Are you aware that almost 95 percent of demonstrations for the Black Lives Matter movement have been peaceful?
If you watch any of the nightly news programs, or even take a close look at some of the stories from the wire services, this would come as a surprise.
We’ve been inundated for months, since the May 25 killing of George Floyd by a police officer in Minnesota, with stories of rioters, looters, vandals and assorted ne’er-do-wells taking over the streets in Portland, Ore., Minneapolis, Chicago, and lately, Kenosha, Wis.
And yes, there was some disgusting looting in Boston the night a peaceful protest wound down at the State House. Streets that had been blocked off to accommodate the tens of thousands of peaceful demonstrators, were opened to people who drove in to smash and grab on Newbury and Boylston streets, while television cameras recorded the devastation.
Because the bad news of the subsequent destruction made better storylines than the tens of thousands marching in solidarity, too many outlets continue to go by the industry standard: If it bleeds, it leads.
And given the optics shown daily and nightly, it’s disappointing, but not surprising, that support among whites for Black Lives Matter has dropped from more than 40 percent to 33 percent.
Some people have decided that affirming being Black shouldn’t be a license for police to harass, brutalize and kill, is closely aligned with looting and vandalism of property (which is still held in higher value than Black human lives).
According to the US Crisis Monitor, which collects real-time data on trends, the United States is at heightened risk of political violence and instability entering the Nov. 3 general election. Mass shootings hit a record high last year (BBC, 29 December 2019), violent hate crimes are on the rise (Al Jazeera, 13 November 2019), and police killings are at 2.5 times the rate for Black men as for white men (FiveThirtyEight, 1 June 2020; Nature, 19 June 2020).
Yet this feeds the narrative for the re-election campaign of the current occupant of the White House. He is fear-mongering, promising law and order, even though under his watch, this country has seen more lawlessness and disorder than in the previous administration, or even in previous decades of administrations, both Republican and Democratic.
And the mainstream media bears some responsibility for the change of focus on a 93 percent peaceful movement to the 7 percent of rabble-rousers. I suppose it’s the same philosophy teachers would use when they would keep the whole class in for recess because one or two others were disruptive. They never praised the ones who followed the rules, they let the ones who didn’t dictate the outcome for everyone else. It wasn’t fair then, and it’s not fair now.
The focus on police brutality has seen more images of more brutality against peaceful protesters. And yet, even as elderly men are knocked to the ground, moms and war veterans in Oregon are beaten and teargassed, videos surface of a man being shot seven times in the back, or of another in mental health crisis being hooded and held down on the ground until he stopped breathing, we focus on buildings being destroyed and watch a 17-year-old white supremacist who crossed state lines to gun down three people (killing two, maiming a third) being hailed as a hero by mainstream right wing media.
Yes, we’re divided and polarized as a nation. The racists and white supremacists have been gleefully coming out of the woodwork for the last four years, answering not the siren call of a dog whistle, but the full-on bullhorn from the biggest bully pulpit in the free (for now) world.
There are others, silently agreeing or silently complicit, because if another unarmed Black person is killed by law enforcement, or another Black child is traumatized by either seeing a parent brutalized or being the victim of police violence, it doesn’t affect them.
Except it might. Look at the victims of teargas and beatings in Oregon, the elderly man in upstate New York, the counter protester who was run down by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, Va., the two young men who lost their lives to a 17-year-old white supremacist.
When you’re witnessing a dumpster fire, make sure you hold the one with the gas can accountable — even as he’s fanning those flames and telling you it could be worse.
When a cancer metastasizes, it is indiscriminate — it destroys all in its path.
Cheryl Charles can be reached at [email protected].
