Notes

Some preliminary points:
- I borrow some ideas from this incredibly powerful video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sb9_qGOa9Go
- I highly recommend that you watch the video linked above: it provides some historical and contemporary context for what I wrote.
- The third thesis is based in part on a short part of John Oliver's most recent episode on the police, which I recommend you watch. Watching and learning from that video does not constitute a substitute for reading black authors and black narratives, so I recommend that you engage with the authors I list in theses 2 and 4.
- I am also not a substitute for reading black authors and black narratives. My own ideas here are informed by black authors (particularly black Marxist thinkers), and I seek to not misrepresent them, but you should read them to derive your own conclusions and interpretations. Black authors and narratives are not a monolith, but have nuanced and contradictory perspectives on race, some of which will contradict my own thoughts. I myself have a lot more reading to do, and my ideas will probably change as I read and learn more.

4 Theses on Snapchat Stories:
1) People criticizing looters need to incorporate a more nuanced class perspective into their understanding of what's happening. Looters do not steal out of greed; looting is an action born out of necessity. Decades, nay centuries, of continued oppression, of segregation, structural violence, systemic racism, divested communities, the murder of black leaders, the war on drugs, white flight, gentrification, disenfranchisement, police brutality, food deserts, and a million other nuanced, systemic forms of oppression, have made people desperate. On top of this, we have a mismanaged pandemic which has disproportionately ravaged black communities, unemployment skyrocketing, a crisis of our medical infrastructure. Deindustrialization and chronic unemployment in black communities. While the looting of a small business is horrific and destructive, you must retain a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of capitalism, must contextualize these incidents as the inevitable result of a vicious and destructive white supremacist, capitalist economic system. And while yes, the looters are not the same as the protestors, it is unfair to depoliticize the actions of the looters by asserting that they are "using chaos as an opportunity to steal." Working-class people forcefully taking basic necessities, seizing the consumer products that we all love to flaunt, stealing commodities that they can later sell, or committing property damage against a big corporation is a political action. To say that the looters are merely "greedy people taking advantage of a desperate situation" ignores that, for many, there is literally nothing else they can do: centuries of dispossession and subjugation have made people so desperate that they see looting as the only way forward and the complete failure of the leftist alternative in the West has weakened everyone's political imagination. Black folks have essentially tried every conceivable form of organizing and every theoretical approach to defend themselves and their communities from racism: anarchism, non-violence, militant self-defense, civil disobedience, electoralism, Marxism-Leninism, Focoismo, intercommunalism, Islam, and Christianity. Countless black leaders killed, imprisoned, exiled: Fred Hampton, MLK, Malcolm X, George Jackson, Assata Shakur, Huey Newton, and so many more. A young generation of black leadership killed, leaving behind a weakened community susceptible to the War on Drugs and mass incarceration. And while new movements begin to organize and expand, new movements like Black Lives Matter (that we should wholeheartedly embrace and support), the specter created by the US government's vicious extermination campaigns still haunts the reality and the memories of all those who are living; for many, an alternative is still not apparent. A new generation of leadership will arise, and we, as the members of the progressive youth, must work to rekindle the flames of revolutionary love, compassion, and ambitions.

2) In 1919, the United States was rocked by tremendous racial and labor upheavals, a period that would be remembered as the "Red Summer" of 1919. Riots, murder, looting, arson. Chicago too was hit by a race riot after tensions that had been boiling between the black and white communities reached a critical point when a white man at a segregated beach throwing rocks at black swimmers killed the 17-year-old black youth Eugene Williams. A white police officer not only failed to arrest the man responsible for Williams' death, but chose to arrest a black man instead. Following the riots, a city commission convened to investigate the complex factors that led to violence, the report they compiled recommended a plethora of policies designed to target discrimination and prejudice. Inaction followed. In Harlem, 1935, riots broke out after rumors that a black teen had been beaten by white employees in a shop began to spread, for some this riot signaled the end of the optimism and hope of the Harlem Renaissance. A report, which was kept hidden from the public, investigated the cause of the violence, and it concluded that a confluence of systemic, discriminatory factors led to the violence. The report called for policies designed to target discrimination and prejudice. Inaction followed. In 1943, Harlem again, a white police officer shot a black soldier and riots broke out. A report was written, recommending policies targeted against discrimination and prejudice. Inaction followed. In 1967, the "Long, Hot Summer" was characterized by daily news coverage of the Vietnam War and a multitude of nationwide race riots. Lyndon B. Johnson established the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders to investigate the riots and its causes. Again, the report called for policies targeted against discrimination and prejudice. Inaction followed. White violence, black reaction, commission, inaction, white violence, black reaction, commission, inaction, a cycle of violence driven by systemic factors that creates white violence, creates the frustration and anger needed for a black reaction, driving the need for an investigative commission, and centralizing power in the hands of the oppressor, leading to inaction. The same damn policies being demanded for again and again, again and again, again and again, and nothing is done. And then people ask, "Why? What could possibly cause this violence? Why are you rioting?" As Trevor Noah and a variety of different black activists have pointed out, the social contract is broken. The people and state each must uphold their responsibilities to one another. The state must protect the natural rights and liberties of the people, must protect them from violence, must protect the equality of its people. The people, in turn, follow its laws and participate in governance. But when the state fails to uphold its side of the agreement, the people are no longer bound by a social contract. When the state not only fails to uphold its social contract, but actively works to break it -- killing black people in the fucking streets for literally no reason, why should the people be orderly, peaceful, and lawful? "Law and order" and a desire to return to "normal" are both violent ideals. Normal clearly wasn't working for a lot of people, and they are not going to let society return to normal without a fight. The way towards peace and equality will not be marked by a return to normal, it will require drastic shifts in the way society is structured and a dramatic shift away from our current understanding of justice and safety.


3) The idea of "defund the police" has arisen recently as a result of these protests. For many, this idea is scary because they cannot conceive of safety and justice outside of the vocabulary of policing. For many, justice is defined in incredibly narrow terms, such as Prager University's definition of justice as "getting what you deserve without favor." This conception of justice might seem self-evidently true, might seem obvious to many, but it fails to account for the many different ways that people understand the word "deserve." For many (including myself), no one "deserves" to be brutally locked up in a system that leads to no social good and is characterized by extremely high rates of recidivism. Many hold onto the idea that the state should not be given the ability to kill someone regardless of their crime. Conservatives often pose a question that places one in the position of the victim's family: "if a loved one was brutally murdered, would you want the murderer to get away unpunished?" These questions are loaded, emotionally and rhetorically loaded. If one says yes, they are a pathetic asshole; if one says no, they are hypocrites. However, these questions are driven by an ideology of punitive justice. Why must we respond to a negative action with another negative action? Where is the space for compassion? Why do we uphold a response to violence that does nothing but continuously harm people and society. Why can't we invest in rehabilitative programs? Why can't we seek to change people for the better? Why must we continue to subject other people to a brutal system that actively dehumanizes them instead of seeking to change them?

4) Marxism often begins its social analysis by using the metaphor of "base and superstructure," where the base refers to the economic, while the superstructure refers to the cultural, political, and legal. For Marxists, the base is primary, it is where our analysis of the cultural, political, and legal must begin. This analysis is very useful because it shows us how all societies (a better term would be "social formation") constitute totalities, where the cultural, political, and legal values that a social formation upholds are configured by economic motions and structures, where all the elements of society/a social formation are all part of a singular social unity connected by economic structures. This analysis is very useful, but this metaphor of base and superstructure can lead to a reductionist understanding of race. For some Marxists, race is merely a tool of the ruling classes used to divide the working class. Afro-Pessimist scholars have responded to this deficiency in Marxism by highlighting how Marx's theories cannot comprehend the base as fundamentally racial, how an analysis of the United States must begin at the racial level, not at the economic level. And while this critique of Marxism is often true, it ignores the ways that the Marxist analysis has shifted, has expanded its methodology to understand the psycho-social effects of racism, as well as its tremendous impact to society. Thinkers like Frantz Fanon have developed theories, often using Marxism as a theoretical starting point, to understand the cultural and psychological violence that results from colonization. Black thinkers who developed 'internal colonization theory' in the US understood black people in the U.S. as part of a internally colonized population who have a right to national self-determination. Thinkers like Huey Newton who reframed the discourse on race in the United States as part of a larger critique of U.S. imperialism and the international struggle for national self-determination, but who predicted the changes that capitalism would experience as the world would become more and more globalized, arguing that the category of "nation" would become less and less useful. Modern post-colonial Marxist thinkers who argue that the U.S. is premised on a setter-colonial structure that configures a messy and contradictory U.S. class and racial hierarchy.

We all need to take a moment to understand these protests with more nuance, to engage in an historical analysis of the concrete developments that led to these outbreaks of violence. Since we are in a pandemic, this is the perfect opportunity for reading critical race theory and engaging in the works of black authors. Authors, writers, activists, leaders like Huey Newton, Malcolm X, MLK, J. Sakai, George Jackson, Angela Davis, W. E. B. DuBois, James Baldwin, Kwame Ture, Frantz Fanon, Harry Haywood, Kevin "Rashid" Johnson, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, Frank B. Wilderson III, and Jared Sexton. These black thinkers and leaders have unique and valuable, often contradictory, opinions and thoughts on how racism is configured in the United States (and globally too). These works will be challenging, and they will often force you to take a deep look into your own identity. Or maybe that won't happen because you'll reject the ideas in these works: you'll create a protective wall between yourself and the work, ensuring that your ego and identity are protected from the work's traumatic implications. If that is the case, then that is fine, but I recommend that you continue to read the book with caution, be slow and deliberate, and make sure you aren't putting words in the author's mouth.