WHITE SILENCE = CONSENT WHITE SILENCE = VIOLENCE
06/10/20
By Deep Time Chicago
Image courtesy of Ryan Griffis.
Empire is breaking down. And that opens up a struggle in the hearts of everyone.
The US is going through the most intense and widespread civil-rights protests since the 1960s. What we see on the streets and on the screens is the racial spectrum of society and above all of youth saying “enough!” Among those who support the movement, what matters first of all is ending systemic racism. If you are white, then one slogan is most powerful: White Silence = Consent.
This movement demands that people who benefit from a white supremacist society stand up and denounce the system that structurally privileges them over others. An incredibly large number of people are doing that. But this is not enough: denouncement is only the first step; defunding the militarized and racist police is the next. And maybe then we can put abolition on the horizon. Study after study has determined that police reforms such as increased diversity and retraining have not made a difference in the gross inequality between whites and blacks at the hands of the police. For all the efforts made since the Rodney King beating, witness the persistence of police violence in response to peaceful protesters as we write. Meanwhile municipal budgets dedicate anywhere from 17% (Los Angeles) to 40% (Chicago) of operations budgets to policing. Police are expected to take care of all the problems associated with poverty while their training and approach is strictly punitive. If police were defunded, this country stands to gain billions of dollars for education, health and other forms of community investment. (For more information about abolition, see Alex S. Vitale, The End of Policing, 2017. Link to PDF here).
Black liberation is an act of environmental justice. In order to make a more livable world, we must end a system in which Black people die from police brutality, from disproportionate exposure to environmental toxins, from denial of proper medical care, from lack of decent food and shelter. In addition to experiencing injustice at the hands of our colonialist system, we recognize that black people have fought at the forefront of the struggle to overturn this system for the wellbeing of everybody.
The president of our country is a white supremacist. With a staggering 40% approval rating (as of this writing), he incarnates the worst of this country and proves how deep-rooted injustice is. The institutionalization of American disdain for other people's lives, the destruction of neighborhoods, the abandonment of millions of people inside the country, the endless imperialist wars and murder from the air, the wanton and unrelenting destruction of the environment by corporations on the ground: all that is sustained by white consent.
This is a dangerous moment. Neoliberalism has left entire sectors of society in ruins and its abuses have given rise to many extremely alienated people. Among the crowds acting from their hearts there are also a few experienced street fighters and arsonists whose aim is to destroy things, fight cops, and provoke wider confrontations. There will be a reactionary backlash centering on their actions, but really aiming to deny all the demands of the entire movement. Many of the so-called liberals, media figures, and presumptive leaders will say we have to "bring things back to normal" by using "legitimate force.”
But “normal” is odious. For the millions of Black, Brown, and Native American people in this country “normal” is a system of racial discrimination and injustice producing a mortality rate obscenely higher than that of whites. State-sanctioned murders like the ones we have just recently witnessed of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and Ahmaud Arbery take their place in a long list. There is nothing new here except citizen videos.
We have already seen the continuation of “normal” inequalities in relation to COVID-19, as Black, Brown, and Native American people suffer the worst rates of infection and death. While many white families are given the luxury to stay home, their POC neighbors must continue working in service industries, taking public transit, and exposing themselves to higher risk in order to support a system that benefits white privilege. Poverty and racial discrimination are essentially pre-existing conditions.
The whole point of this uprising is that the force being used systematically, routinely, is illegitimate. Look at how the immigrants working in meat-packing plants are being treated. Look how the cattle themselves are treated. Go around the Middle East and count the number of people maimed by American bombs. This is racism. This is white supremacy. This is the basis of capitalism, of colonialism, of empire.
It is up to us to make sure that the society we build on the other side of this virus is a society that makes the resolution of racial and economic injustice the number one priority. To care is to change social life at the roots. In addition to face-to-face respect, it means investing in neighborhoods, opening hospitals to everyone, providing education and jobs to those who are lacking, or in short, recognizing systemic differences in life-chances and doing everything possible to address them, with actual successes and not just promises. If political leaders want to overcome Trump, they have to prove, starting now, that they will devote themselves to overcoming white supremacy and ending all the aggression and abuse that flows from it. Anything else is self-interested consent to systemic abuse.
The people in the street have it right: No justice, no peace. If we want to make it through the pandemic, push the economic collapse onto the backs of the rich, and carry out all the changes necessary to survive the onrushing wave of dramatic climate chaos—in short, if we want peace—we can't get it with the usual low profile. It's time to take a stand.
There is a variation on the slogan. It says: White Silence = Violence. The violence being indicated is not only, and not primarily, what happens in the streets. If liberal whites remain silent, the reactionary right will unleash even greater systemic violence, not only with police and military forces, but also with armed gangs and vigilantes. We can stop them by continuing to call out the things that really matter, the truth.
As many protesters across the country have stated: this time will be different, because this time, we will not stop until we achieve the change we want to see.
This text was written collaboratively by Deep Time Chicago, an art/research/activism initiative formed in the wake of the Anthropocene Curriculum program at HKW in Berlin, Germany. The initiative’s goal is to explore one core idea: humanity as a geological agency, capable of disrupting the earth system and inscribing present modes of existence into deep time. By knitting together group readings, guided walks, lectures, panels, screenings, performances, publications and exhibitions, we hope to develop a public research trajectory, offering a variety of formats where Chicago area inhabitants can grapple with the crucial questions of global ecological change.