Sitting high with a uniform, barking orders, demanding order.

For anyone in a position of power, peace is not a right. It is a privilege; and it’s a privilege that needs to be earned. Anyone responsible for creating and enforcing laws needs to do so competently and justly if they want to keep their positions of power. If the system of justice works disparately for different groups of people in a society, anyone destabilized by that injustice has the right to fight to even the scales. Those who seek to preserve unjust systems eventually lose their power and sometimes their heads. Revolts, rebellions, and revolutionary wars are catalyzed on this reality.

For far too long in the United States, the system of white supremacy has perpetually lifted its middle finger at the idea of equal justice. The power structure has been effective at pretty much nothing else but the preservation of white supremacy. It’s a well-oiled machine. So much so, that even people of color, unwittingly, work to preserve it. So when George Floyd was publicly murdered by Minneapolis police officer, Derek Chauvin, the officer did so knowing full-well that the system had his back. Much like the system had Daniel Pantaleo’s back when he murdered Eric Garner in Staten Island, N.Y.. Or like Darren Wilson when he killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO. Or the killers of Sandra Bland, 12-year-old Tamir Rice, Philandro Castile, Alton Sterling, Walter Scott, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, Walter Scott -sadly, we could fill this page with names of innocent and unarmed black men and women who’ve died at the hands of police officers over the course of US history.
Technology, which in recent history, has enabled society to see this evil at work (sometimes in real-time), has only illuminated the disparity of justice instead of providing evidence to correct the wrongs of the system. One can argue that these police state-produced snuff films started with the beating of Rodney in Los Angeles. For decades preceding that fateful night in 1991, black and brown people had reported and protested incidences of police brutality in their communities, but to no avail. A camcorder finally caught four cops engaged in the precise abuse of power these communities had long contended with, giving the rest of the world a glimpse into what it looked like dealing with police brutality. However, the acquittal of the four officers, a year later -even with clear evidence of a crime- confirmed the precedence that had long been established. Cops can do whatever the fuck they want, and black and brown people just gotta eat it. American society and its power structure didn’t even need to shrug off the carnage the cops put on full display. White supremacy was undeterred. The riots that followed the acquittal seemed seismic at the time. Surely, (I thought, anyway) a change would come. But in reality, because we are exactly where we were in 1992, the year L.A. burned in anger -and 25 other U.S. cities are burning in anger right now- nothing has changed. White supremacy remains undeterred.

It’s not just police officers who get the white carpet treatment. Remember the names of aforementioned innocent black people killed by police, and contrast it with psychopaths, like Dylan Roof, a explicitly-self-proclaimed white supremacist, who was treated to a meal at Wendy’s by police, hours after killing nine black church-goers in Charleston, S.C.. Or most recently, the psychopathic McMichaels, a father and son, who walked the streets of Glynn County, Georgia, freely for two months after lynching Ahmaud Arbery by shotgun. The police dragged their feet on the investigation until a video of the murder was made public. For two months. White civilians who unleash weapons of war on innocent people will leave a trail of blood only to be taken into custody with kid gloves. They’re almost always armed, but almost never harmed. In fact, the rare times a white mass-shooter dies in the aftermath of a killing spree, it’s usually because they save their final cowardly act of violence for themselves.

[We’re gonna be] Burnin’ and-a lootin’ tonight.

It’s unfortunate when people who may have invested their life’s work or life’s savings into starting a business or buying a property and it gets burned to the ground. Especially when the economy is in shambles and retail businesses are shuttered from inside the retched bowels of a global pandemic. The reality, however, is that those business owners’ insurance policies will indemnify them, and they will be made whole. They will literally still have their lives and limbs, and the means to rebuild. The stark reality is also that George Floyd is dead, His family has the difficult task of mourning and hoping that all of the officers responsible for his death are arrested and convicted. I’d wager any amount of money that that they’d much rather have their own businesses or homes burned to the ground, than to have lost a loved one by the hands of craven and callous cops. There is no rebuilding for them.
Anyone who says that the destruction of property should be shunned or disavowed play into an ugly game of irony. Why? This country’s economy was built with the broken bodies of enslaved Black people. There wouldn’t be businesses to burn or loot if not for the slave labor that laid the foundation for the creation of every US dollar in circulation today. Anyone concerned about the actions of the so-called rioters prioritize economic needs over justice for Black people. In fact, in this country’s early history, everyone who turned a blind eye to the brutality of slavery made the same calculus as those decrying the rioting today. I’d argue that the rage from four-hundred years of oppression, murder and injustice has a right to look like burning and looting. And if we’re being honest, the impact of rioting across the country, even if they are discrete acts of retribution for those four-hundred plus years, are a laughable slap on the wrist in comparison. Regardless, even if you don’t believe in karma, you can’t argue that it isn’t poetically karmic. I’m also not wholly convinced that legitimate protesters are responsible for the destruction, but that’s a story for another day.

When I finally took a knee, them crackers took me out the league.

So what can we do? Peacefully, silently, protest? Like Colin Kapernick and other black athletes who silently protested against the very acts that killed George Floyd and were vilified, and told to stay in their place? In Kapernick’s case, he was black-balled from being able to earn a living in a football league where he was better qualified than at least 90% of his peers and better than 96% of all quarterbacks in the league’s entire history by some metrics.
Should we organize and vote for people who’ll be agents of change to advance the arc of justice? Like the Georgia gubernatorial race where Stacey Abrams’s victory was stolen, as well as countless other politicians whose candidacies are smothered by gerrymandering and voter suppression. How do you out-organize and out-vote voter suppression?
Should we burn the country to the ground, where its system of injustice deserves to be dismantled. Where in reality, we’d likely languish and be mired in the ashes and rubble of said system of oppression, without any guarantees that a new system would be any more just?

Don’t get me wrong. I absolutely agree with Killer Mike when he said that we need to plot, plan, organize and mobilize. But in reality, because of everything I’ve stated up until this point, there are limits to kinds of systemic change people of color -or any oppressed class, for that matter- can achieve without the destruction of the existing of power structure or without the intentional will of that structure.

Don’t be told what you want to want to
And don’t be told what you want to need

Abraham Lincoln, a white man, issued the Emancipation Proclamation.
Lyndon B Johnson, a white man, signed the Civil Rights act of 1964.
Mayor Bill de Blasio, a white man, struck down the stop-and-frisk policy in New York City.
I have problems with each of those people but the facts are immutable. Will white people work to dismantle the system of white supremacy? I’m afraid it’s the only way we, as a society, will get better.

And Black people, and people of color: I’m absolutely not suggesting lying down and waiting for shit to happen. Without putting in the good fight, absolutely nothing will change. and the inertia will be impossible to overcome. We didn’t get the little progress we have by standing idly; our fight stands on the shoulders of those who’ve put in work before us. We must take to the streets; we must organize and vote out anyone who doesn’t have our interests in mind; and yes, sometimes gotta fuck shit up to let people know we’re serious and angry.

 

For anyone in a position of power, peace is not a right. It is a privilege. It’s a privilege that needs to be earned. White allies reading this, I’m writing directly to you now: Even if you’re not rich nor in a position of political power, you benefit from white supremacy, which is also a privilege. It may not feel like privilege because you don’t have money or power, but you still run this shit. No one will call the cops on you, simply for being white. A cop will never mistreat you, simply for being white. Your credentials, your right to be in a physical location, nor in your station in life will be questioned, simply because you are white. And that, my friends, is privilege. And our society will only progress if you use your privilege to push it towards progress. Your stature in the world can either be used to bolster this unjust system, or it can be used to dismantle it to make this world a fairer and better place for all people. But also remember: peace is a privilege that must be earned. Looks at the world around you and remember: the onus of bringing that peace and justice is on you.