To suggest that protest in the United States is in its blood would be an understatement. Even a flippant view of the creation of this nation would require a recognition that the very founding of the United States was predicated on a string of protests. The casual references to the Boston Tea Party of 1773 and other events in the decades leading up to the American Revolution would have to recognize the train of events as inevitable stepping stones to violence. The founding American story is an easily discernible hill that one must climb, fall down, and climb again: peaceful protest, destruction of property, looting and rioting, rebellion, and revolution.
Yet, in the grand scheme of U.S.-American culture, we have often segregated our favorite variations of the pattern from the less comfortable ones. U.S.-Americans can joke about the Boston Tea Party or raise their fists over the Revolutionary War, but the same fervor and pride is noticeably absent when it comes to the same patterns concerning racial injustice, as in the case of the Slave Insurrection of 1741 or Nat Turner’s Rebellion in 1831. U.S.-Americans during the era of slavery responded to possibility of slave revolts not by recognizing the immorality of the slavery system but by stifling dissent, increasing their control on slaves, and preserving white society. Later, U.S.-Americans would split their views on the institution of slavery while preserving a segregated society — by law in the South and by design in the north. Later still, U.S.-Americans were split again on the Civil Rights movement, with far too many supporting the use of police violence to stop dissent (with the help of the FBI). And today, that familiar response is here again.
In Ferguson in 2014, protests over the police killing of Michael Brown were met by police in riot gear, SWAT teams, tear gas, and other non-lethal methods of crowd dispersal (and violence). Police also destroyed a memorial laid by Michael Brown’s mother, adding fuel to a fire that would erupt into riots. Three years later, Vice President Mike Pence, following the lead of many angry U.S.-Americans, would storm out of an NFL game after several 49ers players knelt in solidarity with Colin Kaepernick and in protest of racial injustice. Pence, who probably staged the walkout, stated that he left because he would not “dignify any event that disrespects our soldiers, our Flag, or our National Anthem,” a sentiment shared by Trump and later emphasized when the cast of Hamilton offered a dissenting message to Pence at the conclusion of their performance in the same year. For Trump, apparently, being told that his administration may be contributing to the unsafe conditions for minority populations constituted an attack on the safety of the institution of the theater, despite, it should be clear, the Hamilton cast offering little more than words. And in Minneapolis, peaceful protests were similarly met by police, and just as in Ferguson, peaceful protests turned to riots. The murder of George Floyd has likewise sparked protests and possible riots across the country. As I said the other day: America burns.
The message from the bottom to the top is pretty clear: you can protest, but not like that or like that or like that…
U.S.-Americans are fond of proclaiming their appreciation of dissent and protest. It’s so ingrained in our culture that we often utter the phrase “your right to protest” without critically examining its unequal distribution. White Americans can show up at government buildings armed to the teeth to protest stay-at-home orders and face little more than ridicule on Twitter. They can crowd government buildings so that business cannot be conducted. The same cannot be said about black America, who are frequently met with police violence, mass arrests, and more, even though they are rarely armed with more than signs and the occasional bottle. The contrast is stark.
Beyond this unequal distribution, U.S.-Americans are also remarkably adept at outright rejecting demonstrations when they don’t conform to the dominant narrative. Protests against racial injustice — a demonstrable and objective problem that extends back to the founding of the nation — challenge the U.S.-American narrative of itself, a narrative created and disseminated by white America. They challenge our institutions and our understanding of our world. They are, unsurprisingly, uncomfortable things. Yet, the fact that protests are meant to provoke discomfort, to challenge entrenched institutions of power, and to seek justice is often lost in the translation, this despite the dominant narrative’s obsession with forms of protest that provoke these very things. It’s hard to view the foundational arguments about taxation without representation as anything but explicit challenges to entrenched institutions, or as naturally uncomfortable forms of protest for loyalists and the British, or as attempts to seek justice. Go through the U.S.-American (dominant white) narrative, and you’ll find countless stories about this very thing, even when those stories end with peaceful protests rather than looting or property destruction or rebellion. Even when this U.S.-America acknowledges racial injustice, it’s often merely to prop up the fundamental myth of the Great America that dispelled its demons for a more equal society.
The unfortunate truth is that the protests in Minneapolis and the protests of racial injustice over the last 30 years are a product of a predominately white public that views most acts of protest as an attack. Indeed, many predominately white Americans have felt themselves under attack by a culture that seems destined to leave them behind, a kind of victimhood that absolves them of responsibility. Rather than treat protests as opportunities for community discussion, far too many wish to dismiss them out of hand. We saw this all too well with the reactions to Kaepernick’s knee protests. No matter how many times he or others tried to explain his position, the narrative of racial injustice was always left behind. His protest was the wrong way. His protest upset people. His protest made us uncomfortable because it flew in the face of the institutions we had uncritically accepted as unchangeable. You can protest, but not that way, or that way…
In the end, it’s hardly surprising that there are riots in Minneapolis and elsewhere. It’s hardly surprising that there are protests happening across the country or that so many people are fed up. This is what happens when people who feel slighted, ignored, and literally brutalized by the de facto U.S. police state try to follow society’s rules and realize that they aren’t being heard. They rebel. They riot and burn things to the ground.
U.S.-Americans (especially white Americans) don’t want to hear it, but they need to. This is the bed that the dominant culture of this country made for itself. Riots are not pure chaos. They are not without provocation. They are a symptom of a disease ravaging the nation. A disease of inaction. A disease of injustice. A disease of closed doors. And they are by no means the “preferred method.” But when the preferred method doesn’t work, what else is there?
The country isn’t burning because the protesters have lost their minds or because they are bad people, even if some of them probably have and probably are… The country is burning because too many of us didn’t want to listen when the message was just a little uncomfortable. And just like the empires of old, sometimes the only way to get a message across is to punch the person who isn’t listening in the face. Or to burn part of your community to the ground to feel a sense of control in a world that has stripped you of it. Whether it works doesn’t really matter.
My friend K. Worthen made a great point in her recent article, “The Frenzy of Our Frustration“:
And yet, it would be unthinkable, in fact repugnant, to not speak, to not scream, to not rage at this persistent juridical, legal, political, and social devaluation of Black life. Throughout its history, it is the one thing that America has done with malignant consistency. So we must speak. We simply cannot sit still.
The tension of U.S.-American protest rests in this moment of the unthinkable. The idea that an injustice can continue unchallenged forever, no matter how small or how large. That familiar narrative mountain always reappears. We protest. We destroy property. We rebel.
