Black Lives Matter

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I posted about donating to bail bonds and some readers objected. Let me address the objections.

The most common one is that there is too much looting and violence, and that we should support peaceful protestors. I can't take this objection seriously when the critics show no indignation over police violence, first from the systematic killing of black people by police and then by the overly violent police response to protests. Don't just read the headlines that talk about looting. Read the social media, look for the videos by protestors that document what is happening. The protests are largely peaceful and the police have been responding with tear gas, rubber bullets (which are far from harmless), batons, and other kinds of violence. In short, any horror about protestors' violence that doesn't at the same time bring up the much more serious problem of police violence reveals the investments of the critic in maintaining a system where the police are allowed to use violence whenever they want, typically against populations that are marginalized and usually invisible. If middle class, upper class, white, and white adjacent populations were subject to the routine deployment of police violence in the way black, brown, indigenous and poor communities are subject to such violence, we would dismantle the police tomorrow.

On "looting": anybody who uses that word and does not at the same time acknowledge that the United States (and many other imperial and colonial countries like France, Belgium, Australia, Spain) are built on the systematic looting of black, brown, indigenous, and yes, Asian peoples and countries is blind to history. The USA would not exist except for the white settler theft of land from indigenous and Mexican people; and the looting of black bodies from Africa, otherwise known as enslavement. Asian migrant labor in the USA also helped build this country, and they were looted by exploitative businesses, too. Is looting wrong? If so, you better understand that the looting of stores are individual crimes, while the looting that is genocide and slavery is systematic, with its history whitewashed and its benefits built into a system of white supremacy that benefits white people in ways that they don't even acknowledge (for example: whose mortgages are approved; whose wealth is transferred and inherited; whose bodies are subject to police violence; whose schools are better funded; and on and on).

On the plight of individual shop owners, especially people of color, whose stores have been damaged or destroyed: my own parents were small business owners in Vietnam and California, and were violently attacked in both countries by thieves. So I get the personal, human dimension of people who feel that they have not done anything to deserve the violence that they or their businesses have been subject to. But I'll point to the Los Angeles riots of 1992 as a previous example of this issue. About $800 billion of property damage was suffered, about half of it born by Korean immigrant store owners. That's a tragedy, and the Korean American community suffered tremendously from economic and psychic damage. But put that in contrast to other figures. 62 people died during the riots; 1 was Korean American, most were black and brown people. Thousands were arrested; most were black and brown people. What that tells me is that black and brown people paid with their lives and liberty, either for "looting" or for protesting the conditions of their racial and economic segregation that they had endured for decades in LA (Los Angeles, for decades, was built on "redlining" where certain neighborhoods were reserved for whites, and other neighborhoods were reserved for black and brown and--for quite a while--Asian people, enforced by racial covenants and by discriminatory real estate and lending practices). Korean Americans suffered, but economically. They had businesses and wealth to lose, but they didn't pay with their lives or liberty, at least immediately (how much PTSD and long term consequences they suffered, I don't know how to quantify, but they did). This is the racially and economically stratified nature of American society, which is how capitalism operates and which is where immigrants and Asians are inserted. Korean Americans knew this and were enraged that the LAPD basically cordoned off Koreatown and let it burn. Korean Americans realized that they had been sacrificed to appease the anger of black, brown, and poor people. That is why, in the days after the riots, Korean Americans marched en masse, not to denounce their black and brown neighbors and customers, but to denounce the LAPD and the racial/class system that allowed Korean Americans a margin of success, until the system decided to sacrifice them as the middle and model minority. So anybody who talks about the plight of individual shopkeepers without understanding how they fit into this larger system doesn't get it. They don't get that the system doesn't really care about this individual shopkeeper. The system will elevate the shopkeeper--often an immigrant--as proof of the American Dream, but when the American Dream collapses on its own contradictions, the immigrant or individual shopkeeper will be sacrificed. Why else did the overwhelming portion of the financial rescue funds for this country go to corporations instead of small businesses?

Lastly, on the use of bail funds: some have asked about whether the bail funds can be targeted only to nonviolent protestors. I addressed the problem of singling out violence above. But on the issue of whether to target funds at all, let's consider what the function of bail funds are for. Like a lot of other things in this country, bail is not neutral. Everyone can use the bail system, but who actually can afford to do it? There's a movement afoot to abolish the cash bail system, because cash bail is a way to keep poor people--disproportionately black, brown, and indigenous--in prison for crimes of which they have not yet been convicted. If they can't afford bail, they can't get out of jail, but the reasons for which they are in jail can be highly suspect. So there is a larger question of social justice around bail that bail funds address. As for this particular instance, the majority of arrests have been of protestors, not of "looters," so for both these reasons, I'm not terribly worried that my donations will bail out "looters."

Final note: Martin Luther King Jr. said that "riot is the language of the unheard." This is your test to see if you can hear.


(Viet-American author Viet Thanh Nguyen)