Sign #4: “Complacency=Violence”
Spent some
time considering this one. At first glance,
I was not convinced. Turns out, that
lack of conviction testifies to the power of complacency. If it is not my truth, it is not truth. But this is not about “my” truth. This is accepting a greater truth, of a
greater reality. To accept it, my first
step was to break it down from the whole into manageable parts.
To start with the easiest, defining
the commitment of violence. In the case
of this protest within BLM, it was the police officer pinning and killing
George Floyd. It continues a trend that
goes back through the history of lynching, back through the slave history of
our nation, the public execution of a colored person by whites. That is the violence, where is the
complacency?
Was it the officers who were
present but did nothing?
To my
mind, they were far more than complacent, they were complicit. They carry the same guilt as Mr. Floyd’s
murderer because they knew exactly what was going on and they did nothing to
stop it. They are no different from
public gatherings at a lynching, where the people ‘of the community’ are as
complicit as any person who laid hands on their fellow human being to end their
life. Because they don’t believe the
black life matters.
You
know who else is not complacent? Those who
self-identify with the white supremacy movement. Anyone who conforms to the tenets of white
supremacy, that the ‘other races’ are inferior, that ‘they’ must be kept in
their place, that ‘we’ are above them, they…we?...are complicit in what
happened.
The
complacent are whites who self-identify as not being part of the white
supremacy movement, who self-identify as not being racist, or at least
‘overtly’ racist, people who ‘feel bad’ when ‘things like this’ happen. These are people who would “never” do
anything like this themselves, and certainly would not condone it in others,
yet people who will do nothing to change the world in which violence like this
goes on.
Now we
come to the centerpiece of this sign.
“Complacency=Violence”. It is
easy to make the case that “Complicity=Violence”, but this? There is an intensely persuasive cultural
narrative that tells whites such an equivalency is just not possible. It is that narrative that must be understood
to be pierced.
Because
its like Kevlar, bullet proof material. You
know where its strength comes from?
Layers and layers of tightly woven fabric. Not one or two or three layers are sufficient
to stop a bullet, but pile up enough layers and the bullet, its power disrupted
and dispersed by each successive layer, will eventually lose its effectiveness.
We live
in a nation where the cultural narrative is a layered barrier between the daily
norm of interracial violence and the complacency of the self-identified
non-racist white majority. Here are a half
dozen representative layers I have identified in my own interaction with the cultural
narrative.
Layer
One is the Ideal of Equality. As
Jefferson put it, “All men are created equal.”
In the cultural narrative, this is romanticized that ‘men’ transcends
race, gender, or anything that divides humanity. Thus ‘racial division’ is, by this
definition, a fallacy.
Layer
Two is the Presumption of Democracy. We
presume a peaceful process of debate and discussion, of concession, consensus,
and binding agreement. We express our
opinion at the ballot box, at the public forum, in our freedom of speech and
the press. We fancy ourselves to be
‘civilized’. Thus, each episode of violence
we see in the media becomes, by this definition, an aberration. And it is amazing how many aberrations we can
absorb.
Layer Three
is the Sieve of History. A certain spin
is put on events that are carefully selected.
So, the Civil War becomes Lincoln’s deliberate battle, on behalf of the
whites, to end slavery in this country. The
definitive event is the Emancipation Proclamation. That Lincoln’s view of slavery was far more
ambivalent over time, that this Proclamation was as much an economic weapon in
the North’s ‘total war’ against the South, that the Civil War is far more
complicated in the history of our nation, those details are filtered out. Instead, a narrowly defined interpretation of
history is offered.
Layer Four
is the American twist on the Presupposition of Colonialism. This is the presupposition of white
superiority over the rest of the world, demonstrated as Europe colonized it
“all”. What is the twist? America broke the notion of European ‘colonial’
superiority with our spin on “liberty” but never questioned the presupposition
of white superiority. Thus “Liberty”
still masks that presupposition.
Layer Five
is the Legacy of the Great Fear. The
Great Fear in the antebellum south was the slave uprising. Slaves on farms and plantations vastly
outnumbered the local white populations and by the very nature of their
tortured existence, were a threat, especially to the white women and children
who were viewed as particularly vulnerable.
In 1791, this fear was realized just offshore with the slave uprising in
Haiti, and the resultant slaughter of the whites. The response was a culture of brutal
repression and violent authoritarianism.
We carry the legacy of the Great Fear, its psychological vestiges in
every moment that we walk past a young black man and feel anxiety.
Layer Six
is the Response to the Great Fear.
Behind the Ideal of Equality, beneath the Presumption of Democracy, while
the culture of brutal repression and violent authoritarianism have changed by
degree, it has not gone away. But the
white community, those not complicit in the violence, we don’t see it. We have colored friends, minority friends,
but they ‘go with the flow’ of this cultural narrative that ‘all are equal’. Do we have any idea how much trust is necessary
for a person of color to share the stories of the reality of their experiences
with white supremacy with someone who is white?
Layer
Seven…Eight…Nine…how many more? What
else weaves into the Kevlar of the cultural narrative that puts blinders on the
white majority so we do NOT see the reality of this nation’s racial
underbelly? We hide in the reinforced ignorance
of our self-identification as not white supremacist. The result is our living in a utopian view of
the world that overlooks every ‘aberration’ to the Presumption of Democracy in the
violence committed against people of color.
That’s why complacency =violence, because we refuse to do the work to
penetrate through the ‘kevlar’ of the cultural narrative.
That’s
why I said that at first glance, I wasn’t convinced of the truth of this
sign. That is not because I did not know
it to be true. It is because I felt the
shame of how long I have been a part of that complacency. For that, I must ask forgiveness, drop the
blinders, and speak the truth.
Peter Hofstra
