Posted by When in doubt, look to Ta-Nehisi Coates to describe the situation in Baltimore so much better than I could:
When nonviolence is preached as an attempt to evade the repercussions of political brutality, it betrays itself. When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse. When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con. And none of this can mean that rioting or violence is “correct” or “wise,” any more than a forest fire can be “correct” or “wise.” Wisdom isn’t the point tonight. Disrespect is. In this case, disrespect for the hollow law and failed order that so regularly disrespects the rioters themselves.
I find myself wondering whether, even someone as titanic as Martin Luther King, Jr would be able to affect the situations we find ourselves in these days? Yes, Dr King faced a lot of hostility from the establishment. But, we have also outsourced the jobs previously done by communities to our police force.
From a previous Coates article:
At some point, Americans decided that the best answer to every social ill lay in the power of the criminal-justice system. Vexing social problems—homelessness, drug use, the inability to support one’s children, mental illness—are presently solved by sending in men and women who specialize in inspiring fear and ensuring compliance. Fear and compliance have their place, but it can’t be every place.
Where once reverends and preachers and families carried weight and force, now we have the state policing the void. One of the hallmarks of smaller, more close-knit societies is a power of shame, for better and worse. Get out of line, get punched down, and the community will shun and punish you. Your parents will punish you. What happens when those structures no longer exist.
I’m not so sure if the Reverend King would have been able to affect change, if he would have had such influence in today’s decentralized world. Statistically speaking, black folk still go to church in larger numbers but even those participation rates are struggling. Immigrant communities also tend to organize themselves around their houses of worship.
Connections to home and hearth, to lord and land, to god and the houses of worship used to serve to keep people in line. Sure there was still crime but in smaller communities around the world where the state does not reign supreme, we do not see the abdication of responsibility by families. Actually, we see families. Parents incentivized to hold their families in line, who know that their fates are tied to their children and their children to their parents. Groups of people have only themselves to turn to, and not the nameless, faceless, unaccountable state.
We no longer live in that world. And we’re paying the price for it.
