Uprising and George Floyd: Because Nothing Has Changed

The United States is experiencing days of rage. Starting in Minneapolis, but spreading to city after city, people are angry. They are angry at racism; they are angry at injustice. They are angry at being called “essential” while being forced to expose themselves to a deadly virus for minimum wage.

And what do we hear? Calls for “calm” and tongue clucking. It is not just the obviously hypocritical words from the immoral, narcissistic, and cowardly occupant of the White House, but also from ostensible liberals, claiming that people are “dishonoring” George Floyd with their anger, that they are debasing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s memory by rebelling violently.

Yet Dr. King, while always believing in nonviolence, also said, in 1966, “I contend that the cry of ‘black power’ is, at bottom, a reaction to the reluctance of white power to make the kind of changes necessary to make justice a reality for the Negro. I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.” We can’t know what King would have thought today, 52 years after his assassination, of the continuing, steady, unwavering refusal of white power to address the most violent racism. Nor can we know how George Floyd would have felt at the violent expressions of rage in the wake of his death.

They can’t tell us because racists killed them.

It’s not like we haven’t had warnings. Nor can we contend that peaceful protests weren’t tried, tried, and tried again to the point of…