"I can't breathe, Mama. I'm dying." - Last words of George Floyd.
LOOK HARD at this image. Think about what it depicts. Ask
yourself how one human-being could behave so brutally when so many
eye-witnesses – and very soon millions of people online around the world – were
there to watch him do it. Then ask yourself why he didn’t care.
In this photograph, lifted from a video taken at the scene,
the Minneapolis police officer whose knee is choking the life out of George
Floyd, registers the presence of witnesses with a mixture of surprise and
annoyance. The fact that he is looking directly into the lens of the cellphone
recording his actions – strongly suggests that he is aware of what is
happening.
Most people, caught in a similarly compromising position
would respond by removing their knee from the suspect’s neck. The man was in
handcuffs. He posed no threat to the officer or anybody else. The witnesses
present could hear the man protesting that he couldn’t breathe. So, presumably,
could the officer. So, why didn’t he remove his knee? Why didn’t he stop?
Part of the answer lies in the culture of American law
enforcement. In all but the smallest communities, US police officers are
encouraged to view their fellow citizens as the enemy. This is true even of
white citizens, who will be shown scant respect unless the socio-political
context of their encounter with law enforcement, and/or their possession of all
the accessories of high social status, indicate a more deferential demeanour
might be in order. In the absence of these warning markers, however, blank
indifference to the rights and opinions of their fellow citizens is considered
mandatory. Anything less would convey an impression of softness and weakness:
displays of which could quickly lead to a potentially fatal loss of police
authority.
With African-Americans, the need for maximum rigor on the
part of law enforcement has always been a given. On the central question of
equal treatment under the law, all of American history conspires against people
of colour. Their role in the development of American capitalism – and of
capitalism globally – may have been crucial. One cannot picture the cotton
mills of Lancashire without also picturing the cotton fields of Mississippi! But,
the great tragedy of African-American history is that it is equally difficult
to explain the global dominance of American capitalism without acknowledging
the racial segmentation of the American working-class. With racial prejudice
forever forestalling working-class unity, anti-capitalism has never found any
enduring purchase on the soil of the United States.
As long ago as the 1830s it was apparent to dispassionate
observers of the American Republic that “free” white American males (the only
people then vested with political power) were bound to the idea of the United
States with chains every bit as strong as those which burdened its black
slaves. The loyalty of the poorest white farmer and/or factory worker was in
large measure guaranteed by his understanding that at least two categories of
human-being would always occupy a more degraded position than himself in the
socio-economic hierarchy: women and blacks.
Nowhere is this crucial political understanding more clearly
spelled out than in the 1857 judgement of the Chief Justice of the United
States, Roger Taney, who ruled against the legal attempt by the freed slave,
Dred Scott, to secure equality of treatment under the Constitution of the
United States.
According to Taney:
“The question is simply this: Can a negro, whose
ancestors were imported into this country, and sold as slaves, become a member
of the political community formed and brought into existence by the
Constitution of the United States, and as such become entitled to all of the
rights, and privileges, and immunities, guarantied by that instrument to the
citizen?”
The Chief Justice’s answer was an unequivocal “No”.
“We think... that [black people] are not included, and
were not intended to be included, under the word “citizens” in the
Constitution, and can therefore claim none of the rights and privileges which
that instrument provides for and secures to citizens of the United States. On
the contrary, they were at that time [of America's founding] considered as a
subordinate and inferior class of beings who had been subjugated by the
dominant race, and, whether emancipated or not, yet remained subject to their
authority, and had no rights or privileges but such as those who held the power
and the Government might choose to grant them.”
Taney’s (along with six more of the nine Supreme Court
justices’) judgement stated more honestly than anything written before, or
since, White America’s true feelings towards Black America:
“It is difficult at this day to realize the state of
public opinion in relation to that unfortunate race, which prevailed in the
civilized and enlightened portions of the world at the time of the Declaration
of Independence, and when the Constitution of the United States was framed and
adopted.... They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of
an inferior order...; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the
white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be
reduced to slavery for his benefit.”
It could hardly be stated more plainly: African-Americans
have no rights which the white man is bound to respect. In very large
measure the American Civil War was fought to nullify Chief Justice Taney’s (himself
a slaveowner) crushing judgement. And though, by the victory of the Union armies,
the slaves were freed, recognised as citizens of the United States, and
guaranteed the equal protection of the laws, their victory was short-lived. Barely
a decade after the war’s end, the relentless roll-back of African-American
rights had begun. On the ground, where it counted, most white Americans found
it more expedient to enshrine the prejudices of Roger Taney than to give heed to
Abraham Lincoln’s “better angels”.
It required terror, of course, this denial of
African-American rights: terror and the connivance of local law enforcement.
Between them, the Ku Klux Klan, the local sheriff and the officials down at the
county courthouse reduced those African-Americans still living within the borders
of the defeated Confederacy to a new form of servitude. It would be another 100
years before the civil rights won in the Civil War were again afforded the
meaningful protection of federal authority.
Perhaps predictably, the spectacle of African-Americans
reaching out to reclaim their lost political, social and economic rights struck
fear into white Americans. Across the whole of America this time, the prospect
of giving up their privileged status – even if its surrender would greatly
enhance the ability of all Americans to pursue happiness more successfully –
was enough to drive working-class whites into the arms of, first, George
Wallace, then Richard Nixon, and ultimately Ronald Reagan.
Is it drawing too long a bow to suggest that in the
aftermath of the Civil Rights Struggle (1954-1980) the terroristic role
formerly assigned to the Ku Klux Klan was assumed by local law enforcement? The
Black Lives Matter movement would not say so. If he had not been silenced
forever by a Minneapolis cop, it is likely that George Floyd would not say so.
Not when practically every day in the United States police officers pay deadly tribute
to Chief Justice Taney’s poisonous legacy.
Demonstrably, it is the opinion of American law enforcement
that African-Americans are indeed members of an inferior order. So far
inferior, that they have no rights which any white police officer is bound to
respect; and that African-Americans might justly and lawfully be put to death –
even when the whole world is watching.
This essay was originally posted on The Daily Blog
of Friday, 29 May 2020.
