"The more I read the papers,
The less I comprehend..."
-George Gershwin lyrics
Back in 1968 when I had a summer job during college, I worked at the Quincy Shipyard in Massachusetts as an insulator on submarines. It was hot and dirty work, and if I remember correctly, I made $2.44 an hour. I used 2 hours of that work to purchase my first hardback book, The Second Civil War by Garry Wills. The author spent 2 months in 9 cities that had burned in the urban riots of 1967. Many folks think the inner-city riots occurred because of the MLK assassination in 1968, but actually, they happened a year before.
Will’s book could never be written today. He interviewed all sides; from police, govt. planners, black leaders, and ministers - he did so without bias - and let the reader absorb his words and come to their own conclusions.
Protesters today complain about the militarization of the police, but in 1967, 7,000 national guardsman and 9 tanks were deployed in Detroit alone. The official report stated that 43 people died and 1400 buildings were destroyed by fire. One black businessman saw the burning decimated frame of his motel, then committed suicide. A young US Representative from inner-city Detroit, John Conyers, said the death count was under-reported and believed the deaths to be in the hundreds.
Reading Will’s book is like watching burning boats flow down a river of violence. We readers probably thought at the time this urban conflagration was a once-in-a-lifetime event. We were wrong.
In 1967, Rev. Albert Cleage of Detroit said, “The white man has to give us control of the cities. If he doesn’t, he leaves no alternative but violence.” A few days ago on Fox News, Hawk Newsome of Black Lives Matter-NY said, “If this country doesn’t give us what we want, then we will burn it down.” All this in a span of 57 years. Social cohesion moves at the speed of a glacier.
Back in 1967 Detroit, the minority unemployment rate was 9%, today it is 16%. All this after one of the greatest transfer of government spending in US history - The Great Society programs of the 60s/70s. In my opinion, the government does have a role in tackling trenchant, measurable problems, but not large scale, cultural ones. We just can’t throw money at big problems and expect success.
Our cities are troubled, but they continue to be the main arteries of our country. The prologue of Will’s book involves the problem of the individual policeman. A Community Relations officer in the book stated, “Police are constantly exposed to the seamiest side of life in the ghetto. Besides, a cop has to be suspicious if he is any good. And our men are scared. They take their lives in their hands every day they go to work. The last three policemen to be killed here were surprised before they could get at their weapons…” Yes, there are bad police just as there are bad doctors, teachers, and managers. Remove them and if necessary, punish them for the individual offenders they are.
I think when you throw the super-human demands of police enforcement against a large-scale and unpredictable protest that can sometimes morph into violence, the fabric of the country can become endangered, but that is the time, the very time, more enforcement is needed, not less. Peaceful protest is part of our republic, but when you keep pulling a loose thread on a sweater and keep pulling, you don’t end up with a better sweater, you end up with no sweater.
And yes, this social cohesion is difficult to balance. One the one hand, control of the streets is necessary if these problems are to be tackled and addressed. On the other hand, I’ve known enough minority co-workers and neighbors in North Carolina that view a traffic stop much differently than I do - even when there’s an even chance the police officer is a minority. These situations need to be talked about and addressed.
This is all that much more difficult because we seem to exist in a nadir of leadership, from top to bottom. We have a President Trump who will not encourage masks during an epidemic(He changed that yesterday - yea!) and his possible replacement, VP Biden if elected, may require adult day care while in the White House. What a choice!
Sadly, this lack of leadership reaches into some local police chiefs. The new Raleigh Police Chief, after a night of rioting, held a press conference to bemoan the damage but then stated her officers are too valuable to protect downtown property in the future. What?? And a few days later, during a prayer parade in a neighboring town, police officers (at the behest of their chiefs), washed the feet of protest ministers in an awkward display of public supplication. IMHO, a complete misreading of John 13. It's not often that municipal public relations and the Bible can be offended at the same time.
Perhaps there are many answers to these many problems, though, measured in inches and not miles. Last year I attended a boisterous meeting full of community disagreement and complaints that were moderated by our town’s police sergeant. With patience and grace, he listened then answered the concerns of the group. Everyone went home feeling better.
And just this. Several years ago my niece, a mother with young children, was in terror at the wailing sounds of sirens bracketing her Somerville neighborhood as police cars patrolled and searched for the Boston Bomber.
That activity would not be in a social worker’s job description.
