In an earlier era – in the late 60s and early 70s – I lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, where I participated in some demonstrations against the War in Vietnam.
Most of the people on the streets were there because they felt strongly that the nation needed to change course in Vietnam. A couple of times, the demonstrations broke down when acts of vandalism prompted law enforcement and/or the National Guard to fill the streets with tear gas.
I always had the feeling that the people who committed acts of vandalism — like one fellow I still remember throwing a rock through a big Bank of America window -- were just using the demonstration as an opportunity to act out their anti-social impulses. But I could be wrong about that: maybe they were acting out their anger at the misguided, destructive, and futile war the rest of us were protesting.
But whatever their motivations, they were undermining the purpose that had brought so many to the streets -- which was to get the nation to look at a serious problem. But the vandalism and violence distracted from that subject. Instead of the folly and evil of that war, a lot of America ended up talking about “law and order.”
I just heard a fellow on NPR declaring that the looting “isn’t the problem.” And surely, the looting is a small problem compared with the deep and enduring American problem represented by the killing of George Floyd. But the looting is a problem to the extent that it distracts attention from that much bigger problem of racism that America desperately needs to address (and has needed to address for as long as there’s been an America).
The rage is completely understandable. But the need, really, is to discipline that rage and keep one’s “eyes on the prize.”
White America has a hard enough time understanding and owning its “original sin.” Witness how successfully Colin Kaepernick’s taking a knee could be misrepresented by the racist demagogue through whose presidency we are suffering.
So I wish that those in the streets — rightly outraged by this latest episode of unarmed black men being brutally victimized by white policemen — could all be disciplined in sending the nation a powerful message. But I recognize that there’s likely no way to assure that everyone who chooses to take to the streets will have that kind of discipline.
So, along with my disappointment at the counter-productive disorder, I’m left with hopes.
- Hope that the violence will not manage to change the subject.
- Hope that enough of America has the sense to understand what the enduring issue is, and to ponder it honestly.
- And hope that this terrible President cannot ride the “law and order” issue to a re-election that would be catastrophic for the whole nation.