Philonise Floyd testified recently to the House Judiciary Committee about the death of his brother George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police. “People of all backgrounds, genders and race have come together to demand change,” Floyd said. Pleading for comprehensive policing reform, Floyd asked Congress to “teach them what it means to treat people with empathy and respect. Teach them what necessary force is. Teach them that deadly force should be used rarely and only when life is at risk.” Unfortunately, Philonise Floyd’s earnest call for reform has been drowned out by an elite-driven narrative about race relations that is empirically weak, counterproductive, and not reflective of most black Americans’ attitudes and wishes.
According to a popular theory of institutionalized white supremacy, history functions not simply as context but as cause. White Americans, on this view, are born in sin—because of the nation’s original sin, slavery—and, for the most part, irredeemable. At birth, all African-Americans are caught in a historical vise that crushes freedom, joy, and (all too often) life itself. Progress is only a prelude to punishment. African-Americans exist without agency or effectiveness—except when achieving objectives or employing means endorsed by adherents of this view. The Black Panthers represented true emancipatory politics, the theory holds, while black anti-crime activism is either a fiction invented by reactionary social scientists or an indication of the reproductive force of white supremacy.
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