by Curtis Bunn
“If we are intentional about doing the work that social justice advocates are talking about right now, we will be busy.”
Too often reports come out of teachers across America being called out for wearing Black face or having slavery simulations in their classrooms—misguided attempts to educate.
Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones said: “The color line, beginning with slavery, has informed every aspect of our history. Slavery is the fundamental contradiction in our country’s history. Our nation’s founding principle—a dedication to the proposition that all men are created equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights—is in direct conflict with slavery.
“Our country was built with slave labor. We went to war over slavery, and we have not yet made good on the promissory note Martin Luther King spoke of in 1963.”
Hannah-Jones asked a profound question: “What if America understood…that we [African Americans] have never been the problem but the solution?
“While our country espouses the ideals of democracy, liberty and equality, we haven’t lived up to them, and yet ironically, it is Black Americans who have been the foremost freedom fighters in our history. Understanding this contradiction is one of the keys towards understanding the history of the United States of America.”
Hannah-Jones’s work, which earned her the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary, appeared in the New York Times Magazine’s inaugural installment of its 1619 Project, which is its ongoing initiative that launched in August 2019, the 400th anniversary of the beginning of American slavery. Its goal is to “reframe the country’s history by placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of Black Americans at the very center of our national narrative.”
In her eloquent prose, Hannah-Jones at once delivered an engaging history lesson and a sweeping condemnation of slavery’s causes and effects that resound today.
“No one cherishes freedom more than those who have not had it,” she wrote. “And to this day, Black Americans, more than any other group, embrace the democratic ideals of a common good. We are the most likely to support programs like universal health care and a higher minimum wage, and to oppose programs that harm the most vulnerable. For instance, Black Americans suffer the most from violent crime, yet we are the most opposed to capital punishment. Our unemployment rate is nearly twice that of white Americans, yet we are still the most likely of all groups to say this nation should take in refugees.
“The truth is that as much democracy as this nation has today, it has been borne on the backs of Black resistance. Our founding fathers may not have actually believed in the ideals they espoused, but Black people did. As one scholar, Joe R. Feagin, put it, ‘Enslaved African-Americans have been among the foremost freedom-fighters this country has produced.’ For generations, we have believed in this country with a faith it did not deserve. Black people have seen the worst of America, yet, somehow, we still believe in its best.”
BLM’s Accomplishments
The grassroots organization founded on emotion grew into a tapestry of dreams responsible for substantive change in America. The name started as a catch phrase and blossomed into a sort of anthem for justice and social transformation. The elevation BLM ascended to is unquantifiable, but an idea can be gleaned from the reality that almost everywhere on the planet “Black Lives Matter” has been spoken and paid attention to by the citizenry.
In Charlottesville in 2017, white supremacists converged on the city to counter protesters who were set to remove a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee. Chaos ensued, as the white supremacists and militia, carrying torches and chanting racist ideologies, clashed with the peaceful protesters, causing mayhem that resulted in three deaths.
With an opportunity to quell the discord, Trump said, “There were good people on both sides,” a comment that will linger in history as a dog whistle to the anti-Black groups that he was on their side.
It did not stop the BLM efforts. In fact, it illuminated why their position was paramount to changing the country, and they pressed on.
All of what Black Lives Matter inspired was a follow-up to the civil rights movement of the 1960s, led by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., which was a follow-up to the abolition movement led by Frederick Douglass in the 1800s.
Douglass, a former enslaved person, used his autobiography to shed light on the horrors of slavery. After escaping slavery, he joined the movement to end America’s original sin. The 1857 decision by the Supreme Court rejected African Americans as full citizens, which squashed the Missouri Compromise that had forbidden slavery in the West, but it galvanized Black leaders instead of deflating them and led to Abraham Lincoln, the Republican anti-slavery candidate, winning the presidency, and the Southern slave states’ secession to form the Confederate States.
Did Lincoln set out to end slavery? No. But the pressure mounted by the abolitionists combined with understanding the value of Black soldiers in the Union Army facilitated the end of slavery with the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.
In the 1960s, King led the nonviolent attack on America, brilliantly, relentlessly, and bravely speaking out on injustices and leading boycotts in the South that rallied Black people—and, at times, crushed the white economy. His movement was national news, but the focus was on the South, where vicious racist practices persisted.
There was much opposition to the movement, but King and his band of courageous soldiers were undeterred. King would ultimately pay with his life.
It was with this history in mind that Black Lives Matter moved forward and initiated change in America, doing it their way, which was as a radical, unapologetic movement that spread via local chapters across the country, deftly leveraging social media apparatuses.
However, with its success, as with other movements, came challenges. Local BLM chapters expressed disenchantment, laying out a variety of issues near the end of 2020 over power and money.
Ten chapters issued an open letter that addressed their concerns—and cast uneasiness on the movement’s future. The letter, in part, read:
We became chapters of Black Lives Matter as radical Black organizers embracing a collective vision for Black people engaging in the protracted struggle for our lives against police terrorism. With a willingness to do hard work that would put us at risk, we expected that the central organizational entity, most recently referred to as the Black Lives Matter Global Network (BLMGN) Foundation, would support us chapters in our efforts to build communally. Since the establishment of BLMGN, our chapters have consistently raised concerns about financial transparency, decision-making, and accountability. Despite years of effort, no acceptable internal process of accountability has ever been produced by BLMGN and these recent events have undermined the efforts of chapters seeking to democratize its processes and resources.
In the spirit of transparency, accountability, and responsibility to our community, we believe public accountability has become necessary.
They questioned Patrisse Khan-Cullors’s elevation as the sole board member and executive director of BLMGN without most chapters’ knowledge, and the formation of BLM Grassroots that effectively separated the majority of chapters from BLMGN without their consent and interrupted the active process of accountability that was being established by those chapters.
The most significant part of their grievances was concern about financial support and receiving more of it.
The discord was not much different from what happened in the 1960s. In the South, King was the clear stalwart, preaching nonviolence and boycotts in the quest for justice and equal rights. Black women were powerful in the movement, including Ella Baker, who was the catalyst for the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, which in many ways is echoed by the Black Lives Matter organization, which initially encouraged input and ideas from the body.
But some grew tired of the nonviolent position King and others took and favored Malcolm X’s “by any means necessary” approach, which meant fighting violence with violence, if
need be.
In the end, measurable gains were derived from the abolish slavery movement, more steps made through the civil rights movement, and still more via the Black Lives Matter push. The inner tumult was frustrating and disappointing to BLM members, but it did not minimize their thirst for justice. So they continued the fight, one born of desperation and hope.
“BLM and the Movement for Black Lives has really created an ecosystem where people know and feel like they can take action now,” Khan-Cullors told Essence magazine. “To challenge the system that has oppressed communities for so long. And what we’ve created is part of American democracy to stand up and fight for what’s right.
“It shows the power of our work. The work we’ve done for seven years inside of Black Lives Matter, but the work we’ve done for hundreds of years as Black people to keep trying to steer this ship in the right direction—the ship being America.
“While seventy-three million did vote for a white supremacist, a bunch of us did not. And we’re going to have to work to heal the pain of racism. But I believe we can.”
Its efforts to “defund the police” amounted to police reform, where local agencies regroup, revise, and reimagine how law enforcement should work, specifically when it comes to African Americans. The phrase was so provocative that political pundits believe it cost the Democrats seats in the House of Representatives and Senate; Republicans used scare tactics, with commercials featuring 911 operators not answering emergency calls, to intentionally mislead on what “defund the police” meant.
Still, incremental change was made. There was a push in California to bar district attorneys from accepting money from police unions, which present the impression of favoritism when it came to pressing charges or at trial. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetti said he would “seek to identify $100 million to $150 million in cuts from the LAPD,” with the surplus directed toward education, health care, and jobs.
In Louisville, Kentucky, the practice of “no-knock” warrants, which led to the tragic shooting death of Breonna Taylor, was abolished. Officers who did not wear required body cams when they shot and killed Black businessman David McAtee were fired. So was the police chief.
In Minneapolis, the ostensible epicenter of the 2020 BLM push, the police department’s 2021 budget was cut by $19 million, including $8 million in direct reduction to the police department. The majority of those funds were earmarked for the Office of Crime Prevention, with another $11 million put in a reserve account that would need council approval before use.
Also in Minneapolis, police officers in June 2020 were required to intervene when they witness unauthorized use of force by a fellow officer—which was monumental, because three officers aided and abetted Derek Chauvin as he killed George Floyd, none interceding because they said Chauvin was the veteran officer on the scene. The New York City Council also voted to ban the deadly choke hold that killed Eric Garner in New York in 2014.
In Vermont, North Carolina, and other states, police reform was on the ballot, something not ever considered before Black Lives Matter.
Still, the popularity of Black Lives Matter, after reaching a summit, diminished as the images of George Floyd faded and the coronavirus impact emerged, according to Pew Research, in the summer of 2020.
“For the larger American public, especially and including the white American public, the spectacle and the violence and the horror of George Floyd’s death really touched something deep within them and had them think and meditate on and deal with at least this one death, and what it meant,” Peters, the professor who focuses on politics and social politics and society, said. “And for a while, this was the most important thing that was happening, when people were thinking about politics and people thinking about what does it mean to be in America and what is America? But I think over time, over the news cycles, the fact that there were new threats to white America’s physical security and financial security, that the coronavirus had really come front and center in how we live our everyday lives [impacted BLM’s popularity].
“That is not blaming or not saying, ‘Oh, if coronavirus never happened we would have this great magical change.’ But it’s more saying that the types of feelings that people have in the face of such violence and the types of reflection that they have in the face of such violence is in some ways very momentary. And the things that sustain consciousness of these things are political movements, are arguments, are politicians talking about things, are different ways of re-centering and reframing things.”
Peters was thinking about Ida B. Wells and the flag that flew outside the NAACP headquarters in New York that read “A MAN WAS LYNCHED YESTERDAY” or “A MAN WAS LYNCHED BY POLICE YESTERDAY,” when there was a slaying.
“That was a reminder to anybody who would see it, that this was an ongoing thing,” Peters said.
“And the fact that the flag was flying has been to tell us and to keep in people’s consciousness the types of violence that was happening in America at that moment and is still happening,” Peters continued. “We have to remember that for every statement for the value of Black lives, there are so many different lies, so many different fear-mongering tactics to undermine not only that statement, but everything that would go along with it.”
The anti-BLM contingent pounced on the optics of burning or damaged buildings during some protests, attributing the destruction to members of the organization. Never mind that Black Lives Matter’s position consistently was peaceful demonstrations that did not include defacing or vandalizing property.
But the ranking of property over Black people, while insulting, has been a consistent part of America’s fabric from the outset. That this devaluation of African American life continues, and shows up blatantly in various ways, is troubling.
“In the United States, the value of property is oftentimes [viewed as] much greater than the value of human lives,” Peters said. “It’s clear that to have a critique of why Black lives have not mattered in the United States is to have a critique of how the United States values money and property over the lives of its citizens.
“Crimes against property, burning something down, is somehow a great no-no,” Peters added. “But the mass incarceration and the killing of other people are somehow acceptable. And I think it’s likely true that people, that many Americans, saw the Black Lives Matter activists or commentators or people commenting and not condemning the burning of property, many Americans saw this as, ‘Oh, my goodness. They don’t uphold the same values as us. How can they allow this to happen to these businesses, even though those businesses are insured?’
“So, for me, the rock and a hard place is: You can either condemn people for doing something to an object or you can’t. And if you condemn those people, then you’re saying property is the most important value, right? That whatever happens to property, we should always pay attention to this, more so than paying attention to what is actually the real cause of this, which is the over-policing and the carceral state and the actual death of people at the hands of the police. Those are really profoundly bad faith arguments and arguments that are meant to inculcate fear in people so that they vote and so that they support this larger structure that is killing Black people, incarcerating Black people and people of color at alarming and very visible rates.”
The Black Carnage of the Coronavirus
By Curtis Bunn
COVID-19: A Survivor’s Story
In early March 2020, before coronavirus-induced stay-at-home orders and other safety measures went into effect, Val Guilford traveled from his home in Connecticut to New York to see the Broadway play To Kill a Mockingbird.
While waiting for the performance to begin, a woman sitting a row behind him coughed. Guilford, a divorcé who was vice president of the Stamford, Connecticut, Urban League, was aware that COVID-19 had become a worldwide concern and grew uneasy.
“It wasn’t a normal cough. It was one after another and it sounded different. A dry cough. It was constant. And I was not comfortable.
”
He left his seat to meet his friend, who had picked up the ticket he had left for her at Will Call. But the coughing bothered him.
“I’m thinking, ‘Damn, she’s coughing right behind me with COVID-19 out here.’ I’m also, I’m thinking, ‘I won’t be able to hear the play if she’s coughing like that the whole night.’”
When the play started, Guilford said he did not hear more coughing, either because he was so enthralled in the show or because the woman had stopped.
A few days later, on Friday evening, he ordered pizza from a popular restaurant in Stamford, near his home. When he arrived, a crowd of people had gathered. Again, he grew uneasy.
He had to negotiate a narrow passageway full of people to pick up his order. “It didn’t look like a good situation. But I was hungry. So…”
Guilford picked up the food but looked at the stack of pizza boxes that were laid out and wondered how long they had been exposed to whoever came by.
A week later, “I got this cough.”
Must be allergies, he thought.
The coughing lasted a week, though, and by the following weekend, Guilford began to feel lethargic.
“My energy was way down.”
But his temperature was way up—to 102 degrees.
Panic began to set in. He set up a virtual appointment with his doctor. “I told her I had a cough, trouble breathing and a fever.”
Almost immediately, she diagnosed him with the coronavirus.
Oh, shit.
Not sure what to do, he contacted his daughter-in-law, who was a respiratory specialist, who told him, “Whatever you do, do not go to the hospital.”
By then COVID-19 had emerged with a furor, and hospitals were overrun with sick people. “Your immune system has been compromised, so the last thing you need is to be in a hospital around so many sick people,” she said.