The 2020 Rant: Fear, Panic, and The Revolution
To skip the pleasantries, I have been trying to write this for months. Since March all I have been doing is sitting in my room ruminating over the state of the country, donating, and protesting as I can but unable to escape the dread daily news headlines cause me. As almost 200,000 have died due to Covid-19, in what can only be described as a nightmarish initial and continued response by our administration, and tensions escalate between citizens and police, it seems the rest of the country is becoming exposed to what people of color have known since the inception of police: that they fundamentally do not exist to protect and serve their communities. The common narrative in online circles is that 2020 is a cursed year — insert whatever arbitrary theory as to why here — despite this year being nothing more than the logical end result of our government’s intentional mishandling of healthcare, pushback against vital social and ecological reforms, and White Supremacy doing its best to maintain its hold on America. This year is not some fabled fantasy conflict between good and evil, it is the very real struggle for the future of this nation, and whether that future will include finally learning from our atrocious past or continuing to sweep our systematic problems under the rug.
I don’t have anything new to say about the orange waste of space who calls himself the president. He lied about how fast the virus was spreading in the U.S., lied about potential treatments for the virus, and even as recently as this week continues to go against the word of medical professionals and spout unrealistic timelines of when vaccines will be readily available for the public. I want to instead shine a light on his avid supporters and verbalize why I find their disposition so unsettling. Trump has a storied history of saying whatever he wants, this includes before his theatrical presidential term and assuredly after. What has been scarier than the lies, however, are the droves of people willing to disregard basic science even in the face of a tens of thousands of their fellow Americans dead. Granted, the virus is disproportionately affecting people of color, so Trumpers probably don’t even count those as real deaths, but the sheer bull-headedness in the face our universal system of understanding is horrifying. Science is our way of understanding the world, our affect on it and vice versa, and should stand far outside the realm of politics or partisanship. We have watched the person in charge of this nation denounce, defame, mock, and blatantly contradict the world of doctors who have collectively spent decades studying diseases and their characteristics for the explicit purpose of informing people about how to combat them. Meanwhile, his followers eat up his misinformation and continue to coast on a fake version of America, one where we as a nation were somehow exempt from the effects of disease hitting the entire world. Once it became known that wearing masks significantly reduces the risk of spreading Covid, that should have been the end of conversation. Once it became known that social distancing was vital for culling the virus, your hair appointment no longer matters, your little league game no longer matters, your spring break beach vacation no longer matters, you owe your fellow people the decency of not being a threat to their health. Refusing to wear a mask in public places in a global pandemic, throwing and attending large parties in a global pandemic, or insinuating that the virus is over or a “hoax” during a global pandemic is not only a threat to public health but insulting to the lives of everyone who has died thus far. If you claim to care about the lives of your fellow people, wear a mask in public, otherwise, stop lying to yourself.
Violence against people of color via police is not a new phenomenon, in fact the very foundation of police in this country involved serving as lap dogs for Southern white elites. Their job was to hunt down runaway slaves and return them by force to the very kidnappers they were so desperate to get away from. That DNA is found in the cops of today, who treat PoC as inhumanely as their predecessors and are unafraid to kill children or fire into vehicles full of civilians. Willing to suffocate a mentally ill man and cover it up for months. Willing to establish a culture of protecting murderers and abusers instead of protecting the citizens that pay for their position in the first place. Willing to indoctrinate themselves into a cult wherein the belief is that police are constantly under threat or in danger, which is blatantly false. Willing to profile based on race, fabricate evidence, and materialize warrants whenever it would be convenient for them to hold you against your will. The list of police’s moral errors is functionally infinite because the police system is broken. Let me repeat: the police system as it exists right now is broken and cannot serve to protect a large percentage of citizens in this country. There is no conceivable way to have a force whose roots revolved around not seeing PoC as people (you cannot own slaves or uphold a system of slavery and believe those enslaved deserve the same treatment as you, it is literally not possible) to actual serve those same people today. The toxicity is hardwired, and the same police who uphold stop and frisk and mandatory sentencing have no interest in protecting the communities that fuel their arrest quotas. If you find yourself upset upon seeing ACAB or think protesting police violence is too extreme, imagine if you had to spend your entire life in fear that a routine traffic stop could result in your death, only to be told how crazy you are by the world when that thought upsets you. If your entire outlook around police is based around your personal good experiences with them or being friendly with cops, then you have no right to chastise because you are not seeing reality. If you genuinely believe that resisting arrest or having prior criminal charges are grounds for murder, I encourage you to re-evaluate your sense of justice. If you honestly believe in our justice system, then you would understand that anytime a person is killed by police in any form it is a gross violation of the rights we are supposedly guaranteed as Americans. The right to a fair trial, to be judged by peers, to serve time and be reformed, to be treated like a human being. If seeing the police subject peaceful protestors to chemical warfare doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, wherein people wearing cloth masks and wielding carboard signs have been confronted with armored vehicles, dogs, and pepper bullets, then you cannot claim to care about human life. For those of you who still pushback against this idea because you know a good person in the force or believe you yourself are a good person on the force, I’ll leave you on this note: it does not matter how good a person you are if you are part of a system that thrives off of oppression. “Good Cops” are still out in the streets getting paid to gas protesters, not calling out colleagues who do wrong (and lets be honest, there’s enough common knowledge out there now to know that snitching is not a well-regarded trait among precincts), and maintaining a racist status quo, even if they personally think they are doing good in the world. The only good cop is one who quits, because that demonstrates an actual desire to ensure the safety of citizens and a commitment to not terrorize them. I can’t choose to not be a PoC, I can’t choose what personality traits are prescribed to me because of my skin, but every single cop has made the choice to become a cop. If they continue to remain so when their job description involves engaging in military grade fire fights with civilians, then I think that tells you everything you need to know about them as a person.
White supremacy is the foundation of America, regardless of how uncomfortable that makes you. While it has many forms and is being fought on many fronts, it doesn’t change how tangible a threat it remains to the average citizen. From the blatant hypocrisy of school shooters being captured alive while unarmed PoC are killed in the streets to the most recent news of abhorrent medical malpractice in ICE detention centers, America has made it clear that if you look a certain way your life is not as valuable. All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter were not slogans until Black Lives Matter and they served as direct, oppressive responses to the simple affirmation that our lives are worth the same respect as anyone else. The real reason for this though is that BLM stands as direct threat to white supremacy, it stands contradictory to our constitution that intentionally did not include slaves in the idea that all men were created equal. It is perceived as radical and outlandish by right wing outlets, but what is so radical about equal treatment? Consider that what our society thinks of as ‘Radical’ has been dictated through our historically inaccurate education system and the numerous artificial barriers put in place to stop PoC from succeeding in life. Racism is not just lynching’s and slurs, its also predatory loans, inequal access to health care, double standards of dress in the workplace, casually referring to impoverished neighbors as more dangerous, and disproportional violence against PoC by authorities. The most threating part of White Supremacy is how deeply it has invaded so many different parts of our society, to the point where you have University Medical students believing myths that black people experience pain differently from white people. Given this context, the wave of protests in 2020 have become one of the most important battles of our time. In the streets you have both able-bodied and those with disabilities consisting of students, teachers, doctors, engineers, musicians, dancers, former police and military, and journalists all serving as catalysts for change in this country. Despite being classified on national news as aggressors or terrorists, the people have not budged in their desire for justice nor should they. It is about so much more than firing the police officers who killed Breonna Taylor or getting justice for Daniel Prude, it is about not letting the powers that be dictate the narrative any further. Police do not get to cover up their murders anymore, politicians are not exempt from getting bombarded with the will of the people, the walls that have been put between different social classes and jobs are eroding as the fight for the value of human life continues. In short, whether the racists want it or not, a revolution is upon us. It is both exhilarating and terrifying as the countermeasures have been swift and severe, but as many have learned this year with the empowerment of peaceful protests, you cannot smother an idea. The road to eradicating white supremacy is long, arduous, depressing, and often times seems futile, but seeing people gather and feeling that power in person gives me the ember of hope. There is nothing radical about wanting the ability to live life freely regardless of what you look like, and to those who think there is, your era is coming to an end.
The world is scary and I have been on the fence about how much I want to make the extent of my thoughts known publicly in 2020. Being outspoken paints you as a target and there are no shortage of racists in this town that would harm me if they had the chance, but our voice and our message are amongst the most powerful things we can share. People are becoming more educated, compassion and empathy are becoming more normalized, and whether it is a fad, the vow to fight white supremacy is in the public eye more than ever before. This year is not cursed, this year is a chance. A chance to get the ball rolling for future generations to never have to worry about the panic of police retaliation, of being shamed for their culture, of being denied basic civil rights because the country doesn’t give a shit about them, and to actually establish a culture of resources being distributed where needed to give every citizen a shot at a successful life. If you still believe protests are violent, I urge you to go to one and speak with the people. If you still believe that police are morally just, I urge you to read testimonies by police officers at how corrupt their system is. If you believe that Black Lives Matter is a terrorist slogan, than I urge you to read into the dense history of racial violence of PoC in this country and tell me to my face that we are treated equally. There is no closer here, at the end of the day you are either on the side of people being given equitable treatment, or you are for maintaining the racist status quo of this country that violates the very foundation we believe it is founded on.
Stay informed, stay safe, protect each other, and never stop fighting the good fight.
Things to check out:
BLM Resources
https://blacklivesmatters.carrd.co/
Brief snippet on medical views of black bodies
https://globalhealth.harvard.edu/racial-bias-in-medicine/
History of Racial Violence against PoC in America
https://twitter.com/ericabuddington/status/1266531249914601472
Trump being wrong about Covid
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIKRMK9idFY
Insight into the inner workings of Police
https://medium.com/@OfcrACab/confessions-of-a-former-bastard-cop-bb14d17bc759
