(Portions of this essay, “The
Meanings of Ferguson,” appeared on August 20, 2014 in Diary of a Heartland
Radical).
Harry Targ
In addressing violence, researchers,
educators, journalists and religious leaders have usually concentrated on its
most visible forms: murder and war. The central features of such violence
include physical assault and killing. In our own day terrorism has joined war
as the most popular common subject for study.
Over the years, peace educators have
developed intellectual tools to uncover more diverse meanings of violence,
their differences and their connections. Structural violence has been
distinguished from direct violence. Researchers continue to analyze direct
violence, physical assault and killing, but also study structural violence, the
various forms of human suffering that take more time; impose pain, sickness,
depression, and death on populations; and are perpetuated by leading
institutions and relationships in society. Structural violence includes economic inequality, low wages and poverty,
inadequate access to health care and education, and the psychological damage
that economic suffering causes. These
injustices, the concept of structural violence suggests, are embedded in
economic, social, and political institutions.
It is possible to disaggregate
further the structural violence that is embedded in institutions. Institutional
violence refers to unequal distribution
of power and influence in major societal institutions: political, criminal justice, and educational, for
example.
Finally, cultural violence refers to the images, symbols, and educational
materials that value some population groups over others. Culture refers to the
public consciousness of history, traditions, and popular narratives that
describe people. Stereotypes are short-hand representations of a culture.
In total then violence is direct,
structural, institutional, and cultural. These kinds of violence may occur
separately but in most cases are inextricably connected. It is this fourfold
conception of violence that is relevant to the crisis that unfolded in
Ferguson, Missouri.
Ferguson, Missouri 2014
The tragedy of Ferguson, Missouri
came to national attention because of direct violence. A Ferguson policeman
shot and killed an unarmed young African American male. In response to the
collective expression of community outrage that followed, the local police
initiated a multi-day barrage of tear gas, strong-arm arrests, and threatening
street protestors with military vehicles and loaded rifles. The images on
television screens nationwide were of a people under assault, parallel to
Israeli bombings in Gaza and United States targeted air strikes in Iraq. The
fear that young African American males in Ferguson have historically felt every
time they stepped into the streets of their city escalated since the killing of
Michael Brown.
Beyond the threat of direct violence
in Ferguson is structural violence, less visible but as important. Brookings
Institute researcher Elizabeth Kneebone (“Ferguson, Mo. Emblematic of Growing
Suburban Poverty,” brookings.edu,
August 15, 2014) reported that the community of Ferguson experienced a qualitative
economic decline over the decade before the shooting. The city’s unemployment
rate increased from 5 percent in 2000 to 13 percent by 2010. Earnings of community
members declined by one-third. One-fourth of the population was living in
poverty.
Kneebone indicated that poverty
rates have doubled in suburban neighborhoods surrounding the 100 largest cities
in the United States. “By 2008-2012, 38 percent of poor residents lived in the
neighborhoods with poverty rates of 20 percent or higher. For poor black
residents in those communities, the figure was 53 percent.” Of course, poverty
is highly related to declining schools, inadequate access to health care,
lessened prospects for jobs, and large-scale youth unemployment.
Institutional violence is reflected
in a 300-year history of slavery and racism. Professor Clarissa Hayward,
Washington University, said: “The St. Louis metropolitan area has been an
extreme example of racial segregation for 100 years.” She pointed out that St.
Louis geographically was at the nexus of the South, the Midwest, and the West
and added: “The practices and politics of St. Louis created the problems that
underlie the tension that boiled out in Ferguson this week.” (Puneet Kollipara,
“Wonkbook: The Social and Economic Story Behind the Unrest in Ferguson,” Wonkblog, The Washington Post, August 18, 2014).
In terms of the Ferguson political
system, two-thirds of the community is Black and the local government has been
almost all white. At the time of the shooting of Michael Brown, five of six
city council members were white, the Mayor was white, and six of seven school
board members were white. And fifty of 53 police officers were white.
Finally, cultural violence addresses
the issue of ideology, consciousness, images of the other, and additional ways
in which whites see African-Americans. Racist culture socializes the dominant
class and race to reflect its superiority. For example, Missouri Lt. Governor
Peter Kinder said shortly after the shooting: “That’s one of the great advances
of Anglo-American civilization, that we do not have politicized trials. We let
the justice system work it out.” The mayor of Ferguson declared that his
community was free of racism.
Since the killing of Michael Brown
in Ferguson, police and politicians organized a campaign to demonize the victim
of the police killing. The tall young man, an African-American, was a robber, a
drug consumer, and violence-prone. Also, the days of protest in Ferguson were
framed to privilege the peaceful, religious, mourning adults and to explain
night-time violence not as police violence but violence perpetrated by outside
agitators from New York, Chicago, and California. The fact that young African
Americans left their houses at their own risk could not, the frame implies,
engender outrage.
Milwaukee, Wisconsin 2016
And in August, 2016 Milwaukee, by
many measures the most segregated and racist big city in the United States,
experienced the police shooting of Sylville K. Smith followed by two days of
frustrated rebellion by some residents of the Sherman Park neighborhood. State
violence, poverty, and racial segregation have created a tinderbox of
frustration and anger in that city. According to a 2015 NPR report, the state
of Wisconsin invests more in prisons than education, incarcerating a higher
percentage of Black men than anywhere in the country. “…in Milwaukee County
more than half of all Black men in their 30s and 40s have served time.” In one
zip code alone 62 percent of Black men have been incarcerated for some time by
the age of 34. The prison population of the state has tripled since 1990.
NPR also quoted a study finding that
Milwaukee has the second highest black poverty rate in the country with an unemployment
rate four times higher than whites (Kenay Downs, “Why is Milwaukee So Bad for
Black People?” NPR, March 5, 2015). A Madison, Wisconsin group, the Young, Gifted, and Black Coalition, after
defining the idea of a “neighborhood,” found that 31 of Wisconsin’s 56 Black neighborhoods
are jails and an additional 21 neighborhoods are apartment complexes or section
8 housing or both. Prisons and poverty dominate the life of Black communities
(YGB, “31 of Wisconsin’s 56 Black Neighborhoods are Jails,”
Summing up the situation in Milwaukee, Alderman
Khalif Rainey said: “The Black people of Milwaukee are tired. They’re tired of
living under this oppression. This is their life.” (Tanzina Vega, “Milwaukee’s
Staggering Black-White Economic Divide,” CNN
Money, August 17, 2016, money cnn.com).
So from police violence--killing,
gassing, beating--to economic despair, to lack of political representation to
cultural rationales for state violence, the basic characteristics of American
society are uncovered. And once again, the victimization of people of color, as
well as workers, and women, suggest the following conclusions:
--the root cause of exploitation,
racism, and sexism is structural violence (capitalism).
--physical violence is used to crush
rebellion against class exploitation and racism.
--unrepresentative political
institutions are dominated by the wealthy and powerful.
--dominant cultural stereotypes and
specific narratives about society reinforce the economic system, the political
system, and justify the police violence in the St. Louis area, Milwaukee and
all around the United States.
Black Lives Matter
But between Ferguson and Milwaukee a
new social movement has emerged, Black Lives Matter, led by young women and men
representing over 60 organizations around the country. Recently they issued a
powerful programmatic statement “A Vision for Black Lives: Policy Demands for
Black Power, Freedom, and Justice, The Movement for Black Lives
(POLICY.M4BL.org). It presented six demands, each with detailed
recommendations:
-End the War on Black People
-Reparations
-Divest-Invest
-Economic Justice
-Community Control
-Political Power
These demands represent African Americans,
Women, Workers, and all oppressed peoples. They address direct violence—Stop
the Killing—and structural violence—Redistribute Wealth and Income, Political
Power, and Opportunity for Human Development for All. The struggles continue.
