thenation--2020-06-19--It’s Time to Make Juneteenth a National Holiday

One reason we continue to repeat the sins of our past is that we haven ’ t fully acknowledged them .
Making Juneteenth a national holiday would help force that desperately needed reckoning with our past—a day to confront the legacy of slavery and white supremacy in the United States .
As recent months have shown , this is something the country needs now more than ever .
Juneteenth , a combination of the words June and nineteenth , is a celebration of the end of slavery .
It commemorates June 19 , 1865 , the day a Union general @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Also known as Emancipation Day , Freedom Day , and Black Independence Day , Juneteenth is celebrated by millions of African Americans each year .
It ’ s a celebration of liberation , of the end of slavery and opportunity for black people to not just be free but to finally live with self-determination and collective actualization after 246 years of bondage .
But the fact that Juneteenth is primarily celebrated by black Americans , and largely ignored by the rest of the country , is part of a larger problem .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ horrors of slavery .
Many would still prefer to just not think about it , or to picture it in benign terms , whitewashed of its true brutality .
Making Juneteenth a federal holiday would be far more than a symbolic gesture .
It would provide space for growth as a nation .
It ’ s a day for celebration , but also a day for education .
Slavery isn ’ t something that ’ s in our distant past ; we ’ re still living with its legacy every single day .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ privileged small elite of white wealthy landowners—affecting everything from public schools to property laws to our tax system .
This obviously affected black Americans , but it also affected poor white Americans too .
“ The slaveholders by encouraging the enmity of the poor laboring white man against the blacks , succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself , ” wrote Frederick Douglass .
“ Both were plundered , and by the same plunderers.
” Today , we live in a nation where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and economy continue to divide and conquer the American people by pitting us against one another on the basis of our identity .
People of color are both exploited and made to shoulder the blame for our own suffering .
When people of African descent are more likely to live in poverty , to be killed by the police , to be incarcerated , and to live in areas where housing has been neglected , that is seen by the majority of white people as our own fault .
For the same reason @ @ @ @ @ @ @ any government program must benefit an undeserving “ Other.
” This is why many working and middle-class white Americans support race-baiting politicians who want to cut taxes on the rich and defund public programs that serve millions of white people too .
Until white America understands the ways in which the exploitation of black people in this country has impacted all of us , none of us will be free .
We ’ ll continue to have underfunded schools , a broken health care system , crumbling infrastructure , and skyrocketing costs of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ll continue to be too divided to take on those who exploit all of us in one way or another .
Only by acknowledging its ugly past can a nation begin to heal itself .
Our government has never gone through the Truth and Reconciliation process that Germany , South Africa , and Rwanda undertook after genocide and state-sanctioned violence in those countries .
We have never apologized for slavery and Jim Crow , nor enacted policies to undo the harm .
We whitewash the brutality of slavery in our national dialogue , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
There are still history textbooks in schools across this country that portray slavery in idyllic terms .
Many American students graduate high school without ever learning the true horrors of American chattel slavery : the fact that slaves were viciously beaten and often lynched if they ever tried to escape ; that parents , children , and partners could be separated and never seen again ; that slaves weren ’ t allowed to read and write ; and the unique horrors that black women endured , including medical experimentation and rape .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ just one step , albeit a significant one , in a larger effort to root out the racism that ’ s been part of this country since the very beginning .
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed , each step forward has been met by a backlash , and the work of Reconstruction after the Civil War was ended by white supremacist terrorism .
The civil rights movement ushered in a Second Reconstruction , but once again , the old America retaliated against that victory with dog-whistle racism , mass incarceration , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all Americans need to thrive .
It ’ s time for us to complete the work of Reconstruction and give birth to a new America that belongs to all of us .
That ’ s why this week , my campaign released our # ReconstructionAgenda .
Our policy plan asks America to do three things : First , America must reconcile with our history by establishing a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission , modeled on the transitional justice approach in Germany , South Africa , and Rwanda .
The commission would work to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s history of racial discrimination and oppression , and establish national memorials and curriculum standards to remind Americans of our history—a goal that making Juneteenth a national holiday would help further .
The commission would also create an accounting of the harm caused by our government ’ s policies , and create a proposal for reparations to rectify those harms .
Second , America must get off our necks by shifting funding and resources from police departments , jails , and prisons to new agencies designed to protect public health .
We @ @ @ @ @ @ @ population by ending the school-to-prison pipeline , lengthy sentencing and mandatory minimums , cash bail , and the war on drugs .
And we can shift funding from police departments to health care , wellness , trauma centers , drug and alcohol treatment , peer support networks , and restorative justice programs .
We can have fewer cops—replacing them with crisis care units of violence interrupters , social workers , and mental health professionals .
Finally , America must let us breathe .
All of us will be better-off in an America that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ control our economy benefit from and exploit racism to keep people divided against each other .
If all of our lives were valued , we could have economic and social programs that take basic human needs off the private , corporate market and invest in every single person who calls this nation their home .
When we all do better , we all do better .
The bottom line is that we can ’ t move forward as a nation until we come to terms with our past .
Recognizing Juneteenth on a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ toward acknowledging the sins of our history , and toward building a genuine multiracial democracy where all of us are finally , truly free .

One reason we continue to repeat the sins of our past is that we haven’t fully acknowledged them.
Making Juneteenth a national holiday would help force that desperately needed reckoning with our past—a day to confront the legacy of slavery and white supremacy in the United States. As recent months have shown, this is something the country needs now more than ever.
Juneteenth, a combination of the words June and nineteenth, is a celebration of the end of slavery. It commemorates June 19, 1865, the day a Union general told slaves in Texas of their emancipation.
Also known as Emancipation Day, Freedom Day, and Black Independence Day, Juneteenth is celebrated by millions of African Americans each year. It’s a celebration of liberation, of the end of slavery and opportunity for black people to not just be free but to finally live with self-determination and collective actualization after 246 years of bondage.
But the fact that Juneteenth is primarily celebrated by black Americans, and largely ignored by the rest of the country, is part of a larger problem. America has never truly reckoned with the horrors of slavery. Many would still prefer to just not think about it, or to picture it in benign terms, whitewashed of its true brutality.
Making Juneteenth a federal holiday would be far more than a symbolic gesture. It would provide space for growth as a nation. It’s a day for celebration, but also a day for education.
Slavery isn’t something that’s in our distant past; we’re still living with its legacy every single day. Slavery created institutions designed to protect a privileged small elite of white wealthy landowners—affecting everything from public schools to property laws to our tax system. This obviously affected black Americans, but it also affected poor white Americans too.
“The slaveholders by encouraging the enmity of the poor laboring white man against the blacks, succeeded in making the said white man almost as much a slave as the black slave himself,” wrote Frederick Douglass. “Both were plundered, and by the same plunderers.”
Today, we live in a nation where people at the top of our democracy and economy continue to divide and conquer the American people by pitting us against one another on the basis of our identity. People of color are both exploited and made to shoulder the blame for our own suffering. When people of African descent are more likely to live in poverty, to be killed by the police, to be incarcerated, and to live in areas where housing has been neglected, that is seen by the majority of white people as our own fault.
For the same reason, too many white Americans feel that any government program must benefit an undeserving “Other.” This is why many working and middle-class white Americans support race-baiting politicians who want to cut taxes on the rich and defund public programs that serve millions of white people too.
Until white America understands the ways in which the exploitation of black people in this country has impacted all of us, none of us will be free. We’ll continue to have underfunded schools, a broken health care system, crumbling infrastructure, and skyrocketing costs of child care and education. We’ll continue to be too divided to take on those who exploit all of us in one way or another.
Only by acknowledging its ugly past can a nation begin to heal itself. Our government has never gone through the Truth and Reconciliation process that Germany, South Africa, and Rwanda undertook after genocide and state-sanctioned violence in those countries. We have never apologized for slavery and Jim Crow, nor enacted policies to undo the harm. We whitewash the brutality of slavery in our national dialogue, and most egregiously in our school curriculum. There are still history textbooks in schools across this country that portray slavery in idyllic terms.
Many American students graduate high school without ever learning the true horrors of American chattel slavery: the fact that slaves were viciously beaten and often lynched if they ever tried to escape; that parents, children, and partners could be separated and never seen again; that slaves weren’t allowed to read and write; and the unique horrors that black women endured, including medical experimentation and rape.
Making Juneteenth a national holiday would be just one step, albeit a significant one, in a larger effort to root out the racism that’s been part of this country since the very beginning.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. observed, each step forward has been met by a backlash, and the work of Reconstruction after the Civil War was ended by white supremacist terrorism. The civil rights movement ushered in a Second Reconstruction, but once again, the old America retaliated against that victory with dog-whistle racism, mass incarceration, and the gutting of public programs that all Americans need to thrive.
It’s time for us to complete the work of Reconstruction and give birth to a new America that belongs to all of us. That’s why this week, my campaign released our #ReconstructionAgenda. Our policy plan asks America to do three things:
First, America must reconcile with our history by establishing a National Truth and Reconciliation Commission, modeled on the transitional justice approach in Germany, South Africa, and Rwanda. The commission would work to foster a national conversation on our government’s history of racial discrimination and oppression, and establish national memorials and curriculum standards to remind Americans of our history—a goal that making Juneteenth a national holiday would help further. The commission would also create an accounting of the harm caused by our government’s policies, and create a proposal for reparations to rectify those harms.
Second, America must get off our necks by shifting funding and resources from police departments, jails, and prisons to new agencies designed to protect public health. We can dramatically reduce our jail and prison population by ending the school-to-prison pipeline, lengthy sentencing and mandatory minimums, cash bail, and the war on drugs. And we can shift funding from police departments to health care, wellness, trauma centers, drug and alcohol treatment, peer support networks, and restorative justice programs. We can have fewer cops—replacing them with crisis care units of violence interrupters, social workers, and mental health professionals.
Finally, America must let us breathe. All of us will be better-off in an America that values black lives. The people who control our economy benefit from and exploit racism to keep people divided against each other. If all of our lives were valued, we could have economic and social programs that take basic human needs off the private, corporate market and invest in every single person who calls this nation their home. When we all do better, we all do better.
The bottom line is that we can’t move forward as a nation until we come to terms with our past. Recognizing Juneteenth on a federal level would be a major step toward acknowledging the sins of our history, and toward building a genuine multiracial democracy where all of us are finally, truly free.


thenation--2020-06-19--The End of the American Century

The End of the American Century

Let me rant for a moment .
I don ’ t do it often , maybe ever .
I ’ m not Donald Trump .
Though I ’ m only two years older than him , I don ’ t even know how to tweet and that tells you everything you really need to know about Tom Engelhardt in a world clearly passing me by .
Still , after years in which America ’ s streets were essentially empty , they ’ ve suddenly filled , day after day , with youthful protesters , bringing back a version of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that ’ s a hopeful ( if also , given Covid-19 , scary ) thing , even if I ’ m an old man in isolation in this never-ending pandemic moment of ours .
In such isolation , no wonder I have the urge to rant .
Our present American world , after all , was both deeply unimaginable—before 2016 , no one could have conjured up President Donald Trump as anything but a joke—and yet , in some sense , all too imaginable .
Think of it this way : the president @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Trump Tower escalator to denounce Mexican “ rapists ” and hype the “ great , great wall ” he would build , the man who , in his election campaign , promised to put a “ big , fat , beautiful wall ” across our southern border to keep out immigrants ( “ invaders !
” ) —my grandpa , by the way , was just such an invader—has , after nearly three and a half years , succeeded only in getting a grotesquely small wall built around the White House ; in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the “ people ’ s house ” into a micro–Green Zone in a Washington that , as it filled with National Guard troops and unidentified but militarized police types , was transformed into a Trumpian version of occupied Baghdad .
Then he locked himself inside ( except for that one block walk to a church through streets forcibly emptied of protesters ) .
All in all , a single redolent phrase from our recent past comes to mind : mission accomplished !
From the second the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ planet have been remarkably inconceivable and yet strangely predictable .
Can you even remember that distant moment , almost three decades ago , when a stunned Washington political establishment ( since its members had never imagined a world without the other Cold War superpower ) suddenly found themselves alone on Planet Earth , freed to do their damnedest in a world lacking enemies of any sort ?
The globe seemed to be there for the taking , lock , stock , and barrel .
Their promised post–Cold War “ peace dividend , ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ military to the teeth , expanding the country ’ s “ intelligence ” agencies until there were ( count ‘ em ! )
17 of them , bolstering an already vast national security state , and dispatching this country ’ s generals to fight “ forever wars ” that would unsettle the planet , while conquering nothing at all .
The folly of this in such a moment on such a planet should have been obvious .
And , in fact , it was .
In early 2003 , facing only one small @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ axis of evil , ” President George W. Bush decided to order the invasion of Saddam Hussein ’ s Iraq .
Sensing what was coming , millions of people poured into the streets of cities worldwide to tell him the obvious : don ’ t do it !
( “ How did USA ’ s oil get under Iraq ’ s sand ?
” a typical protest sign of that moment read . )
Of those millions , however , not one dreamed that , 13 years later , as a result @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them , this country , or at least its Electoral College , would put in the White House a president who would essentially launch the invasion of America .
What else do you need to know about our mad moment than that the president of the land that had , for so long , fought a “ war on terror ” would call the all-American protesters once again turning out in the streets of hundreds of cities and towns in vast numbers “ terrorists ” ?
He would then label a 75-year-old white @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Buffalo , N.Y. , and left bleeding on the ground as they walked away , an “ ANTIFA provocateur.
” ( He ’ s still in the hospital . )
In this fashion , with the police armed to the teeth with weaponry and equipment off the battlefields of America ’ s forever wars and George Floyd literally breathless thanks to one of those policemen , the war on terror would come home big time .
Think of it this way : We Americans , the greatest power in history , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the last century ended , are now living in a disease-ridden parody version of occupied Iraq , and my own generation is officially responsible .
Outside that Green Zone in Washington , an age , a system , even a planet as we ’ ve known it may all be ending and that shouldn ’ t be taken in without emotion .
So many things aren ’ t obvious when they should be .
Still , to give myself a tad of credit , in the years after the invasion of Iraq , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ single superpower world of ours was some kind of sham .
In October 2012 , for instance , I suggested that : I added , however , that “ the end of the Cold War , which put an end…to several centuries of imperial or great power competition… left the sole ‘ victor , ’ it now seems clear , heading toward the exits wreathed in self-congratulation.
” Now , those exits are truly in sight and the self-congratulation that once filled Washington has been ceded to the walled-in occupant of the Oval @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and disarray .
With a regime that not only has autocratic tendencies but also a remarkable urge to take the planet down environmentally ( and possibly via nuclear arms as well ) , it ’ s easier to see just how disastrous the post-1991 “ sole superpower ’ s ” decisions really were .
Hopeful as the grit and determination of those Black Lives Matter protesters may be in the face of police violence and repression , not to speak of the nastiest virus in memory , we ’ re also at what @ @ @ @ @ @ @ when worlds do end and it didn ’ t have to be this way .
After all , in a cocoon of seemingly ultimate triumphalism , those who were running the post-1991 American global system did anything—to steal a word from journalist Thomas Friedman ’ s 2005 book The World Is Flat—but flatten the world they inherited ( as in creating a more level playing field of any sort ) .
In fact , the American powers-that-be promptly put their energy into creating the least level playing field imaginable .
In it , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , would invest more money in its military than the next 10 powers combined and , by 2017 , three Americans would have more wealth than the bottom half of this society .
Meanwhile , the wealth of 162 global billionaires would equal that of half of humanity .
It was a world in which , once the coronavirus pandemic struck causing almost unspeakable economic disaster , those billionaires would once again make a rather literal killing—another half-trillion dollars-plus .
So Friedman was right , but only if by “ flat ” he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American Humvee .
Here , in fact , was the strange reality of that moment of ultimate triumph in 1991 : the American political ruling class , the people who had seemingly won it all , would prove remarkably brain-dead in a way few grasped then or we wouldn ’ t be in Donald Trump ’ s America today .
Back then , the one thing they couldn ’ t imagine in a world without the Soviet Union was an all-American world of flatness , peace , and democracy .
The only thing @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the militarized style of dominance that had long characterized the American Century , to use the famous phrase Life and Time publisher Henry Luce first put into the language in 1941 .
Those managing the imperial system that had dotted the planet with military garrisons in a historically unprecedented fashion , while creating a global economy centered on the accumulation of staggering wealth and power , had no idea that the United States would prove to be the second superpower victim of the end of the Cold War .
Saying Goodbye to the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ launch that rant of mine—and note that there will be no more section breaks or breathing room .
After all , that ’ s the nature of a rant in an era in which the man in the Oval Office is quite capable of running the country ( into the ground ) while tweeting or retweeting 200 times in a single day .
Hey , what the hell else is there to do as the president of these disunited states , except tweet , watch Fox News , and disunite them further ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ more or less 75 years after it began , the American Century is over .
So long !
Au revoir !
Arrivederci !
Zaijian !
Having been born on July 20 , 1944 , the day of the failed officers ’ plot against Adolf Hitler ( and not much else in history ) , I ’ ve lived through just about all of that “ century ” and I ’ m still here .
And yet think of this as an autopsy because the body ( of my hopes and those of my @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a skilled medical examiner should be able to discover just what it died of .
Who knew what I really hoped for back then ?
I mean , you ’ re talking to a guy who can still remember reading quite a range of books , but not what was in many of them .
So who knows , half a century or so ago , what exactly was in me ?
After all , I was then the equivalent of a book that I carried around endlessly but never stopped to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about the late 1960s and early 1970s , the years when , for the first time in my life , however briefly , I suddenly felt strangely at home ( and also movingly out of place ) in this American world of ours .
In the late 1960s , the radical politics of that moment blew me out of graduate school where , of all things , I was studying to be a China scholar at Harvard University .
Yes , the Ming and Ching dynasties ( rather than the Trump dynasty ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ course , they didn ’ t .
Those were the years when I suddenly became deeply aware that the American world I ’ d been brought up to admire ( even if , in my childhood , my parents seemed to be having an awfully tough time in it ) was deeply awry .
And it tells you something about this white boy that it wasn ’ t the civil rights movement that truly brought that home to me ( though it should have been , of course ) but an all-American conflict @ @ @ @ @ @ @ away .
Called the Vietnam War , it was a brutal American folly in the divided Vietnam , Laos , and Cambodia in which millions would die and it would unsettle my mind , my life , my being .
Somehow , in those years , as I ’ ve also written elsewhere , it came to seem as if Vietnamese were being killed right outside my window in peaceful Cambridge , Mass .
While I would never end up in the US military—my draft files were destroyed at the time by an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Daddy Warbucks—I would be mobilized into an anti-military , anti-war movement filled in a fashion unimaginable today with dissenting soldiers , many of whom had fought in Vietnam .
I was swept up by the idea of a better world that I began to imagine might actually come to pass .
How naive I was !
Had you told me at that moment that everything we then dreamt of beyond the ending of that terrible set of American wars would essentially go down in flames ; that the United States would , in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ two endless conflicts in another Asian land , Afghanistan—one in a kind of open secrecy , the second ( now nearly two decades old ) in plain sight even as it turns into a pandemic war ; that , in this century , my country would invade not only Afghanistan but Iraq and fight a war on “ terror ” across much of what once would have been known as the Third World ; and that all of this would happen without—except for one brief moment—anyone out in the streets protesting or paying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ eternally “ thank ” the non-conscripted soldiers fighting in those wars ) , I would have thought you were nuts .
If you had told me that the president of the United States , a man of my generation , would be a narcissistic , autocratic-leaning , utterly self-obsessed version of whatever anyone who mattered to him wanted him to be , a man ready , even eager , to call troops from those distant wars onto American streets to put down a sudden surge of protest amid a viral pandemic and an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , only to find himself opposed by the very generals , each whiter than the next , who fought the disastrous forever wars that paved his way to power ( and that they would be greeted as saviors in the liberal media ) , I would have thought you mad as a hatter .
And here ’ s the saddest thing of all from my perspective : If those young people now in the streets can ’ t perform genuine miracles—and not just when it comes to racism—if they can ’ t sooner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the planet-destroying side of the American ruling class , then forget about it .
This world will be heading into a heat hell .
That my generation , whether in the form of Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell , would be responsible for turning imperial America into an autocratic-leaning , collapsing semi-democracy , and a first-class world annihilator , I would have found hard to imagine .
If you had told me that , half a century into the future , the world ’ s fate would rest on a presidential election between @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a dead man ( that , for all we know , may not prove to be an election at all ) , I would have dismissed you out of hand .
And yet that , it seems , is the pandemic legacy of my generation for which we should all be ashamed , even as we watch the young , driven by the insanity and inanity of it all , turning out in our diseased streets to protest a country coming apart at the seams .
Think of Donald Trump as the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ humanity .
Yes , they were as shocked and horrified as so many of the rest of us when he won the 2016 election , but they created the perfect America for him to do so .
He couldn ’ t have won if they hadn ’ t both built a world that was desperately unflat and been so destructive in the process of unflattening it .
He couldn ’ t have won if they hadn ’ t launched almost 20 years of disastrous , never-ending wars across parts of Asia , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Africa under the heading of the “ War on Terror , ” conflicts that did indeed bring terror to vast populations and spawn a sea of uprooted refugees who helped spark a new right-wing “ populism ” across Europe and here .
( Remember Donald Trump ’ s Muslim ban ! )
It should have been obvious that , in some fashion , those wars and their failed generals would all come home .
Donald Trump couldn ’ t have entered the White House if the Republicans , once the party of the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ party of billionaires and oil magnates .
Donald Trump couldn ’ t have entered the White House if George W. Bush hadn ’ t insisted on invading Iraq .
Donald Trump couldn ’ t have happened if Barack Obama , a president who understood climate change as well as anyone imaginable , hadn ’ t been willing to look the other way while the fracking revolution took place and this country briefly became Saudi America .
The oceans are already hotter than they ’ ve ever been ; storms are intensifying , sea @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; the Arctic is burning in an unprecedented fashion , as wildfires grow wilder ; and a genuine pyromaniac is in the White House .
The American century is ending decisively with a first-class declinist inside Washington ’ s Green Zone .
My small suggestion : Don ’ t hold your breath for the Chinese century either .
I doubt it ’ s coming .
Whatever happens tomorrow or next week , or next month , or next year , despite the rare gleam of hope those young protesters offer , we are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( as Donald Trump has only accentuated ) an increasingly disposable planet .
So here ’ s something I wonder about : 30 or 40 years from now , when I ’ m long gone , will there be a modern Edward Gibbon around to write a multi-volume classic , The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire ?
And will she emerge from that movement of young people now in the streets denouncing racism ?
And will that movement be transformed somehow into a planetary one of people of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of our world and save a planet worth saving by forever burying all those fossil fuels and the criminal companies that produce them , or will the dreams of my generation have turned into the nightmare of all times ?
Will this not just be the end of that foreshortened American century , but—in the deepest sense of the word—the age of disappointment ?
And now , for that rant of mine…

EDITOR’S NOTE: This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To stay on top of important articles like these, sign up to receive the latest updates from TomDispatch.
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Let me rant for a moment. I don’t do it often, maybe ever. I’m not Donald Trump. Though I’m only two years older than him, I don’t even know how to tweet and that tells you everything you really need to know about Tom Engelhardt in a world clearly passing me by. Still, after years in which America’s streets were essentially empty, they’ve suddenly filled, day after day, with youthful protesters, bringing back a version of a moment I remember from my youth and that’s a hopeful (if also, given Covid-19, scary) thing, even if I’m an old man in isolation in this never-ending pandemic moment of ours.
In such isolation, no wonder I have the urge to rant. Our present American world, after all, was both deeply unimaginable—before 2016, no one could have conjured up President Donald Trump as anything but a joke—and yet, in some sense, all too imaginable. Think of it this way: the president who launched his candidacy by descending a Trump Tower escalator to denounce Mexican “rapists” and hype the “great, great wall” he would build, the man who, in his election campaign, promised to put a “big, fat, beautiful wall” across our southern border to keep out immigrants (“invaders!”)—my grandpa, by the way, was just such an invader—has, after nearly three and a half years, succeeded only in getting a grotesquely small wall built around the White House; in other words, he’s turned the “people’s house” into a micro–Green Zone in a Washington that, as it filled with National Guard troops and unidentified but militarized police types, was transformed into a Trumpian version of occupied Baghdad. Then he locked himself inside (except for that one block walk to a church through streets forcibly emptied of protesters). All in all, a single redolent phrase from our recent past comes to mind: mission accomplished! Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
From the second the Soviet Union imploded in 1991 to the spread of Covid-19, developments on this planet have been remarkably inconceivable and yet strangely predictable. Can you even remember that distant moment, almost three decades ago, when a stunned Washington political establishment (since its members had never imagined a world without the other Cold War superpower) suddenly found themselves alone on Planet Earth, freed to do their damnedest in a world lacking enemies of any sort? The globe seemed to be there for the taking, lock, stock, and barrel.
Their promised post–Cold War “peace dividend,” however, would involve arming the US military to the teeth, expanding the country’s “intelligence” agencies until there were (count ‘em!) 17 of them, bolstering an already vast national security state, and dispatching this country’s generals to fight “forever wars” that would unsettle the planet, while conquering nothing at all. The folly of this in such a moment on such a planet should have been obvious. And, in fact, it was. In early 2003, facing only one small terrorist group and a completely concocted three-nation “axis of evil,” President George W. Bush decided to order the invasion of Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Sensing what was coming, millions of people poured into the streets of cities worldwide to tell him the obvious: don’t do it! (“How did USA’s oil get under Iraq’s sand?” a typical protest sign of that moment read.) Of those millions, however, not one dreamed that, 13 years later, as a result of Bush’s decision to ignore them, this country, or at least its Electoral College, would put in the White House a president who would essentially launch the invasion of America.
What else do you need to know about our mad moment than that the president of the land that had, for so long, fought a “war on terror” would call the all-American protesters once again turning out in the streets of hundreds of cities and towns in vast numbers “terrorists”? He would then label a 75-year-old white man, shoved over by two cops in Buffalo, N.Y., and left bleeding on the ground as they walked away, an “ANTIFA provocateur.” (He’s still in the hospital.) In this fashion, with the police armed to the teeth with weaponry and equipment off the battlefields of America’s forever wars and George Floyd literally breathless thanks to one of those policemen, the war on terror would come home big time.
Think of it this way: We Americans, the greatest power in history, the ultimate unchallenged victors on this planet as the last century ended, are now living in a disease-ridden parody version of occupied Iraq, and my own generation is officially responsible.
A Flattened Planet
Outside that Green Zone in Washington, an age, a system, even a planet as we’ve known it may all be ending and that shouldn’t be taken in without emotion. So many things aren’t obvious when they should be. Still, to give myself a tad of credit, in the years after the invasion of Iraq, I did at least sense that this single superpower world of ours was some kind of sham. In October 2012, for instance, I suggested that: Current Issue View our current issue
one thing seems obvious: a superpower military with unparalleled capabilities for one-way destruction no longer has the more basic ability to impose its will anywhere on the planet. Quite the opposite, US military power has been remarkably discredited globally by the most pitiful of forces.… Given the lack of enemies—a few thousand jihadis, a small set of minority insurgencies, a couple of feeble regional powers—why this is so, what exactly the force is that prevents Washington’s success, remains mysterious.
I added, however, that “the end of the Cold War, which put an end…to several centuries of imperial or great power competition… left the sole ‘victor,’ it now seems clear, heading toward the exits wreathed in self-congratulation.”
Now, those exits are truly in sight and the self-congratulation that once filled Washington has been ceded to the walled-in occupant of the Oval Office in a country visibly in dismay and disarray. With a regime that not only has autocratic tendencies but also a remarkable urge to take the planet down environmentally (and possibly via nuclear arms as well), it’s easier to see just how disastrous the post-1991 “sole superpower’s” decisions really were.
Hopeful as the grit and determination of those Black Lives Matter protesters may be in the face of police violence and repression, not to speak of the nastiest virus in memory, we’re also at what looks increasingly like one of those moments when worlds do end and it didn’t have to be this way.
After all, in a cocoon of seemingly ultimate triumphalism, those who were running the post-1991 American global system did anything—to steal a word from journalist Thomas Friedman’s 2005 book The World Is Flat—but flatten the world they inherited (as in creating a more level playing field of any sort). In fact, the American powers-that-be promptly put their energy into creating the least level playing field imaginable. In it, a single country, the United States, would invest more money in its military than the next 10 powers combined and, by 2017, three Americans would have more wealth than the bottom half of this society. Meanwhile, the wealth of 162 global billionaires would equal that of half of humanity. It was a world in which, once the coronavirus pandemic struck causing almost unspeakable economic disaster, those billionaires would once again make a rather literal killing—another half-trillion dollars-plus.
So Friedman was right, but only if by “flat” he meant the four flat tires on the American Humvee.
Here, in fact, was the strange reality of that moment of ultimate triumph in 1991: the American political ruling class, the people who had seemingly won it all, would prove remarkably brain-dead in a way few grasped then or we wouldn’t be in Donald Trump’s America today. Back then, the one thing they couldn’t imagine in a world without the Soviet Union was an all-American world of flatness, peace, and democracy.
The only thing they could imagine was another version of the militarized style of dominance that had long characterized the American Century, to use the famous phrase Life and Time publisher Henry Luce first put into the language in 1941. Those managing the imperial system that had dotted the planet with military garrisons in a historically unprecedented fashion, while creating a global economy centered on the accumulation of staggering wealth and power, had no idea that the United States would prove to be the second superpower victim of the end of the Cold War.
Saying Goodbye to the American Century
Now, let me truly launch that rant of mine—and note that there will be no more section breaks or breathing room. After all, that’s the nature of a rant in an era in which the man in the Oval Office is quite capable of running the country (into the ground) while tweeting or retweeting 200 times in a single day. Hey, what the hell else is there to do as the president of these disunited states, except tweet, watch Fox News, and disunite them further?
So take my word for it, more or less 75 years after it began, the American Century is over. So long! Au revoir! Arrivederci! Zaijian!
Having been born on July 20, 1944, the day of the failed officers’ plot against Adolf Hitler (and not much else in history), I’ve lived through just about all of that “century” and I’m still here. And yet think of this as an autopsy because the body (of my hopes and those of my generation) now lies in the morgue and a skilled medical examiner should be able to discover just what it died of.
Who knew what I really hoped for back then? I mean, you’re talking to a guy who can still remember reading quite a range of books, but not what was in many of them. So who knows, half a century or so ago, what exactly was in me? After all, I was then the equivalent of a book that I carried around endlessly but never stopped to fully read.
We’re talking about the late 1960s and early 1970s, the years when, for the first time in my life, however briefly, I suddenly felt strangely at home (and also movingly out of place) in this American world of ours. In the late 1960s, the radical politics of that moment blew me out of graduate school where, of all things, I was studying to be a China scholar at Harvard University. Yes, the Ming and Ching dynasties (rather than the Trump dynasty) then had my attention… until, of course, they didn’t. Those were the years when I suddenly became deeply aware that the American world I’d been brought up to admire (even if, in my childhood, my parents seemed to be having an awfully tough time in it) was deeply awry. And it tells you something about this white boy that it wasn’t the civil rights movement that truly brought that home to me (though it should have been, of course) but an all-American conflict and slaughter taking place thousands of miles away.
Called the Vietnam War, it was a brutal American folly in the divided Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia in which millions would die and it would unsettle my mind, my life, my being. Somehow, in those years, as I’ve also written elsewhere, it came to seem as if Vietnamese were being killed right outside my window in peaceful Cambridge, Mass. While I would never end up in the US military—my draft files were destroyed at the time by an activist group that called itself Women Against Daddy Warbucks—I would be mobilized into an anti-military, anti-war movement filled in a fashion unimaginable today with dissenting soldiers, many of whom had fought in Vietnam.
I was swept up by the idea of a better world that I began to imagine might actually come to pass. How naive I was!
Had you told me at that moment that everything we then dreamt of beyond the ending of that terrible set of American wars would essentially go down in flames; that the United States would, in the ensuing nearly half century, fight two endless conflicts in another Asian land, Afghanistan—one in a kind of open secrecy, the second (now nearly two decades old) in plain sight even as it turns into a pandemic war; that, in this century, my country would invade not only Afghanistan but Iraq and fight a war on “terror” across much of what once would have been known as the Third World; and that all of this would happen without—except for one brief moment—anyone out in the streets protesting or paying much attention at all (except to eternally “thank” the non-conscripted soldiers fighting in those wars), I would have thought you were nuts.
If you had told me that the president of the United States, a man of my generation, would be a narcissistic, autocratic-leaning, utterly self-obsessed version of whatever anyone who mattered to him wanted him to be, a man ready, even eager, to call troops from those distant wars onto American streets to put down a sudden surge of protest amid a viral pandemic and an economic collapse similar to the Great Depression, only to find himself opposed by the very generals, each whiter than the next, who fought the disastrous forever wars that paved his way to power (and that they would be greeted as saviors in the liberal media), I would have thought you mad as a hatter.
And here’s the saddest thing of all from my perspective: If those young people now in the streets can’t perform genuine miracles—and not just when it comes to racism—if they can’t sooner or later turn their mobilized attention to the planet-destroying side of the American ruling class, then forget about it. This world will be heading into a heat hell.
That my generation, whether in the form of Donald Trump or Mitch McConnell, would be responsible for turning imperial America into an autocratic-leaning, collapsing semi-democracy, and a first-class world annihilator, I would have found hard to imagine. If you had told me that, half a century into the future, the world’s fate would rest on a presidential election between a genuine madman and something close to a dead man (that, for all we know, may not prove to be an election at all), I would have dismissed you out of hand.
And yet that, it seems, is the pandemic legacy of my generation for which we should all be ashamed, even as we watch the young, driven by the insanity and inanity of it all, turning out in our diseased streets to protest a country coming apart at the seams.
Think of Donald Trump as the American imperial establishment’s ultimate gift to humanity. Yes, they were as shocked and horrified as so many of the rest of us when he won the 2016 election, but they created the perfect America for him to do so. He couldn’t have won if they hadn’t both built a world that was desperately unflat and been so destructive in the process of unflattening it. He couldn’t have won if they hadn’t launched almost 20 years of disastrous, never-ending wars across parts of Asia, the Greater Middle East, and much of Africa under the heading of the “War on Terror,” conflicts that did indeed bring terror to vast populations and spawn a sea of uprooted refugees who helped spark a new right-wing “populism” across Europe and here. (Remember Donald Trump’s Muslim ban!)
It should have been obvious that, in some fashion, those wars and their failed generals would all come home.
Donald Trump couldn’t have entered the White House if the Republicans, once the party of the environment, hadn’t become the party of billionaires and oil magnates. Donald Trump couldn’t have entered the White House if George W. Bush hadn’t insisted on invading Iraq. Donald Trump couldn’t have happened if Barack Obama, a president who understood climate change as well as anyone imaginable, hadn’t been willing to look the other way while the fracking revolution took place and this country briefly became Saudi America. The oceans are already hotter than they’ve ever been; storms are intensifying, sea levels rising, floods becoming more devastating; the Arctic is burning in an unprecedented fashion, as wildfires grow wilder; and a genuine pyromaniac is in the White House.
The American century is ending decisively with a first-class declinist inside Washington’s Green Zone. My small suggestion: Don’t hold your breath for the Chinese century either. I doubt it’s coming.
Whatever happens tomorrow or next week, or next month, or next year, despite the rare gleam of hope those young protesters offer, we are deep in the age of disappointment on (as Donald Trump has only accentuated) an increasingly disposable planet.
So here’s something I wonder about: 30 or 40 years from now, when I’m long gone, will there be a modern Edward Gibbon around to write a multi-volume classic, The History of the Decline and Fall of the American Empire? And will she emerge from that movement of young people now in the streets denouncing racism? And will that movement be transformed somehow into a planetary one of people of every age determined to trump the Trumps of our world and save a planet worth saving by forever burying all those fossil fuels and the criminal companies that produce them, or will the dreams of my generation have turned into the nightmare of all times? Will this not just be the end of that foreshortened American century, but—in the deepest sense of the word—the age of disappointment?
And now, for that rant of mine…


thenation--2020-06-22--Go Ahead and Destroy That Racist Statue (and Then the System Too)

On June 9 , after a week and a half of large , daily Black Lives Matter protests in New York City that began as part of a national uprising in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis , Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was taking action : He would name a street in each of the five boroughs after Black Lives Matter and paint the name of the movement on those roads .
The decision came days after Washington , D.C. , Mayor Muriel Bowser received widespread attention for turning a section of 16th @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into Black Lives Matter Plaza , with the phrase painted in 50-foot yellow letters on the pavement .
Meanwhile , a short way down the National Mall , Democratic members of Congress , most of them white , showed up at the Capitol on June 8 wearing kente stoles .
They knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the same amount of time that Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd ’ s neck—before entering their chambers to introduce the Justice in Policing Act of 2020 .
Politicians around the country are performing .
They @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that they ’ re working on the problem of white supremacy in ways big and small .
They ’ re using gestures to attempt to broadcast a message—but one that is ultimately hollow .
As Shannon Keating put it recently in BuzzFeed News , it amounts to “ performative absurdity from powerful people who ’ ve long avoided real accountability for causing or excusing Black suffering.
” Mayor de Blasio ’ s announcement came as he was facing enormous criticism , including from his own staffers , for his refusal to acknowledge the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among them his daughter ) and take action against the department .
Mayor Bowser has been accused of using the Black Lives Matter street mural as a cover for her budget proposal that increases the money going to the police while decreasing funding for community-centered programs .
And the Justice in Policing Act has been critiqued as a superficial , potentially even harmful attempt at reform rather than a reconsideration of a broken system .
Instead of doing the heavy lifting of conceiving real change , Democrats are virtue-signaling and pandering to their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ powerful pictures .
They ’ re trying to use gestures and symbols as a distraction from the issues at hand .
And in a certain way , it ’ s working : The largely white media establishment has responded with a flurry of positive stories about the proliferation of Black Lives Matter murals , with some even praising their aesthetic qualities .
Black activists and writers have been much more skeptical .
As the writer Ijeoma Oluo said in a recent interview with Vox , “ We are not dying because of lack @ @ @ @ @ @ @ question who benefits from that.
” Representation does have value , especially for members of marginalized communities who are barraged daily with the symbols and standards of white supremacy .
But all too often it ’ s wielded by those in power as a dangling carrot .
I learned this lesson in part from studying and reporting on the art world , where museums have spent decades using representation as a substitute—a “ Band-Aid , ” as one activist I interviewed called it—for structural change .
In their exhibitions , major museums have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ giving retrospectives to groundbreaking black artists like Kerry James Marshall and organizing citywide initiatives to showcase Latin American and Latinx art .
But in their governance , their staff , and their collections , art museums remain oppressively white spaces .
The people leading those institutions—who have spent the past two weeks posting generic , watery statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter on Instagram and being roundly criticized for it—remind me of the politicians stunting with symbolic murals and fabrics .
Both use big , visible gestures of “ diversity ” as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ fact that they haven ’ t done much to rethink or restructure the system of white supremacy at all .
“ We have a reliance in this country on asymmetrical displays that allow us to dwell in , and never penetrate beyond , the level of the cultural , ” Doreen St. Félix wrote in a piece on the kente stole debacle in The New Yorker .
Optics are not politics .
At the same time that our leaders continue to flail , we are witnessing , in real time , a hugely @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the cultural over the kinds of images , symbols , and aesthetic choices that represent us as a nation .
And stunningly , after centuries of frustration and dead ends , the people on the ground are winning .
The Racist Roots of New Technology Around the country and the world , monuments to colonial and racist leaders are falling at an astonishing rate .
The current wave seems to have been kicked off in Bristol , England , two weeks ago , when Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a statue @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Colston , knelt on its neck for eight minutes , and then dumped it in the harbor .
( The city council has since had it retrieved from the water . )
In Saint Paul , Minn. , members of the American Indian Movement toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus and then sang and danced over it .
Their approach was more holistic than the one in Boston , where a statue of Columbus was cleanly beheaded .
These are only a few examples of the many insurrections in the public cultural landscape @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , generating historic images as they go .
There ’ s an affective impact in seeing such prominent symbols of white supremacy marred , broken , toppled , or otherwise reclaimed .
Such encounters expand our sense of what is possible .
Aesthetics and images , in these instances , can help fuel the political imagination .
Of course , this is not the first time that people have pulled down statues ; we witnessed a previous wave in the United States just three years ago , following the Unite the Right rally @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about this moment feels different—the speed , perhaps , as well as the scope of the movement , signaled by the toppling of not just Confederate monuments , which are painfully obvious icons to white supremacy , but also the likenesses of historical figures such as Columbus and George Washington , whose racism has long been given a pass by mainstream society because they ’ re foundational to the myth of America .
( In Belgium , they ’ re dismantling statues of King Leopold II , who reigned for 44 years and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo . )
There ’ s the cautious sense that , in combination with the steady protests for more than two weeks ( and counting ) in towns large and small , as well as a public opinion poll that shows a sweeping increase in support for Black Lives Matter , we may have reached some kind of inflection point .
As in 2017 , the DIY dismantling has sparked so much momentum that politicians and institutions are scrambling to catch up .
In @ @ @ @ @ @ @ base of the monument to Confederate leader Robert E. Lee in graffiti and projected “ Black Lives Matter ” and Floyd ’ s face onto it ; soon after , the governor of Virginia announced that it would be dismantled .
( A judge has since halted that plan , but in the meantime , locals have turned it into a photo backdrop and celebratory town square . )
In New York City , the news broke yesterday that a statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History that shows @ @ @ @ @ @ @ American and black figures will finally come down , at the institution ’ s request—just two and a half years after a city commission on monuments decided it should stay .
A bipartisan group of lawmakers has begun discussions about changing the Mississippi state flag , which still features a Confederate battle emblem .
In all these cases , the symbols in question have been the subjects of debate for years , but leaders either defended them under the guise of “ preserving history ” or were unwilling to use their power to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , some politicians are still doubling down on maintaining the presence of this hateful heritage . )
Indeed , when it comes to aesthetic gestures , power determines the impact .
Protesters can ’ t order monuments taken down—in fact , residents of Bristol had been trying for years to have the Colston statue removed through official channels .
So they defy the law and do it themselves .
They create their own authority .
Politicians , on the other hand , make the law .
They can remove monuments if they want @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with all available means ) and use such actions as one of many steps toward racial justice .
They can propose defunding the police or ending the use of private prisons by the governments they lead .
Or they can use their power to uphold the status quo while decorating the streets with slogans .
Monuments , statues , flags , and symbols are an important part of how we understand our national histories and project our values , not to mention how we shape the physical landscape .
They can champion oppression @ @ @ @ @ @ @ or reckon with the violence of the past .
Is it inspiring to have “ Black Lives Matter ” written in huge , defiant letters in front of a White House occupied by a racist president ?
Yes .
Is our cultural landscape less oppressive and more honest without Confederate and colonial monuments towering over our streets ?
Unquestionably .
But will these changes undo the white supremacy on which this country is built ?
No .
We should celebrate the way that the people are rising up and forcing a profound shift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to shape and codify national stories .
But we should also be wary and demand more from leaders who offer performative gestures in place of meaningful action .
A week ago , for example , the Twitter account @ YesYoureRacist noted that Charlotte , N.C. , had commissioned a massive Black Lives Matter mural on one of its streets at the same time that its city council was passing a budget that gives roughly $ 290 million ( 40 percent of the city ’ s general fund ) to the police .
Aesthetic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
White supremacy has withstood much more than statues and paintings .

On June 9, after a week and a half of large, daily Black Lives Matter protests in New York City that began as part of a national uprising in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that he was taking action: He would name a street in each of the five boroughs after Black Lives Matter and paint the name of the movement on those roads. The decision came days after Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser received widespread attention for turning a section of 16th Street NW across from the White House into Black Lives Matter Plaza, with the phrase painted in 50-foot yellow letters on the pavement. Meanwhile, a short way down the National Mall, Democratic members of Congress, most of them white, showed up at the Capitol on June 8 wearing kente stoles. They knelt for eight minutes and 46 seconds—the same amount of time that Officer Derek Chauvin knelt on Floyd’s neck—before entering their chambers to introduce the Justice in Policing Act of 2020.
Politicians around the country are performing. They’re trying to show their constituents that they’re working on the problem of white supremacy in ways big and small. They’re using gestures to attempt to broadcast a message—but one that is ultimately hollow. As Shannon Keating put it recently in BuzzFeed News, it amounts to “performative absurdity from powerful people who’ve long avoided real accountability for causing or excusing Black suffering.”
Mayor de Blasio’s announcement came as he was facing enormous criticism, including from his own staffers, for his refusal to acknowledge the NYPD’s violence toward protesters (among them his daughter) and take action against the department. Mayor Bowser has been accused of using the Black Lives Matter street mural as a cover for her budget proposal that increases the money going to the police while decreasing funding for community-centered programs. And the Justice in Policing Act has been critiqued as a superficial, potentially even harmful attempt at reform rather than a reconsideration of a broken system.
Instead of doing the heavy lifting of conceiving real change, Democrats are virtue-signaling and pandering to their constituents with what they imagine to be powerful pictures. They’re trying to use gestures and symbols as a distraction from the issues at hand. And in a certain way, it’s working: The largely white media establishment has responded with a flurry of positive stories about the proliferation of Black Lives Matter murals, with some even praising their aesthetic qualities. Black activists and writers have been much more skeptical. As the writer Ijeoma Oluo said in a recent interview with Vox, “We are not dying because of lack of symbolism in this country, so question who benefits from that.” Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann Popular "swipe left below to view more authors"Swipe → The Evisceration of a Public University The Evisceration of a Public University Lisa M. Corrigan The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks The Patronizing Moralism of David Brooks Chris Lehmann “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash “The Blind Side” Was Always Trash Dave Zirin A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life A Grim Chronicle of Trump’s Corrupt Public Life Chris Lehmann
Representation does have value, especially for members of marginalized communities who are barraged daily with the symbols and standards of white supremacy. But all too often it’s wielded by those in power as a dangling carrot. I learned this lesson in part from studying and reporting on the art world, where museums have spent decades using representation as a substitute—a “Band-Aid,” as one activist I interviewed called it—for structural change. In their exhibitions, major museums have moved beyond the confines of whiteness by giving retrospectives to groundbreaking black artists like Kerry James Marshall and organizing citywide initiatives to showcase Latin American and Latinx art. But in their governance, their staff, and their collections, art museums remain oppressively white spaces.
The people leading those institutions—who have spent the past two weeks posting generic, watery statements of solidarity with Black Lives Matter on Instagram and being roundly criticized for it—remind me of the politicians stunting with symbolic murals and fabrics. Both use big, visible gestures of “diversity” as a sleight of hand to obscure the fact that they haven’t done much to rethink or restructure the system of white supremacy at all. “We have a reliance in this country on asymmetrical displays that allow us to dwell in, and never penetrate beyond, the level of the cultural,” Doreen St. Félix wrote in a piece on the kente stole debacle in The New Yorker. Optics are not politics.
At the same time that our leaders continue to flail, we are witnessing, in real time, a hugely important battle being fought on the level of the cultural over the kinds of images, symbols, and aesthetic choices that represent us as a nation. And stunningly, after centuries of frustration and dead ends, the people on the ground are winning. Related Article The Racist Roots of New Technology Stephen Kearse
Around the country and the world, monuments to colonial and racist leaders are falling at an astonishing rate. The current wave seems to have been kicked off in Bristol, England, two weeks ago, when Black Lives Matter protesters pulled down a statue of the 17th century slave trader Edward Colston, knelt on its neck for eight minutes, and then dumped it in the harbor. (The city council has since had it retrieved from the water.) In Saint Paul, Minn., members of the American Indian Movement toppled a statue of Christopher Columbus and then sang and danced over it. Their approach was more holistic than the one in Boston, where a statue of Columbus was cleanly beheaded.
These are only a few examples of the many insurrections in the public cultural landscape that seem to be spreading like wildfire, generating historic images as they go. There’s an affective impact in seeing such prominent symbols of white supremacy marred, broken, toppled, or otherwise reclaimed. Such encounters expand our sense of what is possible. Aesthetics and images, in these instances, can help fuel the political imagination.
Of course, this is not the first time that people have pulled down statues; we witnessed a previous wave in the United States just three years ago, following the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. But something about this moment feels different—the speed, perhaps, as well as the scope of the movement, signaled by the toppling of not just Confederate monuments, which are painfully obvious icons to white supremacy, but also the likenesses of historical figures such as Columbus and George Washington, whose racism has long been given a pass by mainstream society because they’re foundational to the myth of America. (In Belgium, they’re dismantling statues of King Leopold II, who reigned for 44 years and committed horrific atrocities while colonizing what’s now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo.) There’s the cautious sense that, in combination with the steady protests for more than two weeks (and counting) in towns large and small, as well as a public opinion poll that shows a sweeping increase in support for Black Lives Matter, we may have reached some kind of inflection point.
As in 2017, the DIY dismantling has sparked so much momentum that politicians and institutions are scrambling to catch up. In Richmond, Va., people covered the base of the monument to Confederate leader Robert E. Lee in graffiti and projected “Black Lives Matter” and Floyd’s face onto it; soon after, the governor of Virginia announced that it would be dismantled. (A judge has since halted that plan, but in the meantime, locals have turned it into a photo backdrop and celebratory town square.) In New York City, the news broke yesterday that a statue of Theodore Roosevelt outside the American Museum of Natural History that shows him flanked by a pair of Native American and black figures will finally come down, at the institution’s request—just two and a half years after a city commission on monuments decided it should stay. A bipartisan group of lawmakers has begun discussions about changing the Mississippi state flag, which still features a Confederate battle emblem. In all these cases, the symbols in question have been the subjects of debate for years, but leaders either defended them under the guise of “preserving history” or were unwilling to use their power to fight for change. (And notably, some politicians are still doubling down on maintaining the presence of this hateful heritage.)
Indeed, when it comes to aesthetic gestures, power determines the impact. Protesters can’t order monuments taken down—in fact, residents of Bristol had been trying for years to have the Colston statue removed through official channels. So they defy the law and do it themselves. They create their own authority. Politicians, on the other hand, make the law. They can remove monuments if they want to (or at least attempt it with all available means) and use such actions as one of many steps toward racial justice. They can propose defunding the police or ending the use of private prisons by the governments they lead. Or they can use their power to uphold the status quo while decorating the streets with slogans.
Monuments, statues, flags, and symbols are an important part of how we understand our national histories and project our values, not to mention how we shape the physical landscape. They can champion oppression or broadcast liberation, reinforce racist policies or reckon with the violence of the past. Is it inspiring to have “Black Lives Matter” written in huge, defiant letters in front of a White House occupied by a racist president? Yes. Is our cultural landscape less oppressive and more honest without Confederate and colonial monuments towering over our streets? Unquestionably. But will these changes undo the white supremacy on which this country is built? No.
We should celebrate the way that the people are rising up and forcing a profound shift in how public visual culture is used to shape and codify national stories. But we should also be wary and demand more from leaders who offer performative gestures in place of meaningful action. A week ago, for example, the Twitter account @YesYoureRacist noted that Charlotte, N.C., had commissioned a massive Black Lives Matter mural on one of its streets at the same time that its city council was passing a budget that gives roughly $290 million (40 percent of the city’s general fund) to the police. Aesthetic changes aren’t—and never will be—enough. White supremacy has withstood much more than statues and paintings.