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There
is a scene in the new film “Judas and the Black Messiah,”
directed by Shaka King and produced by Ryan Coogler, in which
Chairman Fred Hampton of the Illinois Black Panther Party explains to
a group of Black students that just because their school was allowing
them to change its name to “Malcolm X College” did not
mean they were now free from oppression. Hampton, who is played by
actor Daniel Kaluuya in the film, clarified that there is a
“difference between revolution and the candy-coated façade
of gradual reform.” Hampton, a real-life
revolutionary,
who was murdered by the state in 1969 at just 21 years of age, was
ultimately seen as the greater danger to American society than white
supremacy and racism.
For decades,
“candy-coated” reform is all that most politicians have
offered Black communities in America. Evidence of it abounds in the
form of damning statistical measures showing racial discrimination
against Black Americans in health
(including from the novel
coronavirus),
law
enforcement,
criminal
justice,
voting
rights,
education,
employment
(including during the pandemic),
housing,
and life
expectancy
before and especially during the past year.
The starkest
symbol of how little the lives of Black people mean to the state is
the ongoing reckless killings by police that almost always go
unpunished. In one of the more recent and widely covered instances,
the brutal police killing of Daniel
Prude
in Rochester, New York, that took place nearly a year ago as he lay
naked, hooded, and handcuffed in the middle of the street, has gone
unpunished after a grand jury declined to press charges. Although a
medical examiner ruled that he had died from “complications of
asphyxia in the setting of physical restraint,” and the police
initially refused to release the incriminating and deeply disturbing
video of his last conscious minutes of life, it seems that there will
be no justice for Prude.
Prude, like
countless other Black people killed by police - whether they were
women like Breonna
Taylor
or children like Tamir
Rice
- are sacrifices to the altar of white supremacy. They are daily
reminders of the bottom-rung status that Black people occupy in the
American consciousness. Even George Floyd, whose deadly videotaped
encounter with Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was so
egregious and widely viewed that even Donald Trump, among some of the
nation’s most vociferous
white supremacists,
could not immediately deny the injustice that unfolded, is yet to
receive justice. Floyd would have likely been alive today had Chauvin
only been held accountable for the previous
incidents
in which he attempted to use fatal force, including at least one
in which
he placed his knee on the neck of a Black suspect.
Meanwhile, all
that is offered up in response to widespread anger over police
killings are more examples of “candy-coated” reform. No
matter how much money is spent on training police to not be so
violent, they routinely kill on average about 1,000
Americans a year
with stunning consistency. Their victims are disproportionately
Black.
White
supremacists emboldened by Donald Trump’s presidency want to
ensure that justice will remain ever elusive. In a stunning exchange
between Senator John Kennedy (R-LA) and Judge Merrick Garland at a
recent hearing for Garland’s nomination as attorney general,
Kennedy spent
more than five minutes
attempting to trap the judge over his position on racism. The white
Southern conservative senator who voted
to acquit Trump
of responsibility for the January 6 Capitol riot, who cast doubt on
the results
of the 2020 election,
and who denounced four congresswomen of color (“the Squad”)
as “whack
jobs,”
tried in vain to test Garland’s understanding of the
definitions of “systemic racism” and “implicit
bias.”
Kennedy was
clearly hoping he could get the judge to claim that entire agencies
in the U.S. government were racist because there might be some
evidence of systemic racism in their ranks. The senator - more
invested in being protected against accusations
of racism
than actually not being racist - is a powerful elected official
representing a state with the second-largest
percentage
of its population that is Black in the nation.
The nation’s
standard for tackling racial discrimination in the United States is
so low that the fact that Garland, the man who would be the nation’s
top cop, was able to clearly explain systemic racism and accept that
it does indeed exist, has been hailed
as a triumph.
What went less noticed is Garland’s absurd
defense
of the extraordinarily generous funding that police departments enjoy
because Capitol police officers were attacked by white supremacist
Trump supporters on January 6. He told senators that he is of the
same mind as the current liberal president: “Biden has said he
does not support defunding the police, and neither do I.”
Garland said he believes “in giving resources to police
departments to help them reform and gain the trust in their
communities.” In other words, he understands there is deep
racism in American society but is unwilling to take the hard steps to
dismantle it.
The main
difference between white supremacist supporters of police and liberal
reformist supporters of police centers on rhetoric. The former group
wants to claim American racism is over while the latter wants credit
for admitting it is still a problem. Regardless of who is making
decisions - Kennedy, Trump, Garland, or Biden - police are free to
keep killing Black people with impunity.
Rather than be
distracted by pretty words, following the money offers a much clearer
picture of liberal priorities. American cities, including those run
by Democrats, spend inordinately
large percentages
of their budgets on police. The central demand of Black Lives Matter,
to “defund the police,” has largely gone unmet. It
matters little how much lip service politicians,
institutions,
corporations,
and others paid to the notion of equality last year when mass
protests rocked the nation over Floyd’s killing. If offenders
are not held legally accountable and money is not moved to reflect a
priority for racial justice, empty words are nothing more than
“candy-coated” reform.
“Judas
and the Black Messiah” reminds Americans that just a few
decades ago, law enforcement officials from the city, county, and
federal levels collaborated
to brutally murder Fred Hampton,
a charismatic revolutionary leader of the Black Panther Party. While
law enforcement painted the killing as a justifiable response to
shots fired at them during a raid of Hampton’s apartment, in
the end, it was determined that only one shot was fired by the
Panthers while police unloaded nearly 100 bullets, killing Hampton
and one of his colleagues and injuring others. No
officer was ever held accountable,
but the survivors of the attack were instead charged with attempted
murder - as stark an example as one might find of the racism of
American justice.
Having just
experienced a dramatic change in leadership from an avowed and
dangerous white supremacist to a more traditional liberal leader, the
nation has understandably breathed a sigh of relief. After four years
of openly racist rhetoric, policies and actions, even the diverse
demographics of President Biden’s Cabinet appointments
are enough to inspire excitement for a better future. But we’ve
been here before.
Reforming the
police is simply not as good as defunding the police. The symbolic
hallmarks of reform are no substitute for revolutionary change.
This article was produced by Economy for All,
a project of the Independent Media Institute.
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