I’ll settle for WOKE10 min read

In the last few months a number of articles have appeared in the right-wing press (where else?) claiming that ‘taking the knee’ is empty posturing, that the Black Lives Matter movement is led by avowed Marxists and, apparently worst of all, that it’s just ‘WOKE’ and therefore can be tolerated (just), ignored or better yet, booed.

It’s odd that such a cluster of articles with the same theme should appear so close together; as Ian Fleming wrote: “once is happenstance, twice is co-incidence and three time is enemy action.” Here are a few excerpts to give you a flavour.

Woke activists will tell you otherwise – but taking the knee will …

Taking the knee isn’t the best way of showing black lives matter

I’m a strong supporter of anti-racism both in the game and out, but by adopting this gesture, players risk alienating as many people as they persuade. Now that players have been taking the knee for some months now, it’s also worth asking: what has really changed?

Spectator, 21.6.21

The Marxist tag is presumably considered by the authors enough in itself to make it unnecessary to consider the rights and wrongs of taking the knee. So I guess I could just call the articles’ authors crypto-fascists (or just plain fascists) and end the piece here. But I’ve just bought a pictorial history of racial oppression in the US and it’s only a few weeks since players in one of our national football teams were vilified on social media, not for missing crucial penalties but for being black and missing crucial penalties. I guess they would rather not have missed the penalties but I somehow doubt they would rather be white; it’s increasingly embarassing.

I’ve attached below a few facts and pictures that might go some way to explain why making a public gesture against racial prejudice and intolerance is more important now than ever as black voter suppression legislation rolls back the years in the US and bigots and racists are empowered in the UK.

As a way in have a look at abridged lyrics of ‘American Skin’ by Bruce Springsteen (or better yet look at the YouTube clip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQMqWAiWPMs)

“American Skin (41 Shots)”

Forty-one shots and we’ll take that ride
Across the bloody river to the other side
Forty-one shots cut through the night
You’re kneeling over his body in the vestibule
Praying for his life

Is it a gun? Is it a knife?
Is it a wallet? This is your life
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
No secret, my friend
You can get killed just for living in your American skin

(Forty-one shots)
(Forty-one shots)
(Forty-one shots)
(Forty-one shots)

Forty-one shots, Lena gets her son ready for school
She says, “On these streets, Charles
You’ve got to understand the rules
If an officer stops you promise me you’ll always be polite
And that you’ll never ever run away
Promise Mama, you’ll keep your hands in sight”

Is it a gun? Is it a knife?
Is it a wallet? This is your life
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
No secret, my friend
You get killed just for living in your American skin
……………
Forty-one shots and we’ll take that ride
Across this bloody river to the other side
Forty-one shots I got my boots caked in this mud
We’re baptized in these waters (We’re baptized in these waters)
And in each other’s blood (And in each other’s blood)

Is it a gun? Is it a knife?
Is it a wallet? This is your life
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
It ain’t no secret (It ain’t no secret)
No secret my friend
You get killed just for living in
You get killed just for living in
You get killed just for living in your American skin

Forty-one shots (You get killed just for living)

The song is about the shooting of an unarmed 23-year-old immigrant named Amadou Diallo by four plainclothes officers: Sean Carroll, Richard Murphy, Edward McMellon, and Kenneth Boss. Carroll would later claim to have mistaken him for a rape suspect from one year earlier. In the early morning of February 4, 1999, Diallo was standing near his building after returning from a meal. At about 12:40 a.m., officers Edward McMellon, Sean Carroll, Kenneth Boss and Richard Murphy were looking for an alleged serial rapist in the Soundview section of the Bronx. While driving down Wheeler Avenue, the police officer stopped his unidentified car and interrogated Diallo, who was in front of his apartment. When they ordered Diallo to show his hands, he supposedly ran into the apartment and reached into his pocket to show his wallet. Soon afterwards the four officers fired 41 shots with semi-automatic pistols, fatally hitting Diallo 19 times. Eyewitness Sherrie Elliott stated that the police continued to shoot even though Diallo was already down.

The investigation found no weapons on or near Diallo; what he had pulled out of his jacket was a wallet. The internal NYPD investigation ruled that the officers had acted within policy, based on what a reasonable police officer would have done in the same circumstances. Nonetheless the Diallo shooting led to a review of police training policy and of the use of full metal jacket (FMJ) bullets.

On March 25, 1999, a Bronx grand jury indicted the four officers on charges of second-degree murder and reckless endangerment. On December 16, a court ordered a change of venue to Albany, New York because of pretrial publicity. On February 25, 2000, after three days of deliberation, a jury composed of four black and eight white jurors acquitted the officers of all charges.

Information fromWikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Amadou_Diallo)

Amadou’s shooting was not an aberration or a tragic but unavoidable accident: it was simply a continuation of the strong thread of oppression and violence running through American history from the slave trade on. In our modern and enlightened times there are many shootings in the US and around 1000 a year are by police officers. And race and colour often play a part. Black Americans account for less than 13 percent of the U.S. population, but are killed by police at more than twice the rate of White Americans. Hispanic Americans are also killed by police at a disproportionate rate.

Information from the Washington Post, September 6^th 2021.

During the Civil War in the US black Union troops if captured would be sold into slavery or simply executed or burnt alive. And, of course, black Union soldiers were paid around half the white rate though there is no evidence that they suffered at half the rate when injured or killed.

The post-Civil War Reconstuction aiming at biracial democracy was remorselessly dismantled in the southern states and the 1876 post-election trade-off of a Republican president in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the south led to increasing repression and racial violence. There were attacks by the KKK and other groups on black churches, schools and public officials and then, in 1883, the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1875 unconstitutional. Then as now the Supreme Court rolled back hard-won civil rights and then as now voter suppression accompanied discrimination in social, economic, political and legal areas of life. By 1910 to be black was to be disenfranchised in southern states.

 

 

And there was lynching. At least
2060 African Americans were lynched between 1882 and 1901.
In parts of the South public lynchings became popular events.
Photos were taken and turned into souvenir post-cards.

 

 

 

In Waco in 1916 a black man was publicly burned in front of a cheering crowd of several thousand whites including many children.

‘Freedom’, Phaidon Press, pp39

After the First World War returning black troops encountered a ‘wave of white racist vigilante violence and rioting. African Americans were publicly executed, sometimes burned alive, sometimes still wearing their uniforms.

Always the lesson that racist whites tried to instil in the peoples they enslaved and kept back was a simple one: “Don’t try to get up, we’ll just knock you down again.”

It’s a story of hundreds of years of oppression based on nothing more than some irrelevant difference, in this case colour, in others religion or gender. I’ve highlighted episodes from a largely American story – the English one is less violent, at least after the slave trade but won’t feel so different to many of us, whatever our colour. After all, the UK government deported some of its citizens because they clearly weren’t white and would have deported a whole lot more if the Windrush scandal hadn’t broken. Dawn raids were the order of the day along with a ‘hostile environment’ – just like Germany in the 30’s. And now we’re going to push refugee boats back where they came from. After all they’re not like us are they? Except…… I still remember Jo Cox’s maiden speech: “We have more in common than that which divides us.”

And we can believe that and act accordingly given the right leadership. Given the wrong leadership we can be blind to everything but division.

“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. ……….when they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.”

Stanley Milgram, 1974

There’s quite a lot at stake if we’re not allowed to be WOKE:

If we fail (to collaborate) the forces that contributed to Brexit, the envy and isolationism not just in the UK but around the world that spring from not sharing, of cultures driven by a narrow definition of wealth and a failure to divide it more fairly, both within nations and across national borders, will strengthen. If that were to happen, I would not be optimistic about the long-term outlook for our species.

Stephen Hawking

“And is the rift between Black and White? Or Poor and Rich? Stranger and Friend? Or between those whose fathers have died and those whose fathers are still alive? Or those with curly hair and those with straight? Those who call their dinner fufu and those who call it stew? Or, to ask it differently, what is the one true, crucial border?”

‘Go, Went, Gone’, Jenny Erpenbeck, pp211

So taking the knee is a pretty mild demonstration against the border between those who are held back, often suffer and sometimes die because of an accident of birth and those who thrive because of it; it might even be considered by some (Marxists no doubt) to be a relatively measured way to respond to, and protest about, hundreds of years of violence and injustice.