Sunday, August 21, 2016
(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.
