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[Christian Davenport]

Tactical Selection, Tolerance and the Rights of the Oppressed

7/17/2016

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If an individual or group is being killed in a systematic manner, then the rules of the game are less applicable and people can argue about what is the most effective response to what is taking place but if it is not clear what is being done or what works, then the non-victimized cannot complain if the victimized experiment with resolving their problem.  This is a survival mechanism and one acknowledged by both domestic and international law - the oppressed have the right of survival.  If someone steps into your house and you feel threatened or if you are walking in your neighborhood and you feel threatened, then you have the right to protect yourself.  Citizens within nation states are supposed to roll back a bit and allow governments to handle the second scenario and maybe even the first but if the government is not present or worse yet if they are associated with some of the violence, then it's up to the citizen(s).  Citizens are not supposed to let themselves be killed.  No one should do this. Indeed, the essence of human rights is that people are allowed to stay alive and, by association, do what they feel is necessary to guarantee that outcome.

And this is where we are.  At present, many black urban communities are in the cross-hairs.  They are being targeted by violence from the police as well as by other African Americans.  In this context, it is ridiculous to assume that blacks will just tolerate this situation, wait for help to show up and not do anything.  As a consequence, we see individuals and groups in this community starting to try things.

Many of these tactics will look familiar and will be favorably viewed by those outside of the black community because they draw upon tactics that have been used in the United States for quite some time - what Charles Tilly would call a "repertoire".  For example, some will  rely upon individuals in the community to help navigate local tensions like the "Interrupters" in Chicago.  Some will rely upon local NGOs. Some will rely upon local activists like the locale Black Lives Matter movement.  Some will rely on local politicians like the mayor to step up and do something.  Some will rely upon legal remedies like lawsuits by the NAACP or ACLU. Some will start talking about black community empowerment through boycotting and developing black economic power like in a bank.

And, some tactics will look unfamiliar and will not especially be favored by individuals outside or inside the community.  For example, some want to pick up and some have picked up guns in retaliation and frustration as was done in Dallas. Some want to pick up and have used guns in defense and protection.  The latter approach was not only advocated by individuals such as Malcolm X and Robert F. Williams but it was also advocated by different political organizations (e.g., the Deacons for self defense, The Revolutionary Action Movement, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense and the Republic of New Africa).

Of course, this is not all that we are going to see. I'm sure that there are going to be town hall meetings, sit ins, teach ins, walk outs, petitions, lectures, commissions, hearings, concerts, conferences, grant competitions, tv specials, calls for black private security firms, calls for personal responsibility and other activities.

But regardless of what we see people try, if the American repertoire of solutions that step outside of mainstream politics holds true, people will want to think that America can talk its way out of the current problem.  There is a faith in deliberation that exists.

With this in mind, though, I want to remind folks about an earlier effort toward this end. Remember President Bill Clinton's national conversation on race? This had the approval of the president, a prestigious national panel as well as the buy in from locale leaders and for all intents and purposes, it was a miserable failure.

At the time, a group convened in different cities around the us, they talked about national as well as some locale trends in racism/discrimination and then they opened up to the locale community.  This is where things got interesting because invariably people had much more to say than the panel had time for.  In Denver (where I was at the time) I remember the ridiculousness of trying to get some seventy year old African American man asked about racism to rap it up in a few minutes. There was no way that this was going to work.  He had so much he wanted to share but the structure of the event did not facilitate this.  

Now, It's not as if Americans are not ready for such conversations and there aren't some people out there with the time, heart and interest for such a thing.  I participated in a year-long meeting on racial harmony that convened once a month while in Houston, Texas in 1990s that was one of the best experiences of my life.  

The initial group was brought together by some artists who each put forward pieces that addressed the topic.  Each artist went around the room at the opening to talk about what they had in mind.  I was there representing my mother who submitted a piece where some whites were painting Jesus white.  After the individual presentations, we had a relatively open discussion about race relations in america for several hours.  

This time was filled with questions, emotions, half-truths and curiosity but overall there was a desire to understand.  Things got heated at times that day but this is just where we were and, I think, this is where we had to go.  This was not uniform - some whites as well as whites did not see the point of a conversation and they left before the meeting ended.
At the end of the day about 10 of us wanted to continue to have the conversation.  Month after month we returned for our sessions (6-8 hours on a Sunday).  Month after month new people would show up, vent and walk away or someone would show up and want to see what we were going to do.  Once it was clear that we were not going to do anything "outside of that room", they would leave. 

But, we did do something outside of that room and in my mind this legitimated the whole effort.  I met and interacted with what became two of my best friends on the planet and their children, extended family and friends.  They entered my life and I entered theirs and my existence was improved from the exchange.  

Now, I'm not saying that someone should go pick up a conversation as opposed to picking up a gun or a lawsuit or a sit in. Most do not want to put in the time for such a thing.  We also don't really know what has an impact on making individuals aware about anti-black violence nor what decreases it but this is what we have to investigate.  But we can start thinking about what to do.

Perhaps we need "black-watch" committees in each city that can develop appropriate research designs, collect data, facilitate analyses as well as conversations.  While we are going to gravitate to our preferred tactic/resolution, let us remember that just because we like a tactic does not mean that it is the best for the specific topic of interest nor does it mean that all others will likely gravitate to it as well.  

Perhaps we need each city in America to explore its specific version of the color line - something less official than the president's effort but deeper and more consistent. We meet to talk all the time - in classes, places of worship, chat rooms. What if we had the conversation about what is going on, why it's going on and what should take place to change it?   What if we made the answers to these questions available?  What if foundations offered a reward for coming up with resolutions?  What if we had 300 million conversations that became one?  

Perhaps we need to have a moratorium on diverse aspects of the criminal justice system that are being questioned - patrolling, patrolling with weapons, stopping drivers/walkers, arresting, sentencing and parole evaluations. Perhaps it all needs to be halted and systematically evaluated, so we can have a real conversation as well as some guided change. 

But before we can get here, if we are to find our way as a collectivity, perhaps we will need tolerance for everything as we find that way.  Am I saying that we tolerate and excuse violence?  Well, no because no more human lives should be lost to violence.  At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the country as a whole has generally been tolerating violence for quite some time.  Americans have largely tolerated, ignored and occasionally excused anti-black violence. This community has been killed off - systematically and purposively - for quite some time.  This community is also dying off as black mortality rates relative to whites are not comparable.  I do not want to get into a these people have suffered more than these other people type of discussion at this point (although one is overdue), but at a minimum we should be able to agree that there has been violence directed against as well as within the black community and over several hundred years.  Much of it has taken place without any or much discussion but that is not where we are now.  Today is when we start to catalog, discuss and analyze all of it.  Perhaps the beginning of this conversation is taking it all in, understanding everything that is being done on all sides and trying to understand why actions have been taken.  
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Exit, Voice, Loyalty or Dallas?

7/9/2016

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It is the job of political leaders to protect those within their territorial jurisdiction.  This is such a well understood aspect of modern existence that we do not even say it aloud that frequently. Governments are supposed to prevent their citizens from being subject to violence, torture, harassment, extortion and fear.  Not only are they to stop other citizens from doing this against their fellow citizens but they are also supposed to not engage in this behavior themselves.  Indeed, it is fair to say that the phrase “state failure” applies equally to situations when governments prove to be incapable of protecting its citizens from other citizens as well as when governments prove to be incapable of protecting its citizens from their own government. 
 
When governments are in situations of state failure, what is the fearful, harassed, terrorized citizen to do?  The answers are numerous and well described by Albert Hirschman in 1970 as exit (leave), voice (express yourself) or loyalty (shutup and wait for something to be done). 
 
Hirschman evidently missed a few options and the current situation in Dallas reminds us of this.  Citizens could also attack the state and/or move to try to displace it.  Rather than leave, talk or sit and wait, citizens can strike bank at those who are supposed to protect and serve them.  They also might attempt to remove and replace the system that has so ineffectively protected and served them.  We might not like these responses but we should nevertheless, as thinking and compassionate beings, understand the impulse – especially when nothing appears to be being done and the body count continues to rise (i.e., of black bodies delivered by the police as well as black bodies delivered by other black people). 
 
Consider the mounting evidence: African Americans appear to be more likely policed (i.e., have armed individuals stuck in their places of residence), stopped, frisked, arrested, perceived as guilty, harshly sentenced as well as kept in prison and denied parole.  Note, that I have left off that blacks are more likely shot because this we don’t really know with the same degree of confidence as we do with the other information above.  If you add to this that blacks are more likely to die early (largely because of stress related to living in America), less likely to get a job, education, adequate health care and be employed, then the situation gets a bit clearer.  In this situation, what response are you likely to take as the aggrieved population?  Lets briefly consider the options.
 
Exit - Blacks moved out of the South after being given the opportunity following the end of slavery as well as waves of lynching.  I have not seen the evidence but I imagine that there is some African American movement out of locations after other instances of anti-black violence.  There is also some movement around for other reasons.  But this is all inside the US. African Americans rarely travel outside of the United States.  The exit option is thus underutilized.
 
Voice – this has been attempted and quite frequently.  Blacks vote in relatively large numbers over time.  African Americans have also protested a bit – increasing in the last year or so.  What have these efforts yielded?  We don’t seem to know.  Are more blacks being killed now by the police than in the 1960s? Is black unemployment rising or declining? What is black life expectancy at the moment and what has it been?  Have black reading levels increased or decreased?  Are African Americans satisfied with the America that they see around them?  I don’t think that anyone has assembled all this information so that we could have an informed and honest discussion about the topic. Until this has been done, however, then we cannot really understand the influence of the black voice.  It just looks like it has been ineffective and looks matter.
 
Loyalty – As for this approach, well…. It seems as though Blacks have generally tended to follow this method.  That said, loyalty looks a lot like unexpressed disappointment and disaffection.  Loyalty or expressed loyalty could simply be what people have become conditioned to do – thinking that if they out-Americanized everyone else that they might not be discriminated against.  As Paul Dunbar wrote a long time ago though: “We wear the mask that grins and lies”.  Who knows what lies beneath?  After several hundred years of existing in the US, African Americans have become adept at seeming supportive but keeping disappointment and dissatisfaction to themselves, showed only amongst those deemed safe (ala James Scott, Robin Kelley and Melissa Harris-Perry).  What potentially lies beneath is a myriad of opinions about the failed state and what should be done about it. 
 
One response was seen in Dallas.  A lone African American, fed up with seeing violence being directed against his ethnic kin with seemingly no end in sight and no effective response that reassured him that he did not need to take action on his own, took action.  Without an ability or interest in Exit, with seemingly no hope for Voice or Loyalty, he picked up arms and directed them against those that he believe were responsible.  The historically minded will think of Mark Essex of New Orleans who in 1973 engaged in similar activities.  Others will pay attention to the passing references being made to “black nationalism”, harking back to the armed resistance to police occupation offered by the Black Panther Party. But to do so would be to miss the important differences: the Panthers took up arms defensively, not offensively; they challenged the failed state as a collective not as an individual; the Panthers offered a solution or, rather, several of them not simply the emptiness of gunfire.  Of all the differences, the last one for me seems to be the most pressing. 
 
Without some well worked out idea, some vision of what the world could look like, what do we expect people to do?  Exit presumes that there is some place that is better.  Voice presumes that there is someone to hear you on the other end that will take action on your behalf.  Loyalty presumes that someone will empathetically hear your pain.  Displacement and revolution presumes that you have some idea of what you would create in the place of what exists.  Only lashing out like in Dallas is left as the response to those who feel that they have no other options. 
 
To be clear (invoking the ever-appropriate Chris Rock): I’m not saying that I agree with what happened, but I understand the impulse.  To prevent Dallas, however, one of Hirschman’s other options needs to be rebuilt and I do not know how easily that can be done. 
 
Regarding Exit: I’m sure that there are some folks out there who would be more than willing to resurrect Marcus Garvey’s idea of shipping black folk to Africa but that is not going to happen.  Black folk don’t generally see this as an option and Africa is not really looking like a place that is ready to accept some old stolen property.  
 
Regarding Voice: I’m sure that this is where the majority of active individuals will be channeled because this is what happens in America.  Get people to sub-contract the resolution of their problem to some leader who will promise to resolve the situation.  But, what solution can be offered in the current system that would garner support from the population? 
 
Body cameras?  This idea presumes that the individuals watching them care, will evaluate, investigate and when deemed necessary prosecute offending behavior.  Perhaps I would like this idea more if all police had cameras (throughout the nation), they could not be shut off and all feeds were provided to everyone – live.  Direct Democracy requires Direct Access (a true PoliceWatch in every sense of the term).  This would be accompanied by DischargeWatch – where every discharge of a police weapon was geocoded in a national database that triggered an immediate investigation.
 
Retraining?  Perhaps but I’m not sure how people are trained now nor how they could be trained to be less likely to shoot. 
 
Moratorium (i.e., everything stops until we figure out what is going on)?  I don’t even think that this is possible but it should be discussed. 
 
Regarding Loyalty: This is an interesting one because in the Hirschman sense, individuals were to be loyal to the organization/entity that represented the collectivity – in this case, the nation-state.  I would suggest, however, that loyalty be extended to the human race.  And remaining loyal here might alter one’s loyalty to the specific states that humans are found within.  For example, when citizens in Sudan or Rwanda are suffering at the hands of their governments (i.e., when stat failure is underway abroad), we (the international community of nations) discuss economic sanctions, military intervention and/or naming and shaming.  Why are these options not discussed in the current context of urban America?  Clearly, this might be over-responding (especially when we don’t really know the extent of the problem) but I think that some over-responding might actually be good to restore faith in government.
 
What could other countries teach us?  I think that we should at least hear what they have to say.  Why not have a HelpAmericaNotShootBlackPeople.com?
 
Regarding Alternatives: Dallas was one response but I would suggest that the resurrection of a group that I studied called the Republic of New Africa (RNA) represents another. The RNA was a black nationalist organization existing in the 1960s and 1970s which called for reparations for slavery, a plebiscite to determine what blacks wanted to do and the creation of a new black nation set within the Deep South (referred to as the Black Belt) where members of the new black nation could live and pursue happiness.  Upon hearing about this group years ago, someone asked me why I did not write a book about exactly why African Americans would want to secede and create their own nation.  I wrote a note down about doing that sometime later and proceeded to write the book that I did about the rise and fall of the RNA. 

With discussions now about anti-black violence, black responses to the violence and what should be done, it may be time to lay that out a bit.  I assure you that there is a group of black people in America right now who are trying to think about what a world should look like that does not involve black bodies dying in the streets (an earlier group like this was called the AfroFuturists).  I assure you that there is a group of white, brown and every other color doing the same thing.  As educators and those interested in eliminating human violence, we need to provide these groups with as much information as possible.  If we don’t, then more events like Dallas might be the outcome.
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    Analog - The Anti-Blog

    By "Analog" I am referring to the adjective (i.e., relating to or using signals or information represented by a continuously variable physical quantity such as spatial position or voltage) and not the noun (i.e., a person or thing seen as comparable to another) for I wished to give voice to my thoughts which have come to me in a more or less continuous manner but which do so in a way that is not consistent in content or form. Thus you will see short stories, brief thoughts, haikus, low-kus and even a political cartoon or two. 

    Winner of Best Blog Post for 2014 by International Studies Association

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