Dylan Brogan
The protests should serve as a wake-up call.
As a white man in Madison, my voice is by no means uniquely important on the topic of the murder of George Floyd and the protests around the country that have followed. But it does still matter: All people, and especially all white people in this country, have an obligation to stand up and speak up for racial justice, now and always. This is our problem as much as anyone else's. For that reason, I am using my voice, and my privilege, to speak up.
George Floyd's death was so horrendous precisely because it was so unextraordinary. Face it: After you absorbed the news about Ahmaud Arbery, you did not think to yourself, "I wonder whether this will be the last time a black person is lynched in this country." Rather, the only question was when, where, and by whom the next attack would be perpetrated. That the next one (that garnered major media attention) turned out to be in Minneapolis and by a police officer was not surprising, just interesting. And that is outrageous. The normalcy and numbness with which we routinely take in this news is appalling. I don't know why Floyd's murder became the final straw instead of any other, but only good things can come of us finally treating this issue with the seriousness it has always deserved.
I understand the inclination to condemn the rioting and looting that has accompanied the protests in recent days. After all, rioting and looting are illegal acts, distract from the message rather than further the cause of justice, and target businesses that didn't specifically do anything to cause these problems. The only problem is that if we carefully examine each of those assertions, at most one of them is actually true. In the United States of America, every single one of us operates within a system that was built and acquired wealth on the backs of an enslaved people, and with every generation through which that wealth passes (and stratifies) our culpability only grows. By participating in this system, we abet it, and all participants bear responsibility for its consequences.
Most importantly, we need to recognize that outrage is, quite literally, a reasonable response to something that is outrageous. We do not get to dictate the terms of how outrage is allowed to express itself. If we are unhappy with how that expression is happening, we have exactly one option at our disposal: make the situation less outrageous. The problem with saying that people are justifiably indignant but should only express themselves through peaceful protest is that we are effectively saying, "We welcome your expression as long as it doesn't make us uncomfortable." But we should be uncomfortable, we need to be uncomfortable, about the way people of color are treated in our society.
So often, it is the defense of our own comfort that blocks us from truly being anti-racist. Most of us are not overtly racist, and so it is easy enough — gratifying, even — for us to support calls to reduce police brutality against black and brown bodies. But that is just the first step. Saying that people of color should not be routinely lynched in our country is a pretty low bar. If we truly want to give our neighbors not only physical safety but also economic justice and dignity, we have to be willing to do things like integrate our neighborhoods, redistribute wealth, and empower people of color to represent and lead us politically. Many people who genuinely believe themselves to support racial justice suddenly get cold feet when their own personal comfort is challenged by proposals such as these. That complacency is racist; we need to be shaken out of our complacency.
So, no, we don't have to like that property is being damaged. We don't have to condone the rioting and looting, because the businesses being targeted are no more responsible for how our society treats people of color than the rest of us are. But neither should we condemn it. Rather, we should seek to understand it. We should allow ourselves to be challenged by it. And we should make sure that we become and remain motivated by it. To the extent that we feel these specific businesses should not be targeted in the way they have been, we can do something about that. We can help clean up the destruction each morning. We can donate to the relief funds that have been set up, so that we bear some of the cost and spread that burden more widely. Most importantly, we can and must advocate, loudly, for the policies that will dial down the outrage, not by suppressing it, but by removing its inspiration.
This is a wake-up call. We are being given an opportunity. But we cannot watch passively and expect someone else to solve this problem. It is a problem that will only be solved if every single one of us speaks up and demands that it be solved. As my religious tradition teaches, if not now, then when? And if not me, then who? It's time to get to work.
David Hoffert ran for Madison Common Council in 2019 and is a past president of two Madison neighborhood associations.
