David Goldman/AP Photo
Following the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, protesters call for the defunding of police, June 13, 2020, in Philadelphia.
Every day in every part of America, people of all backgrounds, but especially people of color, are menaced by poorly regulated police. Absent the fortuity of a video recording, the circumstances of George Floyd’s death would have probably been effectively covered up and buried. Even with the evidence at hand, securing a conviction and appropriate punishment is by no means guaranteed; police caught red-handed abusing civilians have frequently escaped accountability.
At the same time, the response to Floyd’s killing has been extraordinary. People of all races, all ages, all gender identifications, and all party affiliations have raised their voices—as one. Hundreds of thousands have taken to the streets braving the risks associated with the pandemic and panicky law enforcement. They act out of grief for Floyd, determined that his killers be punished. They act out of pent-up frustration and fury, keenly aware that despite increased scrutiny of policing over the years, the grisly chronicle of avoidable police killings grows apace. They act out of solidarity with mistreated fellow demonstrators and out of a sense that their dissent is making a real difference. They act out of revulsion for the antics of President Donald Trump, who, far from displaying any compassion, tried to vilify and intimidate protesters and appeal to the nethermost instincts of his electoral base.
The breadth and intensity of the expressions of bereavement, solidarity, sympathy, and hopeful demands for reform are what have made this period feel so promising. Organizers from across the spectrum of progressive activism have, to a large extent, conducted themselves admirably, eliciting broad participation, and infusing supporters with fervor and resolve. After years of often overlooked work associated with or inspired by Black Lives Matter, they have clearly honed their skills and become remarkably effective agitators. These are the organizers most responsible for drawing and channeling the massed dissent.
Their ranks include people like Rasheen Aldridge, 26 years old, a Missouri state representative, who started protesting in Ferguson in the aftermath of Michael Brown’s killing. And Kwame Rose, a 26-year-old professional activist, who got his start in the agitation in Baltimore following the police killing of Freddie Gray. And Tay Anderson, a 21-year-old who was elected to the Denver Public School Board and who has been a leading voice demanding change in that city. An impressive feature of their leadership has been their loud, clear, unapologetic insistence upon disciplined militancy. Knowing that looting and random violence is discrediting in the eyes of many people—including African Americans—to whom they want to appeal, they wisely eschew the hooliganism that right-wing commentators seize upon and exaggerate to besmirch protests that have been mostly peaceful.
That the influence of the anti-racist protest has extended far beyond the precincts of those typically present at Black Lives Matter rallies is substantiated by polling. One survey reports that in the two weeks following the killing of Floyd, “American voters’ support for the Black Lives Matter movement increased almost as much as it had in the preceding two years.” Another poll found that 76 percent of Americans consider racism and discrimination a “big problem,” up 26 points from 2015.
Figures that seldom factor prominently in polarizing racial controversies found themselves stepping forward, or being pushed, to address the crisis. In a speech to graduates of the National Defense University, Gen. Mark Milley, chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for walking with Trump to the St. John’s Church photo op. Here was the country’s top military officer apologizing for being seen with the commander in chief!
What received too little attention, however, was the large portion of Milley’s speech in which he identified racism, condemned it, specified its legacy in the military, and committed to making the armed forces more racially equal. Displaying the reach of cultural revisionism championed by initiatives such as The New York Times’ 1619 Project, Gen. Milley declared, “What we are seeing is the long shadow of our original sin in Jamestown 401 years ago … We are still struggling with racism, and we have much work to do. Racism and discrimination, structural preferences, patterns of mistreatment, and unspoken and unconscious bias have no place in America and they have no place in our Armed Forces.”
Notable, too, was the statement by the bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C., Mariann Edgar Budde, who complained loudly about Trump’s use of Bibles and churches as props in the service of his agenda. Even organizations that are normally defiantly immune to anti-racist demands have succumbed. NASCAR announced that it was prohibiting the display of the Confederate battle flag at its events, at the prompting of Bubba Wallace, the only Black person among top-ranked drivers, who himself now races in a car emblazoned with “Black Lives Matter.” Roger Goodell, commissioner of the National Football League, also flipped dramatically:
We, the NFL, condemn racism and the systematic oppression of Black People. We, the NFL, admit we were wrong for not listening to NFL players earlier and encourage all to speak out and peacefully protest. We, the NFL, believe Black Lives Matter.
In a letter to customers, Bloomingdale’s acknowledges that “systemic racism” has been “woven into the fabric of our nation” but “has no place in our company” because “Black lives must matter.” Similar messages have been prominently displayed by Amazon, McDonald’s, even Walmart.
Of course, much of this is merely opportunistic branding. If these firms are sincerely committed to social and racial justice, the first thing they should do is offer decent wages and benefits, and get far more serious about hiring and promoting people of color. Their racial-justice advertising, however, is significant. It shows the gale-force energy unleashed by the protests. Clearly these profit-maximizing firms are determined to be on what they perceive as the side of these controversies that their most valued customers favor. The advertising is also important because it confers added legitimacy upon the protest. Readers of this publication might not be impressed by what Amazon likes, but large numbers of Americans are.
A great challenge that faces any protest movement is winning victories that can enable reformers to overcome the gravitational force of inertia. Establishmentarians know that fervor, for all its potentiality, eventually subsides. When the crowds go home, bureaucracies continue to do the prosaic tasks that society requires. It is therefore imperative to reprogram bureaucracies, through legislation and other enduring interventions. The protesters behind the George Floyd moment have succeeded in winning a few such victories, most notably a new law in New York that bans the use of chokeholds by police and repeals a policy that kept police disciplinary records secret. That is an important, albeit belated, achievement that activists ought to celebrate. Without their pressure, that reform legislation would have continued to languish.
What other reforms are urgently needed? A good start would be getting rid of “qualified immunity,” a judge-made doctrine that insulates police from liability for violations of civil rights in circumstances in which the precise conduct in question has not previously been declared illegal. Mayors must reject union contracts that thwart sensible efforts to hold police accountable. We need accessibility to data to learn about citizen complaints and the way they are resolved. Procedures should be instituted to prevent officers who are disciplined (or facing discipline) in one jurisdiction from moving on, without notice, to another. Whether these and other initiatives are put on the path to becoming binding will tell us a lot about whether the George Floyd moment will mark a sharp turning point or instead dissipate.
The obstacles facing racial-justice activists are daunting. Policing in the United States is decentralized, with some 18,000 autonomous police agencies. We saw how difficult it was to even begin to investigate, monitor, and punish priestly sexual misconduct within the centralized hierarchy of the Catholic Church. Policing the police will be a hugely more arduous enterprise. Even when overprotective laws or policies are pruned away, the essentials of due process will make difficult the timely and effective sanctioning of police misconduct.
Then there is the double-sidedness of policing. Protection against criminality is most needed in the very communities in which uprisings against police authorities are most intense, which highlights the African American double bind. Black communities suffer from legal under-protection (as when officers fail to protect them against criminal misbehavior by fellow officers and others) and simultaneously suffer from over-policing (as when officers subject them to abuses typically absent from white communities). The situation would be less vexing if one could responsibly simply banish police. But one cannot do that. Police are an essential public service that are especially important to the well-being of those without the means to hire private police protection.
John Minchillo/AP Photo
‘Black Lives Matter’ on Fulton Street in Brooklyn, New York
Passing laws and promulgating new policies, though crucial, is just a beginning; afterward there remains the difficult task of enforcement, dependent on political will and in turn influenced by popular sentiment. We need to be careful when deciphering the complexities of public opinion in this massive country of ours. Much attention has been focused upon whites who, prompted by Black friends and allies, have enlisted in strenuous efforts to confront their own prejudice, acknowledge their own misbegotten privilege, and subordinate their own vanity in preference to leadership undertaken by people of color who have long been marginalized. The emergence of “woke” white people is something to behold! Although the virtue-signaling of some is preposterous and annoying, overall there is much that is encouraging about this development.
Never in American history have there been more ordinary white people willing to demonstrate forcefully and publicly on behalf of Black people in the teeth of disapproving officials. But we dare not overlook those other whites who remain in deep denial about the facts of life in our pigmentocracy. This includes white downwardly mobile working-class people who live in pinched circumstances that make it difficult for them to feel privileged (though in terms of race they are). Across large swaths of America, moreover, the face of crime remains a feared Black face. The extent of that visceral impression will, alas, play a major role in the ongoing struggle for racial justice in policing and other domains.
There has been more sustained and wide-ranging public attention to matters of race in the first two weeks of June 2020 than in any other similar period since the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. That analogy, however, underlines the peril that surrounds us alongside the promise. After King’s death in 1968, there was momentarily a widespread desire to redress racial wrongs. An antidiscrimination bill that covered housing, the last federal legislation of the Second Reconstruction, had been bottled up in Congress, successfully stymied not only by Southern segregationists but also by politicians elsewhere who feared backlash from white constituents who mouthed the rhetoric of equal opportunity but loathed the prospect of a Black neighbor. Caught up in the agony of the moment, Congress surprisingly passed the bill in the aftermath of King’s death, and President Lyndon Johnson signed it into law. But just months later, after a bitter campaign in which the slogan “law and order” figured prominently, the electorate narrowly elevated Richard Nixon to the presidency, inaugurating a rightward shift in American politics that has, alas, retained momentum over the course of half a century, despite liberal interludes.
There has been more sustained and wide-ranging public attention to matters of race in the first two weeks of June 2020 than in any other similar period since the aftermath of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.
This moment, for all its promise, is more perilous than 1968 because of Donald Trump. The presidency, of course, is not the only source of political power in the United States. Other branches of the federal government are important, as are local and state governments. But the president, with his control over the military, his power to shape the federal courts, and his standing at the apex of federal executive power, is singularly influential. Despite the tumult in 1968, there was no doubt but that Johnson would hand over power. With Trump, though, all bets are off. Fears of him attempting to hold onto power by any methods, including extralegal and illegal, are well justified. So, too, is fear that he might win a legitimate victory again in the Electoral College, replicating his win in 2016 in which he so effectively mobilized white racial resentments.
Racism, of course, was not the only thing that mattered. Millions who voted for Barack Obama turned around and voted for Trump. One should avoid overemphasizing the race angle and thus obscuring other important considerations: Economic stagnation, impatience with eight years of Democratic White House occupancy, and the terribly flawed Clinton candidacy mattered, too. But Trump’s elicitation of racism did help put him over the top. Indeed it was indispensable to his victory. He could succeed again absent a massive outpouring of support for the presumptive candidate of the Democratic Party.
Joe Biden has spoken forthrightly about the racism that is so much in evidence around the killings of African Americans at the hands of police and the police response to protests against those killings. I hope that activists and their followers will acknowledge that. If they do not, and there is a slackening in support for Biden among those who should be part of his coalition, the consequence could be tragic. Tragedy could also ensue if rioters (abetted perhaps by right-wing agents provocateurs) commit enough mayhem to discredit the protest movement and stampede otherwise winnable voters into the Trumpist column. If Biden prevails, good ideas that have gained at least some traction in the George Floyd moment will surely receive support in a new presidential regime. If Trump prevails, it is certain that the promise of this moment will be cruelly disappointed.
As I wrote for the Prospect six years ago, I have long been a racial optimist, believing that we will overcome impediments to attaining racial decency in the United States of America. But my faith has definitely been shaken. The derangement exacerbated by the presence of a Black president figured significantly in enabling Trump to ascend to the White House, a stain on our politics that is indelible. The continuing routine racist practices of police are harrowing. The videotaped assaults and murders confront the public in a fashion that cannot be denied. And then there is the appallingly negligent response to the COVID-19 catastrophe that has, of course, cruelly burdened racial minorities disproportionately. Amid these distressing events, I have sometimes admonished myself for remaining in the optimistic camp. That I do so stems in part from a desperate yearning on behalf of the future of my children. It stems, too, from the solace, hope, and inspiration derived from seeing those protesters in the streets making that “necessary trouble” that the great John Lewis has so compellingly championed. The dissidents have been the ones most responsible for making this the George Floyd Moment. And they and kindred souls are the ones who will play the leading role in redeeming America, if it is to be saved.
