by Dr. Paula Parks
Coordinator, Umoja Community
How did we get here?
First, how do we even define "here"? "Here" is bigger than the recent killing of George Floyd. It is a manifestation of centuries of inequality derived from not valuing the lives of Black people. Floyd’s inability to breathe and his ultimate death were due to the officer’s knee on Floyd’s neck, but the circumstances around his death represent the situation of all African Americans who metaphorically have had white people’s knees on their necks for centuries, as was aptly explained by Rev. Al Sharpton at Mr. Floyd’s funeral. African Americans are a people whose bodies and minds have never mattered.
Slavery
Slavery in America was the most brutal version in recorded history. It was not the traditional type to work off a debt; instead, slavery became inextricably bound to an entire race of people, generation after generation, starting with the 10 to 15 million Africans who were ripped from the continent and brought to America, explained Dr. Joy DeGruy in Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome. People of African descent were
Illustration courtesy of University of California, Berkeley
repeatedly raped by the owners and other members of the household, forced to have children with others who were enslaved, forced to labor long hours around the plantation, beaten for any perceived infraction, sold away from their families at the whim of the owner, and continually belittled and ridiculed. The cruelty with which these new Patriots behaved was at odds with their professed faith and the country’s ideals of freedom. So a narrative was created, through “scientific and medical studies,” to justify the treatment of enslaved Africans. Literature “documented” Black people as lazy, stupid, not fully human (specifically 3/5), child-like, impervious to pain, incapable of feeling grief, not civilized, dishonest, and unattractive, added DeGruy. Those outright lies were repeated and repeated and purposefully woven into movies, books, and live performances. Sadly, so many of these myths, especially the lie of criminality, are still believed today, reflected in the media, and ingrained in popular culture.
Convict Leasing
Immediately after slavery, very little changed as Southern businesses had to figure how to replace slave labor. So states instituted convict leasing, a way for the accused to serve his/her time by performing hard and often dangerous labor on plantations, in mines, and on railroads. Charges were often fabricated and almost anyone could be swept up by police for something as inconsequential as loitering or not having a job. Landowners cared even less about the convict’s well-being than they had about their slaves’. These were more expendable. When a convict was worked to death, a replacement was promptly issued. About 25 percent of convicts died states DeGruy. The passage of the 13th Amendment didn’t mean African Americans were free nor safe.
Lynching
Lynching became another way to exert control over and legally kill Black people due to their “criminal” behavior. Black people were lynched for disrespecting a white person, looking at a white woman, being independent or “uppity,” or for nothing at all. From 1877 to 1950, more than 4,000 African Americans were lynched, mostly by a mob, documented the Equal Justice Initiative in "Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror." Many lynchings included a family picnic or religious event and were memorialized with souvenir post cards. Often fingers, toes, private parts, and ears were cut off the victim and sold to attendees before the victim was burned alive while hanging from a tree. For centuries, perceived criminality has been justification to kill a Black person.
Economic Attacks
In addition to enduring voting barriers and legalized segregation, African Americans suffered through strategic attacks on any economic advancement. For example, 35 city blocks of a self-sustaining, thriving community called Black Wall Street in Tulsa were burned to the ground and 300 people were killed, explains DeGruy. In other cases, policies such as redlining, enforced by realtors and lenders, meant that Blacks could only live in certain parts of town where the property values were lower but the insurance rates and interest rates were much higher, according to Ta-Nehisi Coates in "The Case for Reparations." Residents paid for their homes many times over. Due to contributing to someone else’s wealth through enslavement, not inheriting property nor wealth, and being subjected to targeted discrimination, the average African-American family has one tenth the wealth of the average white family, adds Kristin McIntosh, et al who wrote "Examining the Black-white Wealth Gap."
Mass Incarceration
Black people are still seen by many in society, as well as by those in the criminal justice system as threatening criminals and have been disproportionately affected by the exponential increase in incarceration rates. While African Americans are 12% of the population, they are 34% of the state and federal prison population and are "incarcerated at more than 5 times the rate of whites," states the NAACP's "Criminal Justice Fact Sheet." Major contributing factors include being subjected to mandatory minimum sentencing laws, being pressured to make plea deals, having inadequate legal representation, and being targeted by police. Furthermore, in prison, convicts perform janitorial, agricultural, and manufacturing work that benefits the state and major corporations while only earning pennies per hour.
Police Brutality
Police brutality is just a recent example of dominant society’s knee on Black America’s neck – a continuation of slavery’s behaviors and attitudes. In fact, slave patrols, a practice that started in the 1700s to return runaways and to inflict terror, evolved into lynch mobs as well as our current police system. The same lynch mob mentality which resulted in the death of Emmet Till in 1955 also contributed to the beating of Rodney King in 1992. Sadly, while the open casket of Till and video of King’s beating shocked the world, they didn’t result in a conviction nor a reduction in such abuse. And currently, the deaths of Trayvon Martin through George Floyd have the same theme of legally extinguishing Black lives with or without a knee.
Further Reading
- Post Traumatic Slave Syndrome by Joy DeGruy
- The New Jim Crow by Michelle Alexander
- "Honoring Our Ancestral Obligations" by Chike Akua
- 1619 Project by the New York Times
- "Democracy in Black" by Eddie Glaude, Jr.
- Equal Justice Initiative
- “The Case for Reparations” by Ta-Nehisi Coates
- 13th (2016 documentary directed by Ava DuVernay)
- Law Enforcement Museum