["Our only hope for our collective liberation," writes Michelle
Alexander, "is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love."]
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AS UPRISING SPREADS ACROSS US, SCHOLARS ARGUE ECONOMIC TRANSFORMATION
AND SOLIDARITY KEY TO ACHIEVING RACIAL JUSTICE  
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Jon Queally and Jessica Corbett
June 9, 2020
Common Dreams
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_ "Our only hope for our collective liberation," writes Michelle
Alexander, "is a politics of deep solidarity rooted in love." _

Protesters march on Hiawatha Avenue while decrying the killing of
George Floyd on May 26, 2020 in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Four
Minneapolis police officers have been fired after a video taken by a
bystander was posted on social media showing Floyd's neck b, Stephen
Maturen/Getty Images

 

In separate in-depth columns published Monday, two leading black
female scholars argue that the while the United States stands on the
edge of a precipice of either transformational change or tattered
ruin, there is renewed hope for fundamental change—including both
racial and economic justice—to be found in the nationwide uprisings
sparked by last month's murder of George Floyd by police in
Minneapolis.

Civil rights attorney and legal scholar Michelle Alexander warns in a
column for the _New York Times_ titled "America, This Is Your Chance
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that American "democracy hangs in the balance"—before adding: "This
is not an overstatement."

Writing
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for _The New Yorker_, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, assistant professor of
African American studies at Princeton University, referenced the two
weeks of protests since Floyd's killing as a "rebellion" of
"relentless fury and pace" whose "sheer scale has been surprising"
even through the long historic lens of community protests and
uprisings fueled by racial injustice, police brutality, and social
neglect.

Taylor's piece is explicitly titled "How Do We Change America?
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Both her and Alexander seek to address that outstanding and elusive
question. For Taylor's part, it's clear the "quest to transform this
country cannot be limited to challenging its brutal police." Alexander
makes it central to her critique that while President Donald Trump has
been "disastrous" as a leader during this crisis, "it would be a
mistake to place the blame on him alone" for the nation's woes.

"In part," writes Alexander, "we find ourselves here for the same
reasons a civil war tore our nation apart more than 100 years ago: Too
many citizens prefer to cling to brutal and unjust systems than to
give up political power, the perceived benefits of white supremacy and
an exploitative economic system. If we do not learn the lessons of
history and choose a radically different path forward, we may lose our
last chance at creating a truly inclusive, egalitarian democracy."

Similarly, Taylor argues that for a nation whose history is steeped in
white supremacy and pervasive economic inequality, very little of
what's transpired recently—least of all the killing of an unarmed
black man by a police officer—is anything new.

"It should be clear," she writes, "what the demands of young black
people are: an end to racism, police abuse, and violence; and the
right to be free of the economic coercion of poverty and inequality."
But the very "refusal or inability of this society to engage" the
question of how to meet those demands, Taylor continues, is a big part
of why protesters now "swell the streets with clenched fists and
expressive eyes" nationwide.

Securing the future that the protesters demand requires conquering
"the logic that finances police and jails at the expense of public
schools and hospitals," according to Taylor. "Police should not be
armed with expensive artillery intended to maim and murder civilians
while nurses tie garbage sacks around their bodies and reuse masks in
a futile effort to keep the coronavirus at bay."

"We have the resources to remake the United States, but it will have
to come at the expense of the plutocrats and the plunderers," she
adds, "and therein lies the 300-year-old conundrum: America's
professed values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,
continually undone by the reality of debt, despair, and the human
degradation of racism and inequality."

In a post on social media commenting on Alexander's piece, Taylor said
the two of them were "in unexpected synchronicity
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their respective essays.

In her column, Taylor insists "we cannot insist on 'real change' in
the United States by continuing to use the same methods, arguments,
and failed political strategies that have brought us to this moment,"
while Alexander declares "we cannot achieve racial justice and create
a secure and thriving democracy without also transforming our economic
systems."

Alexander points to historical figures—from James Baldwin, Martin
Luther King Jr., and WEB Du Bois to Albert Einstein, Helen Keller, and
Paul Robeson—who have shared the belief that "we must move toward
some form of socialism." She then turns to a more recent champion of
social democratic reform: Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who suspended
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his second campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in
April.

"We all owe him and countless organizers a debt of gratitude for
pushing universal healthcare, paid family leave, free college
education, a $15 minimum wage and many other economic rights into the
mainstream," Alexander says of Sanders' diverse movement. Citing
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Taylor, who endorsed
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Sanders, she writes that "the coronavirus crisis proved that Mr.
Sanders was right all along—that healthcare and other economic
rights should be considered part of our social contract, not special
benefits for those who are lucky enough to be employed by companies
that grant discretionary benefits."

"Nobody would have benefited more from Mr. Sanders' political
revolution than black people
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Alexander adds, "and yet the generational divide among black voters
affected his campaign." As she explains:

Younger black people seem to understand that the neoliberal Democratic
politics of the past will not take us where we need to go, and they
supported Mr. Sanders by significant margins in polls. We must work to
create an economic system that benefits us all, not just the wealthy.
If our nation was not so deeply divided along racial lines—and if so
many white people were not revolted by the idea of their tax dollars
helping poor people of color obtain education, housing and social
benefits—we would most likely have a social democracy like Norway or
Canada. Achieving economic justice requires we work for racial
justice, and vice versa. There is no way around it.

If we fail to take these obvious steps, our democracy will remain in
peril even if Mr. Trump is defeated in November. Police killings,
uprisings, and riots will remain a recurring feature of American life.
The black-white economic divide
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is as wide today as it was more than 50 years ago. And the same
divide-and-conquer tactics that were used to prevent multiracial
alliances for economic justice in the 1800s and 1900s were employed
yet again in 2016 with spectacular results, as white Americans fearful
of losing political power because of profound demographic changes
elected a former reality show billionaire to the presidency, a man who
unleashed racist tirades against immigrants on the campaign trail and
vowed to "make America great again" by taking us back to a time we
supposedly left behind—perhaps the time of civil war. Unless we
choose a radically different path now, our persistent racial divisions
and oppressive political and economic systems may unravel our
democracy sooner rather than later.

Alexander's piece won praise from Taylor and other Sanders supporters
and former 2020 campaign staffers:

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor; Naomi Klein; Faiz.

"Our only hope for our collective liberation is a politics of deep
solidarity rooted in love," according to Alexander. "In recent days,
we've seen what it looks like when people of all races, ethnicities,
genders, and backgrounds rise up together, standing in solidarity for
justice, protesting, marching and singing together, even as SWAT teams
and tanks roll in."

"We've seen our faces in another American mirror—a reflection of the
best of who we are and what we can become," she concludes. "These
images may not have dominated the media coverage, but I've glimpsed in
a foggy mirror scenes of a beautiful, courageous nation struggling to
be born."

Our work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike
3.0 License. Feel free to republish and share widely.

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