Our racism is a hydra

Hydra vulgaris (Proyecto Agua/Flickr (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)

Editor’s note: Professor Danielle Legros Georges, director of our Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program, wrote the first half of this essay in 2017 in advance of a university event. The second half was written this week in the wake of the death of George Floyd and in the context of ensuing protests.

By Danielle Legros Georges

The great sociologist W.E.B. Du Bois saw into the future and stated in 1903 that the great problem of the 20^th century would be “the problem of the color-line.” What he could not predict was the recalcitrant nature of that line, and the manner in which it would stretch into the 21^st century.

Racism is alive and well in the United States, despite the civil rights movement and legislation of the 1950s and 1960s whereby scores of Americans worked, in a massive grassroots effort, to hold our government and fellow citizens accountable to the rights and values articulated in our Constitution. Activists took great risks, and endured significant personal losses, with many losing their lives, for a multiracial democracy. The color line noted by Du Bois has, however, remained entrenched. This despite our first black president, even as some saw his 2008 election (perhaps naïvely) as a harbinger of a post-racial nation. Yes, we can, but we did not, manage to wrestle down our racial demons.

We need only turn to our devices and televisions for very recent and very graphic manifestations of American racism (and the dazzling intransigence and blindness to it by its perpetrators): a man shot seven times and dying in his car as his girlfriend and her infant are forced to watch; a woman pulled from her car for a minor traffic violation and later found dead in her jail cell; protesters hosed and tear-gassed; a man choked to death on camera; a teenager killed for walking home, wearing a hoodie; a man shot in the back running from the police. State-sponsored and personal aggression, both macro and micro, against bodies of color is as old as the nation itself, and it seems, business as usual.

Less visible and insidious are the institutions and structures that carry on traditions of privilege and segregation. American racism may not live next to us, but it works alongside us. Home loans have historically been and continue to be more difficult to obtain for people of color than for white Americans, yet property ownership has been a primary means by which many white Americans have acquired and maintained wealth. Structural violence continues to keep communities of color, particularly poor people of color, from access to high-quality education, decent housing, decent food (think food deserts), and affordable health care. Moreover, voter suppression laws and policies continue to disproportionately harm people of color. The American Civil Liberties Union reports that since 2008, “states across the country have passed measures to make it harder for Americans — particularly black people, the elderly, students, and people with disabilities — to exercise their fundamental right to cast a ballot.”

Our racism is a hydra. It is multi-headed. It is systemic. Given its nature, it is fitting that its examination be conducted by a group — comprising individuals who have sought, through their work, to understand racism in America, present it to us, support those disenfranchised by it, teach its dangers, and un-teach its pedagogy.

2020 Addendum

I write this note one week after the demise of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis. The circumstances of his death have received worldwide condemnation and engendered protests across the nation. Viewing the video of his death is unspeakably troubling, and at moments, unbearable. Floyd communicated his distress to the officers (now we understand there were three kneeling on him) without relief. His last words: I can't breathe. There is only so much a body can take. The weight of men employed as public servants, to safeguard the community in which George Floyd lived and worked, came down on Floyd, with little, if any, humanity.

I am struck by the cool and control of Derek Chauvin, the officer and man whose knee remained on Floyd’s neck as bystanders protested, pleaded. This is what power devoid of humanity resembles. Somewhere he learned this cold-bloodedness. The video both horrifies and informs. Here is state-sponsored terrorism and racism in daylight. 

In 1892, the activist and publisher Ida B. Wells lost three friends. The men were lynched in Tennessee, not by an accusation of attempting to pass counterfeit $20 bills, but because they were successful in business. Through Wells’ ensuing courageous investigations and documentation came an understanding of lynchings as a form of extra-judicial terror and social control, abetted by law enforcement. Wells revealed that these horrible killings, while involving mob violence, were not spontaneous combustions of white rage, but were often planned — ultimately to instill fear in and control a population of Americans who sought autonomy, the economic development of their communities and participation in U.S. democracy via the right to vote.

Then there are the lynching postcards and photographs. There is the coolness of the photographer who framed the shot, the smiles of the observers, picnickers even, engaged in the restorative moment of white supremacy. There is the body, with no features, no name. White supremacy drips from the postcards, labeled with locations and dates. It drips from the trees.

Here is a list of names. Here is a ledger. Here is a litany: Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, Kayla Moore, Bettie Jones, Trayvon Martin, Aiyana Stanley-Jones, Tanisha Anderson, Michael Brown, LaTanya Haggerty, Tamir Rice, Keith Childress, Gabriella Nevarez, Aura Rosser, Kevin Matthews, Michelle Cusseaux, Eric Garner, Meagan Hockaday, Sean Bell, Mya Hall, Sandra Bland, Natasha McKenna, Philando Castile, Walter Scott, Rekia Boyd, Eleanor Bumpurs, Freddy Gray, Tyisha Miller, Margaret Mitchell, Laquan McDonald, Tarika Wilson, Amadou Diallo, Jessica Williams.

This is also a list of individuals whose lives have been cut short by deadly force in the United States. There are countless others who will never appear on such lists. They go undocumented. They have been lost to time. They have been, centuries ago, fed to the waves of the Atlantic.

We are all affected by American racism.

The least we can do to honor and understand those who have been most forced to bear its weight is to learn our awful U.S. history.