When the protests end, fixing cities will not begin or end with buildings

W.E.B. Du Bois wrote, “Men go wild and fight freedom with bestial ferocity when they must – where there is no other way; but human nature does not deliberately choose blood – at least not black human nature.”

These are words that guide my thinking about the uprisings we have seen in cities across the United States, events that have seen buildings burned and businesses looted.

While the protests, by and large, were peaceful non-violent demonstrations, some portions devolved into unorganized expressions of anger and sorrow. But all were fueled in part by video footage and news reports of Black men and women murdered in plain sight and their murderers protected behind a badge of the states. Breona Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Tony McDade, and David McAtee have all been killed in the last several months.

Two plagues waging war on Black bodies

Their deaths happened against the backdrop of a pandemic which has disproportionately impacted Black people, the highest unemployment levels in decades, and economic uncertainty that will more likely than not stick with Black households longer than it will for our peers.

The message from armed “reopeners” and elected officials across party lines is that everyone should just get back to work. Never mind the lack of provisions by the state to protect your bodily and economic well being.

There have been many people throughout the last four or five months who expressed solidarity with people of color at the frontlines of COVID-19. They have used their platforms to criticize efforts to put the nation’s economic health before the health of people who have been deliberately excluded and neglected by the nation’s healthcare system.

They have talked of the gut-wrenching disgust they felt when they saw Ahmaud Arbery’s execution at the hands of White vigilantes or George Floyd’s killing at the hands of Derek Chauvin and the Minneapolis Police Department officers who stood by.

But as soon as scenes of stores emptied of goods and in flames spread across media this sympathy subsided. Questions of messaging, intention, and efficacy began being pondered.

“Is this expression of anger the right sort of expression?”

“Were the protests being hijacked by nefarious characters looking to push an agenda?”

“Are a few lost lives worth looting and burning down businesses?”

It is the last question that angers me the most, and while that might not be how the question is asked it is undoubtedly what is implied. It is a question which only Black Americans have been made to answer, even when these outpourings of unbridled tension are justified.

White mobs, officers of the law, and lone wolves have throughout our history committed irrational, unwarranted violence against Black bodies and communities. There must be a juxtaposition of what has been considered legitimate expressions of protest and what has been questioned as illegitimate.

The long history of White violence against Black Americans

In September 14, 1874, the White League, a White supremacist organization founded by former Confederates and White Southern Democrats, descended on New Orleans and against the local police and state militia, eventually overwhelming them and requiring support from federal troops.

Their aim was to reverse the gains made by freedmen in the wake of the American Civil War and to end Reconstruction in Louisiana. They wanted to reestablish White supremacy in the state. The combined federal, state, and local forces were eventually able to subdue the League, but not before over 30 people died and many more were wounded.

A memorial to honor the insurrectionists was placed at the site of the Battle of Liberty Place in 1891 and would stand for 126 years until it was removed in 2017.

Similar groups came to exist in states throughout the South. These groups used violence and intimidation to suppress newly-enfranchised Black voters, overthrow Reconstruction governments in Southern states, and reimpose White control over the South.

Their efforts were mostly successful, so much so that by the end of the nineteenth century the South was firmly under White control. The most prominent example of this struggle was the Wilmington Insurrection of 1898, which helped to cement the end of Reconstruction in the South and to date the only coup d’etat in American history.

Josephus Daniels, owner of the Raleigh News and Observer, used his paper to fuel the White race resentment which would contribute to the insurrection in a fashion similar to Tom Cotton’s usage of The New York Times. Daniels would later be appointed to the post of Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson and later Ambassador to Mexico by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Even after White dominance had been restored across the South, White terror campaigns continued. There were upwards of 4,000 lynchings between 1877 and 1950, according to the Equal Justice Initiative. But it is the instances of mass violence that also ought to be juxtaposed to current events.

White mobs destroyed Black communities wholesale

The Tulsa Massacre of 1921 destroyed the Greenwood District, a self-sustaining segregated urban community known as Oklahoma’s Black Wall Street. It is one of the most egregious examples of White mobs making incursions into Black communities to kill and destroy property.

Approximately 200 Black residents were killed, and it is estimated that $32 million in today’s money worth of damage was done. In the wake of the destruction, the State of Oklahoma dragged its feet in delivering aid for rebuilding, leaving residents reliant on the charity of philanthropists. A group of White business owners went so far as to get an ordinance passed to prevent Black residents from rebuilding, which would be overturned by Oklahoma courts.

The 1920s are held to be the nadir of race relations, but the White struggle to keep Black people under their knee continued on and reared its head again in the midst of World War II.

Race riots broke out in Detroit, Michigan; Beaumont, Texas; and Mobile, Alabama. In Mobile, it was the promotion of Black shipyard workers that contributed to the violence. In Detroit, it was long standing tensions over racial integration orders and a housing shortage. In Beaumont, it was the old rumor of a Black man raping a White woman.

It is emotionally exhausting recounting this history and placing it against the riots of the 1960s, but it is important to note the distinctions between what happened throughout the long history of the United States and what took place in the latter years of the twentieth century.

It is undoubtedly the case that the grievances raised by White people in the wake of the Civil War up through the 1960s were illegitimate and racist. But what of the riots that took place beginning in 1967? Look to the Kerner Commission which reported on issues of long-standing racial discrimination, housing shortages, segregation, and the flight of capital and jobs that followed White people out to the suburbs.

But, deep-seated racial and economic resentments will continue to bubble over and cities will be ablaze once more. Look at the more recent Los Angeles Riots of 1992.

Two weeks before Rodney King was beaten by the Los Angeles police, 15-year-old Latasha Harlings was shot and killed by Korean liquor store owner Soon Ja Du. Du had accused Harlings of stealing a bottle of orange juice worth $1.79 and confronted her.

After a struggle, which was initiated by Du, Du shot Harlings in the back, killing her. When the LA Riots started, rioters were contained inside Koreatown by law enforcement, and it is thought the destruction which happened there was sparked in part by memories of Latasha Harlings’ murder. That George Floyd would have police called on him over a counterfeit $20 bill is the cruelest of ironies.

Where we go from here, depends upon on how we interpret where we’ve been

For those removed from the realities of being Black in America, it is important to understand the cumulative anger that the Black community feels and that young people especially are communicating in the streets of cities across the country. The history of irrational, racist violence against Black communities must be understood and it must be addressed. The profiling we experience in high-end or low-end stores; the commutes we take to get to work, school or to buy groceries in nicer neighborhoods; and the reminders that we’ve been priced out of parts of cities where our families once lived.

The destruction we see is not out of a lack of love for cities, but out of an expression of frustration with the reality that our needs have consistently been pushed aside. The destruction is an expression of our collective rejection of the notion that it is okay for our humanity to be denied, not just by police forces in cities and towns all across this land, but by the systems of governance and economics.

Most people out on the streets are peaceful, but I cannot help but to find appeal in the folks looting and breaking glass. They are speaking to my exasperation when I see successful campaigns against affordable housing in neighborhoods because “neighborhood character” is more important than my Black body being able to live where I want. They are speaking to my frustration when bus lane projects get held up because parking spaces are more important to a privileged few than the hundreds of Black bodies carried by buses.

They are speaking to my disappointment when urbanists I respect disregard conversations about displacement and gentrification in pursuit of their aims of smart growth. They seem to understand my anger when, “Do you remember 1990s DC?” is invoked to wave away calls for greater investments in neighborhood schools, social services, or the city’s only public hospital.

What protesters, peaceful or otherwise, are communicating is simple. Black life matters. Business will come back, but once we are killed we are dead. Whether we are killed by a police officer; by an asthma attack set on by mold that a slumlord refused to remediate; or by a driver on our poorly designed streets, we will not come back. Broken glass, graffiti, and stolen goods can be replaced. Our parents, siblings, cousins, friends, and lovers cannot be replaced.

If people – no matter their race – place order over justice, there will be another spark. If keeping a building untouched is more important than confronting the United States’ original sin then we are destined to repeat the scenes that have filled our televisions, phones, and minds for the last two weeks.