people get together it is amplified, the usual social norms are replaced with feeling of the crowd. Why do people riot? Many are angry together. King said that riot is the language of the unheard. He was not advocating rioting, he was understanding that it’s the irrational but natural reaction to anger, fear, and frustration. It can be generated by many strong emotions, people riot in response to their team winning a championship, which makes even less sense. “Our team won! Let’s turn that car over!”
To understand that reaction is not to condone it. I watched footage or rioters in Minneapolis trying to overturn an ambulance. I was revulsed. There are no two side of that, it was wrong. But seeing that it is wrong is not the same taking sides and saying, “those people are wrong, they are the others, we must stop them!” It’s not the same as calling for shooting rioters. It should be the opposite. We should not be looking at cops and saying, “they are wrong, they are the others, we must stop them!” Our anger feeds their anger and their anger feeds ours. We must fight our limbic systems which are trying to take control.
All people should agree that the murder of George Floyd was wrong. Most do. What many resist is the notion that it’s part of a systematic problem. George Floyd being black was not incidental, it was central to what happened. Cops react violently to blacks far more often than they do to others. They even arrested a black TV reporter while he was on the air. What we have to remember is that doesn’t mean all cops are racists and more than all blacks are rioters. All cops are people so some of them harbor racial resentment and fear. The problem historically is that when a cop kills a black person the reaction of too many cops is to see themselves as cops first and support their colleague, even when he’s wrong. The silver lining in this tragedy is that cops throughout the country are not defending the murderer but condemning him. It’s not all cops but many, far more than we’ve seen in the past. We watch the video of the cop’s knee on Floyd’s neck and are filled with horror and disgust. This time many cops are seeing the same thing. They aren’t thinking that they could be that cop, they are knowing that they couldn’t be. We’ll see real progress if the next time this happens the other cops don’t stand around and watch but jump in and stop their violent colleague.
What can I do? Not much, write this. What can you do? Not feed the anger in yourself or in others. That doesn’t mean being passive, it means being resolute. Non-violent resistance is still resistance. For those that say that it doesn’t work I’ll point out that India is free, and Jim Crow dismantled. Working doesn’t mean things are perfect, nothing is perfect. There will always be strife, but there can be less strife. Every year Nicholas Kristof publishes a piece called This Has Been the Best Year Ever. Even with COVID-19 and the murder of George Floyd and rioting he will say the same about 2020; not because he’s trying to make people feel better but because it is true. Instead of feeding anger, both yours and that of other people, read that, listen to Verdi, be kind, and be generous. That doesn’t mean accepting wrongs; it’s about fighting them in ways that help, not in the ways that feel good.
Wise Madness 