By Richard Mellor in California
White public opinion could not “conceive of the negro having any rights at all”: “Men, who are honourable in their dealings with their white neighbours, will cheat a negro without feeling a twinge of their honour; to kill a negro they do not deem murder; to debauch a negro woman they do not think fornication; to take property away from a negro they do not deem robbery….They still have the ingrained feeling that the black people at large belong to the whites at large.”
(Eric Foner, writing in Reconstruction, America’s Unfinished Revolution)
Today there are hundreds of thousands of people across the US protesting police violence and the killing of black people in particular. As Sandra Bland, of Double Down News says in this video, a black person can surrender to the police and still die. We see it all the time.
In this situation, to raise in response to Black Lives Matter, “All Lives Matter” is simply absurd. Of course all lives matter. As I have written before, if Jews in Nazi Germany were calling for Jewish Lives Matter, would we respond with Christian Lives Matter?
Urban centres heavily populated by black people
The police are an arm of the state and they swear an oath to defend the laws of the state. In our system they defend capitalism. They are there to protect Amazon, the banks, the energy companies, the tech billionaires, and so on.
In the poorest communities and the urban centres, heavily populated by black people, the role of the police is to ensure the anger and rage at the system that has abandoned them cannot develop in to any form of organized resistance. In strikes they defend the bosses’ rights, not the workers. Historically, the police have broken strikes and often with extreme violence.
Huge disparities in wealth
There is one staggering statistic that reveals the racial disparity in the US that is a product centuries of social marginalization since the times of slavery. The Wall Street Journal noted last week that in 2016, the median black household had $18,000 in net worth. The median white household had $171,000.
There is a “pandemic” of racism and violence directed specifically at this group of people and it has a long history in the US. It is important to see and understand that racism and colour prejudice is ingrained in US society, it has been the main means of social control and how the ruling class has maintained power.
It is also of no help to say to a person of colour, “I don’t see colour” in order to separate oneself from those that apparently do. Whether you “see” colour or not is not an issue. The state sees colour, society sees colour, and it sees colour very differently.
I made a short video myself in relation to the use of “All lives matter” or “Blue lives matter” slogans, please pass it around.
From the US socialist website, Facts for Working People, with whom Left Horizons shares many articles. To see the FFWP website, go here.
June 9, 2020
