George Floyd died on Monday, May 25. He was known among his family and friends for his compassionate character and “beautiful spirit.” However, he died in a matter of minutes at the hands of Derek Chauvin, an officer with the Minneapolis Police Department. Since then, protests have erupted across the country, demanding justice for Black Americans who have been murdered this year, including Breona Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud Arbery, and countless others. In the process, police precincts have been seized, protestors have been fired upon, and stores have been razed. America is returning slowly to a “new normal” constructed on the ruins of weeks of protests and riots.
However, as we watch this violent crisis unfold, another looms in the background: The pandemic rages on. On May 28, the U.S. death toll surpassed 100,000 people. As of July 13, that number has increased to 137,000, with over 3 million total cases. Yet, reopening orders continue to be implemented across the country, with states like Texas, Florida, and Arizona emerging as new global epicenters for the virus. Adding to this, the American economy is in a state of crisis. The federal deficit is climbing at an unprecedented rate, with the Department of the Treasury borrowing over $3 trillion in only the last three months and economists foreseeing a significant recession in our near future. People are dying, markets are in a freefall, and GDP growth and deficit spending are at unhealthy long-term levels.
Today, however, we must realize that the crisis of policing and that of the economy are inextricable from each other. George Floyd himself, as reported by Joanna Walters in the Guardian, was like many millions of Americans over the last few months: “out of work and looking for a new job.” His situation was the result of mass businesses closures, a situation which has left millions of other Americans jobless. The crises are converging. Both the calamity of the COVID-19 pandemic and the scourge of systemic racism are inextricably intertwined, stemming from and perpetuated by the country’s reverent adherence to a corrupt, capitalist system. If we are to cast off the political and social ineptitude that has marked our policies for generations, we must take this moment of large-scale societal change to implement progressive political change.
With regard to the pandemic, despite the heightened urgency of support, the only existing relief package to Americans has been a means-tested $1,200 check without systemic payment freezes or assistance for utilities, rent and mortgages. This has left many millions of Americans in a state of economic limbo. Sandra Black, an economics professor at Columbia University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute, highlighted the insufficiency of such a measure. In an interview with Time, Black remarked that “this is not enough money to keep most families afloat … And this shutdown is far from over.”
Meanwhile, major debt-bearing American corporations have received substantially more government assistance, resulting in moral hazard — a situation which encourages corporations to continue their risky practices without liability, to the detriment of the average American. As American workers find it more difficult than ever to make ends meet, financial institutions are saved to the penny. Meanwhile, billionaires continue to profit, with some, like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckeberg, adding over 50% to their respective net worths as most Americans suffer on a months-old relief check. This conundrum is similar to the Great Recession, but our contemporary context makes it an entirely different beast: Even if individuals can find work, they may have to expose themselves to unsafe conditions in order to earn wages. Floyd himself was among the millions caught within this abhorrent paradox. Like so many other struggling Americans, Floyd found himself in search of a new job. However, in merely soliciting a possibly counterfeit bill, Floyd became part of an even more sinister statistical grouping: an unarmed Black person killed by an American police officer.
The intersection of these trends is no coincidence. It is the working of a corrupt, capitalist system. The wage slavery that has arisen amid stagnant wages drives poverty, and poverty drives policing — especially in urban areas. These trends further drive community mistrust of police, where the force that allegedly protects the public is increasingly perceived as the problem. Black Americans, who are disproportionately represented amongst these poor communities, are continually targeted by police in their own communities. However, what brings together these two systems — that of police targeting and economic disadvantage — is racial policing.
Consistent historical evidence has documented overtly discriminatory policing against Black Americans for centuries, but the most recent surge in such behavior was catalyzed by Reagan’s “Tough on Crime” campaign and its post-Reagan continuations, especially the 1994 Crime Bill. The War on Drugs and calls to crack down on urban crime became political tools for the mass incarceration of Black Americans. Indeed, as Kenneth Nunn writes in Race, Racism, and the Law, the War on Drugs was a targeted war, “the employment of force and violence against certain communities … in order to attain certain political objectives.” These political objectives are expressly racial — the mass incarceration of people of color. Compounding this, many millions of Black Americans are stuck in generational cycles of poverty, their communities also engulfed by gentrification. They are denied political rights by racial gerrymandering and overtly discriminatory polling rules in the South. These distinct yet structurally intertwined systems of oppression are the makeup of an apartheid state, in which White supremacy complements the American neoliberal economic system to maintain a vast prison-industrial complex that disproportionately targets communities of color.
Also inherent in the nature of American capitalism is the defense of private property before social good. The police have revealed themselves to be the mercenaries of corporate interests, stepping in not to protect protestors but to protect burning buildings and endangered private property. Jacob Frey, the Democratic mayor of Minneapolis, even came under fire from the president for refusing to dispel protesters from the Third Precinct station of the Minneapolis Police Department, instead allowing the building to burn in hopes that it would quell the passion of the protesters. It was at this juncture, when private property was threatened, that Trump escalated his federal response, threatening and then pursuing national military action.
Leftists intellectuals have long asserted that the role of police in America has been to uphold the agenda of the monied elite. Recent events have indeed evidenced the inherently violent means of enforcing protection of property in this country, especially in urban areas where looting is most concentrated. Even President Trump asserted this logic in invoking the racially charged words of Miami Police Chief Walter Headley in 1967: “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.” The violent actions of police demonstrate an insurmountable internal contradiction for police officers: How can the “protectors” of our communities often meet peaceful protests with military-style repressive tactics? In the midst of this contradiction, organizers have brought awareness to a new rallying cry: “Buildings can be rebuilt, but lives cannot be brought back.”
While only now coming to the forefront of ongoing discourse, these are long-existing realities of the Black experience in America. As a White man, I cannot say I can truly give this experience and crisis enough consideration in writing this article — I can only recognize the systemic inequity and utilize my privilege to become an ally. But I can review the annals of our history, and such a reading provides a dangerous narrative: It is this time, in our era, that the riots are different. This time, compromise and peace are failing to deliver answers, even more so than they did in Los Angeles in 1992. This time, dialogue is breaking through at an alarming rate.
This is because the COVID-19 pandemic is threatening the basic institutions of American society. The market disruptions of March and April were unprecedented, featuring the biggest stock market crash since 2008. As a result, the modern state has expanded across society in a visibly larger way since even March. The coronavirus relief bill shares many traits with major policies of crisis management in the past, especially during the Great Depression and the Great Recession, such as its direct assistance to individuals, companies, and even American cultural funds. Yet, it is distinct in its size: It appears now to be the largest economic stimulus, even adjusted for inflation and real growth, in American history. What may be more important than scale, however, is implication. Similar to the Works Progress Administration in FDR’s New Deal and the employment-based direct assistance in Obama’s American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the current world situation again evidences that large, rogue markets cannot regulate themselves and that they are undermined by systemic crisis. Again, people are being asked to forgive the mistakes of a system that has never worked for them.
Such large-scale changes, undergirded by major global crises, open up the space for political discourse and make equally large-scale institutional and social change seem like achievable goals. Yet, we cannot merely speculate any longer. We must seize this moment for change.
Image Credit: Photo by Julian Wan is used under the Unsplash License
