One of my favorite professors of all time, Dr. Chris Caldwell, once taught a class about the relationship between perception and social movement to a small group of philosophy students at the University of Kansas. More specifically, Me, one Asian guy and 15 White folks took a class from a teacher we liked. We went through quite a bit of fiction but most memorably for me was our our brief trips through Toni Morrison's Beloved and Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man.
If you want to know how I ended up being the only Black person in a class that teaches Morrison and Ellison, it's like I said above...The University of Kansas...(it's in the state of KANSAS) It would often bother me that if I wasn't enrolled in a class it would have no Black students.
Anyhoo, in this class the students would lead lecture every Friday and we would discuss the week's assignment. The unfortunate soul that drew Invisible Man was some young frat boy who probably helped invent the now infamous SAE chant. What aspect did he choose to dissect in this rather dense novel? Communism. Fucking communism! The other students even chimed in and wasted the entire period talking about the shortfalls of communism in the protagonist's life. The riots at the end of the novel, they proclaimed, clear proof that communism leads to anarchy. (The somehow missed the opportunity to talk about interracial rape fantasies).
Relax, I'm not going to talk about rape fantasy today. However I want to discuss rioting. Those of you that watch TV coverage of these riots have been bombarded with same ideas those 20 year old White kids did so many years ago. You are told that these people are a mindless mob that only seek sneakers and alcohol. Lucky for them, the only stores around sell sneakers and alcohol. I'm sure that's a coincidence. What isn't a coincidence is why this keeps happening so let me explain it to you and my old classmates.
This is why things burn.
The question I hear most is "Why are these people burning up their own neighborhoods?" The answer is the same reason people burn their bunks in a prison riot. Our surroundings are a reflection of the situation we wake up to every day. If you scrape together your money only to be reminded that you can't afford half the shit you need, let alone the shit you want, it tends to stick in your craw. If the same thing happens to 500 or so of your neighbors, it's only a matter of time before you guys do something about it. Even if you manage to take what you want, that symbol of that corporate vacuum remains... so it burns.
The cop cars? Come on now. You can't step on the roaches under your floorboards so you stomp the ones you see. Most people understand that the police force are just one branch of a much bigger system. But it's such a hassle to get your local congressmen together to pelt with rotten fruit these days. So when it hits the fan and the mob comes across two cops that weren't smart enough to know when the battle was lost, the mob spares the lives, keeps the car... so it burns. (Kudos to both sides for affirming life over property)
The random shit? There is no better symbol for struggle than fire in the dark. For so long people live in fear of the police. What better way to send a message that the power has shifted than to let them know where you are and that they can't do shit about it? So they find whatever is flammable and it burns.
Well what will those people do when it's all over? That is the cruelest joke of them all. Before the fire they toiled, after which, they will do the same. The harsh joke about riots is that they only seem to change things for that one night or two, the the powers that be call in their enforcers. Of all the police brutality riots, what has it brought us but more riots? Rioting is just a short high in a country addicted to the worship of the wealthy. Just like a crackhead we light that rock well knowing that the hunger will come again. That familiar feeling that we cannot ignore will again be our singular thought until we let it burn once more.
We have long been on this carousel and we will come back around again until we address the real problems (poverty, wage inequality, white supremacy, gender inequality. etc.) we are just going to have to accept that ironically this is just what needs to happen in order to maintain the status quo. Too many of us have bitten that bullet. Let those plumes of smoke on the horizon be our warning that fire is coming and if we just let it burn the place, after we rebuild, it will only burn again.
If you want to know how I ended up being the only Black person in a class that teaches Morrison and Ellison, it's like I said above...The University of Kansas...(it's in the state of KANSAS) It would often bother me that if I wasn't enrolled in a class it would have no Black students.
Anyhoo, in this class the students would lead lecture every Friday and we would discuss the week's assignment. The unfortunate soul that drew Invisible Man was some young frat boy who probably helped invent the now infamous SAE chant. What aspect did he choose to dissect in this rather dense novel? Communism. Fucking communism! The other students even chimed in and wasted the entire period talking about the shortfalls of communism in the protagonist's life. The riots at the end of the novel, they proclaimed, clear proof that communism leads to anarchy. (The somehow missed the opportunity to talk about interracial rape fantasies).
Relax, I'm not going to talk about rape fantasy today. However I want to discuss rioting. Those of you that watch TV coverage of these riots have been bombarded with same ideas those 20 year old White kids did so many years ago. You are told that these people are a mindless mob that only seek sneakers and alcohol. Lucky for them, the only stores around sell sneakers and alcohol. I'm sure that's a coincidence. What isn't a coincidence is why this keeps happening so let me explain it to you and my old classmates.
This is why things burn.
The question I hear most is "Why are these people burning up their own neighborhoods?" The answer is the same reason people burn their bunks in a prison riot. Our surroundings are a reflection of the situation we wake up to every day. If you scrape together your money only to be reminded that you can't afford half the shit you need, let alone the shit you want, it tends to stick in your craw. If the same thing happens to 500 or so of your neighbors, it's only a matter of time before you guys do something about it. Even if you manage to take what you want, that symbol of that corporate vacuum remains... so it burns.
The cop cars? Come on now. You can't step on the roaches under your floorboards so you stomp the ones you see. Most people understand that the police force are just one branch of a much bigger system. But it's such a hassle to get your local congressmen together to pelt with rotten fruit these days. So when it hits the fan and the mob comes across two cops that weren't smart enough to know when the battle was lost, the mob spares the lives, keeps the car... so it burns. (Kudos to both sides for affirming life over property)
The random shit? There is no better symbol for struggle than fire in the dark. For so long people live in fear of the police. What better way to send a message that the power has shifted than to let them know where you are and that they can't do shit about it? So they find whatever is flammable and it burns.
Well what will those people do when it's all over? That is the cruelest joke of them all. Before the fire they toiled, after which, they will do the same. The harsh joke about riots is that they only seem to change things for that one night or two, the the powers that be call in their enforcers. Of all the police brutality riots, what has it brought us but more riots? Rioting is just a short high in a country addicted to the worship of the wealthy. Just like a crackhead we light that rock well knowing that the hunger will come again. That familiar feeling that we cannot ignore will again be our singular thought until we let it burn once more.
We have long been on this carousel and we will come back around again until we address the real problems (poverty, wage inequality, white supremacy, gender inequality. etc.) we are just going to have to accept that ironically this is just what needs to happen in order to maintain the status quo. Too many of us have bitten that bullet. Let those plumes of smoke on the horizon be our warning that fire is coming and if we just let it burn the place, after we rebuild, it will only burn again.
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