TODAY’S VIOLENCE IN BALTIMORE GOES WELL BEYOND FREDDIE GRAY

…Maryland State Attorney, Marilyn Mosby

Past and current race wars against people of color are almost exclusively the domain of white Americans.

With what has been going on between the police departments across America and the nation’s black communities, I guess it was inevitable that eventually I would be writing on this subject.  Unfortunately, most of today’s American public, both black and white, they have no real history on the realities of the details of past conflicts between white and black America.

Oh sure, I could just ignore all the noise and stick with my focus on the conservatives versus the liberals, or the Republicans versus the Democrats.  But the reality is that America is the world’s melting pot of multiple cultures and ethnicities.  And trying to ignoring what is going on between these cultures today would be improper and virtually impossible in today’s ethnic environment.

In following all the latest issues, it has been very disappointing to hear some of the stereotype comments that are offered by the political conservatives and those talking heads at Fox News.  Comments such as from those like Fox’s, Bill O’Reilly saying “…racial persecution really isn’t the problem in Baltimore. Something else is in play. And that something else is personal behavior of the black community.”  Or Kentucky Senator, Rand Paul suggesting that, “the Baltimore uprising was caused by absent black fathers…. the breakdown of the family structure, the lack of fathers, the lack of sort of a moral code in our society. And this isn't just a racial thing, it goes across racial boundaries, but we do have problems in our country."

So, according to these so called conservatives, it’s all Baltimore’s black community’s own fault due to their own personal behavior or there being too many black single mothers in Baltimore.

Today, you can see how the black community is rebelling after the brutal death of the young Freddie Gray in Baltimore.  The reasons young people in Baltimore and other parts of the United States have been moved to street protests in response to police violence are today a mystery to American policymakers and members of the public who choose to live in a total state of denial.

White America in general has been a country with a limited historical perspective and possessing a very short-term memory.  The American public has been removed from any meaningful social or historical context for the on-gong police abuse in Baltimore, Ferguson, or any of the other locales.  Yes, those other locations where police thuggery and state violence are routinely visited upon black and brown Americans.  But this violence is also being applied by local police forces to the nation’s poor and the mentally ill, all with the same relative impunity

How many Americans are aware that in the United States, past and current “rioting” and “race wars” against people of color are almost exclusively the domain of white Americans?

Going back to 1863, the then New York City riots were where white people were killing black Americans and destroying the African-American community’s churches, orphanages, businesses and schools.

James Loewen, the historical scholar has estimate that as many as 3,000 black communities were “ethnically cleansed” by white violence and other means of intimidation.  Historian Gregory Downs has suggested that as many as 50,000 black Americans were killed by white racial terrorism in the 30 years following the end of the American Civil War. This total may not even include at least 4,000 blacks who were victims of lynching by whites across the South and other parts of the United States.

In 1919 alone, land was taken, people killed and there were 26 white-on-black recorded race riots.  White Americans were the country’s most successful, adept and skilled rioters. White America was an expert on rioting and race wars, while black Americans were virtual amateurs with little to no experience in such matters by comparison.  

In 1921, over a 24-hour time period, whites destroyed a prosperous black community in Tulsa, Oklahoma. White rioters used machine guns and actually dropped bombs from an airplane on the local black community. Conservative estimates suggest that at least several hundred black people were killed.

In the aftermath of World War I, in East St Louis, whites engaged in a virtual riot war against the black community.  As it had occurred in Chicago, this was part of the “Red Summers” in which whites attempted to reassert their control and dominance over the local black communities.

The late Joel Olsen described in his book, The Abolition of White Democracy, that white riots against black Americans and other people of color were a way of creating a sense of community across lines of class and ethnicity. Thus, “whiteness” was continually nurtured by white violence against non-whites generally, and African Americans in particular.

White riots and other types of mass violence against the black community have historically enriched white Americans through land theft, and the destruction of black businesses.  In the past, it was a way of enforcing a regime of racial terrorism that economically and politically oppressed the black community, but was very profitable for America's white communities.

But today however, due to the latest technological advances that allow for cell phone cameras and dash and body video cameras, America is seeing the reality of the issues that still remain between white versus black Americans. And this issue is specifically applied to our local police departments

Is today’s American police culture just sick and pathological in how black and poor citizens have been killed, tortured, sexually assaulted or otherwise violated and abused by police officers?

If there are only a few bad apples in America’s police departments, why doesn’t the police department heads just throw them out?  But are America’s police forces today more like street gangs than the supposed public servants they are supposed to be?

Up to this point, it has been easy for mainstream news medias to lecture us about those “pathological” black communities that are supposedly plagued by their “bad culture.”

It is far more difficult for this same media to discuss America’s broken police departments and their culture of violence and disrespect toward non-whites and poor people.  This lack of respect has eventually led to the high-profile killing of Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Eric Garner, Walter Scott and now Freddie Gray in Baltimore, and so many other black men and women across the United States of America.

These latest technologies are unveiling what is really going on inside our police departments against those that are the most venerable Americans.  These new body cameras can now show how out-of-balance the system has become.  But be assured, the deeper we dig, the uglier it will probably get, and it will get much worse before it gets better.

But at least it’s being brought out in the open to be dealt with and for everyone to see.

There is finally now a glimpse of a reason for some real new hope.

Copyright G.Ater  2015