"I say the future is ours...if you can count." from Cyrus' speech in The Warriors (1979)
"I've waited my whole life for this. The world's going to start over. I'MA BURN IT ALL." N'Jadaka (aka Erik Killmonger) in Black Panther (2018)
Many Americans seem shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that rampant racism runs through this society's veins, and even more shocked that people are actually doing something about it. I guess structural racism is another one of those things that my anthropologist friends tell me is a sacred cultural secret best not profaned by uttering out loud. Everyone knows it, of course, but it's impolite to acknowledge it in public. Or at least it was, before this particular president turned dog whistles into foghorns so folks could find their way through the smoke and the tear gas.
I find it surprising that anyone is surprised by any of this. The two new laws of nature that cell phone cameras have given us are that (1) contrary to all of those books and movies of the 70's and 80's, aliens are not abducting us, and (2) cops do an awful lot of brutal murderous stuff and usually get away with it.
The United States is structurally racist. There's no mystery to this. All you have to do is look at the very design of the government. There was a time when African-Americans counted as three-fifths of a person for purposes of representation. Well, one current consequence (perhaps the main consequence) of the electoral college is to make minority votes worth about nine-tenths of a white vote. I guess that's better than three-fifths, eh? But how is it not racist? Then we have the Senate, a body that by design provides equal clout for low population/low minority states and high population/high minority states. How is that not structurally racist?
If you're surprised by any of this -- the horrific murder of George Floyd, the demonstrations, the looting, then you've been watching too much Disney for the last 50 years. Wake up and smell the coffee. Police kill a thousand people a year in the United States. In the UK, they kill two. Minorities are overrepresented in the essential worker categories that are supposed to risk their lives during the pandemic. I'm not going to go on a stat rant here. If you want to see how few police are convicted of brutality each year, go look it up. But you won't. You know why? You don't want to know.
I'm surprised at how many people seem surprised by the events of this last week. I'm more surprised that every day of the last few decades hasn't been like this.
And I'm still not sure who I was rooting for in Black Panther, T'Challa or N'Jadaka. I hope I figure it out in time for the sequel.
Bob Dietz
June 2, 2020
