Baltimore: The Black Elite has not learned how to condemn violence and destruction without condemnin

Predictably the conversation in the media about Baltimore quickly changes from systemic police brutality, racism and poverty to one about the sanctity of property and the primacy of law and order. The same mistake occurs over and over—the system drives people to desperation and when they express themselves they are criminalized.

It is painful to hear the Black Mayor mourning the loss of property outside of the larger context of the chronic anti-Black racism. It still bothers me that the Black Elite has not learned how to condemn violence and destruction without condemning Black and poor people as hooligans. There is little attempt to see the burning and looting as the worse consequence of a persistent anti-black racism.

It was just yesterday that Black People were legal property subject to burning, looting, raping and wanton killing without any recourse to protection by the law. Did anyone mourn the destruction of property then? Today the chains around our feet are removed but we are still subject to daily lynching, which the law finds a way to excuse.

Many Black People still express surprise at the frequency of official murder of Black men. That is a reflection of the extent to which we as a people have allowed ourselves to believe that the rest of the world has changed its attitude to Blackness. They have duped many of us into believing Racism is gone so that Racism can be practiced on us without us recognizing it. We stopped affirming our Blackness because somebody fooled us into believing that to say you are Black is to be divisive. And then they murder our boys and girls precisely because they are Black.

Baltimore is yet another manifestation of how far America has come on how to deal with the uncomfortable presence of its Black citizens—but in the wrong direction. What we need is a curfew on Racism. As Bob Marley asks rhetorically—why can’t we roam this open country?

Dr. David Hinds, a political activist and commentator, is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Caribbean and African Diaspora Studies at Arizona State University. More of his writings and commentaries and other news and views on Guyana and Caribbean politics can be found on his YouTube Channel Hinds’ Sight: Dr. David Hinds’ Guyana-Caribbean Politics and on his website www.guyanacaribbeanpolitics.com