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Is Easter relevant?
What if I was to ask you what images will you conjure regarding Easter? For many pictures of yellow chicks, ducklings, bunnies, and colourful eggs! This sounds like a celebration of the rebirth of nature, nothing too religious. As for the hot cross buns, these come to our local stores across the year. The calendar marks it as a spring break without any significant reference to the religion that underpins the origin of the holiday. Easter is a moving celebration that observers the lunar calendar like other religious festivals dictated by the equinox of spring and the first full moon. It replaces previous Greco-Roman holidays, and it takes its influence for the Hebrew Passover. For those who regard themselves as Christians, the message Easter encapsulates is part of their pillars of faith. The main message is that Jesus, the son of God, was arrested for sedition and blasphemy, went through two types of trials representing two different forms of justice; a secular and a religious court which found him guilty. He was convicted of all charges, sentenced to death, and executed the day after sentencing. This was exceptional speed for a justice system that many countries will envy. By all accounts, this man who claimed to be king and divine became a convicted felon put to death for his crimes. The Christian message focuses primarily on what happened next. Allegedly the body of the dead man is placed in a sealed grave only to be resurrected (return from the death, body and spirit) roamed the earth for about 40 days until he ascended into heavens with the promise to be back in the second coming. Christian scholars have been spending time and hours discussing the representation of this miracle. The central core of Christianity is the victory of life over death. The official line is quite remarkable and provided Christians with an opportunity to admire their head of their church.
What if this was not really the most important message in the story? What if the focus was not on the resurrection but on human suffering. The night before his arrest Jesus, according to the New Testament will ask “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me” in a last attempt to avoid the humiliation and torture that was to come. In Criminology, we recognise in people’s actions free will, and as such, in a momentary lapse of judgment, this man will seek to avoid what is to come. The forthcoming arrest after being identified with a kiss (most unique line-up in history) will be followed by torture. This form of judicial torture is described in grim detail in the scriptures and provides a contrast to the triumph of the end with the resurrection. Theologically, this makes good sense, but it does not relate to the collective human experience. Legal systems across time have been used to judge and to punish people according to their deeds. Human suffering in punishment seems to be centred on bringing back balance to the harm incurred by the crime committed. Then there are those who serve as an example of those who take the punishment, not because they accept their actions are wrong, but because their convictions are those that rise above the legal frameworks of their time. When Socrates was condemned to death, his students came to rescue him, but he insisted on ingesting the poison. His action was not of the crime but of the nature of the society he envisaged. When Jesus is met with the guard in the garden of Gethsemane, he could have left in the dark of the night, but he stays on. These criminals challenge the orthodoxy of legal rights and, most importantly, our perception that all crimes are bad, and criminals deserve punishment.
Bunnies are nice and for some even cuddly creatures, eggs can be colourful and delicious, especially if made of chocolate, but they do not contain that most important criminological message of the day. Convictions and principles for those who have them, may bring them to clash with authorities, they may even be regarded as criminals but every now and then they set some new standards of where we wish to travel in our human journey. So, to answer my own question, religiosity and different faiths come and go, but values remain to remind us that we have more in common than in opposition.
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When This is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic
This week a book was released which I both co-edited and contributed to and which has been two years in the making. When This is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic is a volume combining a range of accounts from artists to poets, practitioners to academics. Our initial aim of the book was borne out of a need for commemoration but we cannot begin to address this without considering inequalities throughout the pandemic.
Each of the four editors had both personal and professional reasons for starting the project. I – like many – was (and still is) deeply affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. When we first went into lockdown, we were shown the data every day, telling us the numbers of people who had the virus and of those who had died with COVID-19. Behind these numbers, I saw each and every person. I thought about their loved ones left behind, how many of them died alone without being able to say goodbye other than through a video screen. I thought about what happened to the bodies afterwards, how death rites would be impacted and how the bereaved would cope without hugs and face to face social support. Then my grandmother died. She had overcome COVID-19 in the way that she was testing negative. But I heard her lungs on the day she died. I know. And so, I became even more consumed with questions of the COVID-19 dead, with/of debates. I was angry at the narratives surrounding the disposability of people’s lives, at people telling me ‘she had a good innings’. It was personal now.
I now understood the impact of not being able to hug my grandpa at my grandmother’s funeral, and how ‘normal’ cultural practices surrounding death were disturbed. My grandmother loved singing in choirs and one of the traumatic parts of our bereavement was not being able to sing at her funeral as she would have wanted and how we wanted to remember her. Lucy Easthope, a disaster planner and one of my co-authors speaks of her frustrations in this regard:
“we’ve done something incredibly traumatising to the families that is potentially bigger than the bereavement itself. In any disaster you should still allow people to see the dead. It is a gross inhumanity of bad planning that people couldn’t’t visit the sick, view the deceased’s bodies, or attend funerals. Had we had a more liberal PPE stockpile we could have done this. PPE is about accessing your loved ones and dead ones, it is not just about medical professionals.”
The book is divided into five parts, each addressing a different theme all of which I argue are relevant to criminologists and each part including personal, professional, and artistic reflections of the themes. Part 1 considered racialised, classed, and gendered identities which impacted on inequality throughout the pandemic, asking if we really are in this together? In this section former children’s laureate Michael Rosen draws from his experience of having COVID-19 and being hospitalised in intensive care for 48 days. He writes about disposability and eugenics-style narratives of herd immunity, highlighting the contrast between such discourse and the way he was treated in the NHS: with great care and like any other patient.
The second part of the book considers how already existing inequalities have been intensified throughout the pandemic in policing, law and immigration. Our very own @paulsquaredd contributed a chapter on the policing of protests during the pandemic, drawing on race in the Black Lives Matter protests and gender in relation to Sarah Everard. As my colleagues and students might expect, I wrote about the treatment of asylum seekers during the initial lockdown periods with a focus on the shift from secure and safe self-contained housing to accommodating people seeking safety in hotels.
Part three considers what happens to the dead in a pandemic and draws heavily on the experiences of crematoria and funerary workers and how they cared for the dead in such difficult circumstances. This part of the book sheds light on some of the forgotten essential workers during the pandemic. During lockdown, we clapped for NHS workers, empathised with supermarket workers and applauded other visible workers but there were many less visible people doing valuable unseen work such as caring for the dead. When it comes to death society often thinks of those who cared for them when they were alive and the bereaved who were left to the exclusion of those who look after the body. The section provides some insight into these experiences.
Moving through the journey of life and death in a pandemic, the fourth section focusses on questions of commemoration, a process which is both personal and political. At the heart of commemorating the COVID-19 dead in the UK is the National COVID Memorial Wall, situated facing parliament and sat below St Thomas’ hospital. In a poignant and political physical space, the unofficial wall cared for by bereaved family members such as Fran Hall recognises and remembers the COVID dead. If you haven’t visited the wall yet, there will be a candlelit vigil walk next Wednesday, 29th March at 7pm and those readers who live further afield can digitally walk the wall here, listening to the stories of bereaved family members as you navigate the 150,837 painted hearts.
The final part of the book both reflects on the mistakes made and looks forward to what comes next. Can we do better in the next pandemic? Emergency planner Matt Hogan presents a critical view on the handling of the pandemic, returning to the refrain, ‘emergency planning is dead. Long live emergency planning’. Lucy Easthope is equally critical, developing what she has discussed in her book When the Dust Settles to consider how and what lessons we can learn from the management of the pandemic. Lucy calls out for activism, concluding with calls to ‘Give them hell’ and ‘to shout a little louder’.
Concluding in his afterword, Gary Younge suggests this is ‘teachable moment’, but will we learn?
When This is Over: Reflections on an Unequal Pandemic is published by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press. The book can be purchased directly from the publisher who offer a 25% discount when subscribing. It can also be purchased from all good book shops and Amazon.
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Frames of Farage: The far-right’s hijacking of the “anti-“ narrative
During the research and write-up of my PhD, I have had the opportunity to continuously reflect on the chronology of populist political discourse and the divisive stance it has taken in recent years, not least in relation to key issues of social (in)justice. What has fascinated me most, however, is the familiarity of much of the (currently) dominant narrative to the discourses used during the early years of the Austerity programme (early 2010s) where anti-capitalist, anti-establishment and anti-elite sentiments were particularly rife. I reflected on my days of activism as part of the Anonymous hacktivist collective, when these words seemed to be synonymous with a desire for genuine social justice for the vulnerable, marginalised and minoritised…only to later discover that the years of gradual drip-feeding of far-right ideas surrounding race, gender, religion, sexuality and environmentalism had hijacked those same signifiers – framing any kind of opposition to the “new” (but very much old and tired) hegemony as “annoying wokeness” or “political correctness gone mad”.
Right-leaning politicians soon jumped on this bandwagon to appeal to the racist factions of the public who had finally been empowered to show their true inner colours during the Brexit years, and those who were simply looking for an outlet for their woes – someone or something to blame – but who had somehow managed to forget the deep scars left behind from the inevitable consequences of neoliberalism. There cannot be a better demonstration of this than Liz Truss’ latest attack, in her keynote speech at the Conservative Party conference, on anyone opposing the government’s policies as being “anti-growth”…whatever that means. Even as each Conservative politician turns out to be more discursively radical than their predecessor, rooting the country deeper in this post-truth hegemony, we are still subjected to remnants of Nigel Farage from the sidelines. In his most recent 42-minute interview with Steven Edgington from the Telegraph, he demonstrated the continued stronghold of the far-right on the discursive field surrounding anti-establishmentism and anti-elitism.
It was interesting to hear Farage’s embodiment of the 1930s Chicago School of thought surrounding crime and criminality, framed as some kind of nostalgic dream that Britons should aspire to return to; people speaking the same language, having similar cultural interests, histories, engaging in self-regulation (i.e. emulating ideas of informal policing mechanisms), with the consequence of the alternative being framed as lawless anarchy. It is almost as though he spent an inordinate amount of time rifling through any Criminology textbook he could find to try to secure the smallest sliver of justification for spewing hatred about migrants and refugees. It is unclear whether or not this was a deliberate attempt to appeal to academic audiences, but it may have been worth (rather than remaining in the 1930s) actually reading ahead to more contemporary work which largely discredit some of these bygone theoretical ideas as inadequate in explaining “crime” rates in large metropolitan cities. Even so, Farage’s Chicago School ideas seemed misguided. Discourses relating to ‘community cohesion’ and ‘integration’ were thrown out without adequate explanation, closely linked to his views on immigration; the cause of our economic woes being framed as some kind of ‘burden on the state’ as a result of migration.
In Farage’s post-truth world, deregulation of industry and business is framed as a solution to the ongoing cost-of-living crisis. Well, we know the inevitable consequence of deregulating industry…we have been privy to the process in slow batches for 12 years. The UK also fell victim to this kind of neoliberal model during the Thatcher era. There is a vast archive of state-initiated and state-facilitated corporate crimes (and other significant individual and ecological harms) that can be attributed directly to the deregulation of major industry, and that’s even before talking about the horrors of the Grenfell Tower fire. These arguments for neoliberalism were accompanied during the interview by a narrative fixated on attacking globalism (e.g. “globalist idiots”) in defence of economic, political and cultural nationalism. The outrage at the state-facilitated actions of rich bankers that caused the 2008 Economic Crisis, and the subsequent Austerity programme, was framed as some kind of exaggeration (“hardly anyone lost their jobs”).
While there are statements made throughout the interview that those opposing the current Conservative government could agree with, like the weakness of the Party in resonating with ‘regular’ people (due to being out of touch with social reality), and the fact that they are almost certainly “headed for a 97-style wipeout, and they deserve it”…it is worth noting that the message is also reliant on the messenger. As a private-school educated politician, with a background in corporate tax avoidance, Farage is the epitome of the ‘establishment’, the ‘metropolitan elite’ who he claims to oppose. Despite this discursive war taking place in political, social and academic arenas, the “anti-” narrative needs reclaiming not through defensive practices, but ones which engage in active reframing of the ‘establishment’ as being all-encompassing of the vices associated with neoliberalism; greed, selfishness, individualism, ego-centrism and inevitable narcissism.
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No ways tired: Miss Lillie, arrested with Mrs. Parks.
12 September 2021
Visit to the Equal Justice Initiative Museum, From Enslavement to Mass Incarceration.
Near the end of the EJI’s newly expanded museum, there is a wall of slightly larger than life-size mugshots of folks arrested alongside Mrs. Rosa Parks in just another local act of civil disobedience. I’ve rarely seen a more earnest collection of everyday people, not unlike the folks around me as I get to know Montgomery today.
Mugshots.
Men in suits, ladies sporting pretty hats in their Sunday best.
Farmers in overalls and working women in neat dresses.
Learned-looking men with glasses, and fancy tiepins.
Young men in sleek fedoras and two or three older men in derbies.
Another man wears a skullcap.
Meaningful women and men of age, of reconstruction age, whom we imagine had by then seen every intimate and public side of Jim and Jane Crows’ wickedness.
They were representin’.
The only thing they seem to have in common is their determination.
(Sigh).
I found myself face-to-face and fixated with
Miss Lillie Bell Robinson.
She sat,
Framed,
With her arms,
Crossed.
Double-crossed.
With her head,
Tilted,
With her expression, tired, but
Also, a particular squint in her eye – or perhaps a gleam – that betrays her obvious fatigue,
As if saying: “No ways tired.”
I moan in tune, and
This somehow keeps my knees from buckling under the weight of it all, since
The preceding exhibits have already taken us along a long timeline where
Every glimpse of justice gets trampled upon –
Again, and again.
I sigh and see why they are tired.
On that day, did Miss Lillie know that much more violence, much more real intensified violence was yet to come?
This was the mid-50’s, and
Could Miss Lillie have imagined that:
Just 5-6 years later,
Freedom Riders from the north would arrive around the corner,
Riding federally desegregated, public coaches, and
The same local sheriffs would stand by, and
Let them get beaten, assaulted, brutally, and
Battered by white-hot mobs –
Only to arrest the so-called outside agitators?
Probably all of you, Miss Lillie, were battered by many of the same hands, and
Abandoned by many of the same actors of local justice.
I estimate Miss Lillie to be my grandparents’ age, and
By that day, they’d already fled and made their way to Kentucky.
I am wondering where Miss Lillie is now – right now?
(I take a deep sigh and realize that I’ve not yet reached the mass incarceration part of the museum, and ultimately just skimmed on by.
Graciously, the final exhibit is a “Recovery room,” a hall of walls of portraits,
which we might also call “mugshots,”
As each face had all, actively, over centuries,
Activated against oppression.
I recognized writers, musicians, poets, painters, politicians, preachers, teachers, activists of all flavors, and
After the weight of the truth shown in each timeframe, this left me feeling full of joy.
And, I moaned along with the tunes, there, too.
That day,
She’d had had enough, and
Though reluctant before,
Somehow now,
Miss Lillie could no longer stand by, and
Just wait for justice, and
Just go on about her own merry way, and
Pretend like this is ok, and
Adjust to the insanity of segregation, and
The very look on her face said this is “why we can’t wait.”
Her face calm, but
Twisted.
The mug shot ID, hanging around her neck like a shackle: #7010.
Business as usual, and for sure somebody’s gettin’ paid.
So, she not knowing.
She, not knowing if this all will work.
If getting arrested today mattered.
If any of this is worth it.
If this time change is coming,
having nothing left but Faith…
in herself, in others, and
Somehow faith in her nation… to do the right thing,
Despite this day, and
In spite of the many apparent setbacks, and
A million everyday,
Tiny little cuts.
We rise.
That day, Miss Lillie rose to the occasion.
She and all these others stepped up so we could step out, and
Step in here now,
Free to learn about each step along our legacy of peace.
I’m now in awe of Miss Lillie, and
Take a step back and
Smile at her, and
Take in the glory of this sensation.
Hats off to you, Miss Lillie.
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DIE in Solidarity with Diversity-Inclusion-Equality
As an associate lecturer on a casual contract, I was glad to stand in solidarity with my friends and colleagues also striking as part of UCU Industrial Action. Concurrently, I was also glad to stand in solidarity with students (as a recent former undergrad and masters student … I get it), students who simply want a better education, including having a curriculum that represents them (not a privileged minority). I wrote this poem for the students and staff taking part in strike action, and it comes inspired from the lip service universities give to doing equality while undermining those that actually do it (meanwhile universities refuse to put in the investment required). This piece also comes inspired by ‘This is Not a Humanising Poem’ by Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, a British author-educator from Bradford in Yorkshire.
Some issues force you to protest
the way oppression knocks on your front door
and you can’t block out the noise
“protest peacefully, non-violently”
I have heard people say
show ‘the undecided’, passive respectability
be quiet, leave parts of yourself at home
show them you’re just as capable of being liked
enough for promotion into the canteen,
protest with kindness and humour
make allusions to smiling resisters in literature
they’d rather passive images of Rosa Parks all honestly
but not her politics against racism, patriarchy, and misogyny
but I wanna tell them about British histories of dissent
the good and the bad – 1919 Race Riots
the 1926 general strikes, and the not so quiet
interwar years of Caribbean resistance to military conscription
I wanna talk about how Pride was originally a protest
I wanna talk about the Grunwick Strike and Jayaben Desai
and the Yorkshire miners that came to London in solidarity
with South Asian migrant women in what was 1980s austerity
I want to rant about Thatcherism as the base
for the neoliberal university culture we work in today
I want to talk about the Poll Tax Riots of 1990
and the current whitewashing of the climate emergency
they want protesters to be frugal in activism,
don’t decolonise the curriculum
they say decolonise
they mean monetise, let’s diversify …
but not that sort of diversity
nothing too political, critical, intellectual
transform lives, inspire change?
But no,
they will make problems out of people who complain
it’s your fault, for not being able to concentrate
in workplaces that separate the work you do
from the effects of Black Lives Matter and #MeToo
they make you the problem
they make you want to leave
unwilling to acknowledge that universities
discriminate against staff and students systemically
POCs, working-class, international, disabled, LGBT
but let’s show the eligibility of staff networks
while senior leaders disproportionately hire TERFs
staff and students chequered with severe floggings
body maps of indenture and slavery
like hieroglyphics made of flesh
but good degrees, are not the only thing that hold meaning
workers rights, students’ rights to education
so this will not be a ‘people are human’ poem
we are beyond respectability now
however, you know universities will DIE on that hill
instead,
treat us well when we’re tired
productive, upset, frustrated
when we’re in back-to-back global crises
COVID-19, Black Lives Matter, femicide,
failing in class, time wasting, without the right visas,
the right accents; Black, white, homeless, in poverty,
women, trans, when we’re not A-Grade students, when we don’t
have the right last name; when we’re suicidal
when people are anxious, depressed, autistic
tick-box statistics within unprotected characteristics
all permeates through workers’ and student rights
When you see staff on strike now,
we’re protesting things related to jobs yes,
but also, the after-effects
as institutions always protect themselves
so sometimes I think about
when senior management vote on policies…
if there’s a difference between the nice ones ticking boxes
and the other ones that scatter white supremacy?
I wonder if it’s about diversity, inclusion, and equality [DIE],
how come they discriminate in the name of transforming lives
how come Black students are questioned (under caution) in disciplinaries
like this is the London Met maintaining law and order …
upholding canteen cultures of policing
Black and Brown bodies. Decolonisation is more
than the curriculum; Tuck and Yang
tell us decolonisation is not a metaphor,
so why is it used in meetings as lip service –
why aren’t staff hired in
in critical race studies, whiteness studies, decolonial studies
why is liberation politics and anti-racism not at the heart of this
why are mediocre white men failing upwards,
they tell me we have misunderstood
but promotion based on merit doesn’t exist
bell hooks called this
imperialist heteropatriarchal white supremacy
you know Free Palestine, Black Lives Matter, and the rest
we must protest how we want to protest
we must never be silenced; is this being me radical, am I radical
Cos I’m tired of being called a “millennial lefty snowflake”, when I’m just trying not to DIE?!
Further Reading
Ahmed, Sara (2012) On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life. London: Duke.
Ahmed, Sara (2021) Complaint. London: Duke.
Bhanot, Kavita (2015) Decolonise, Not Diversify. Media Diversified [online].
Double Down News (2021) This Is England: Ash Sakar’s Alternative Race Report. YouTube.
Chen, Sophia (2020) The Equity-Diversity-Inclusion Industrial Complex Gets a Makeover. Wired [online].
Puwar, Nirmal (2004) Space Invaders: Race, Gender and Bodies Out of Place. Oxford: Berg.
Read, Bridget (2021) Doing the Work at Work What are companies desperate for diversity consultants actually buying? The Cut [online].
Ventour, Tré (2021) Telling it Like it is: Decolonisation is Not Diversity. Diverse Educators [online].
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Jimmy Carr and Acceptable Racism
Jimmy Carr’s Dark Material stand-up comedy is the latest in a long line of everyday racism that has been subjected to a trial by Twitter. The context in which the joke is told is as follows:
A wealthy white gorger man mocks Roma and Sinti people because of who they are. His mostly white gorger audience than laughs and finds this hilarious. This man’s stand-up is so successful that it is endorsed by Netflix, of which the CEO appears to be a rich white gorger man. Both Jimmy Carr and Netflix profit from dehumanising a marginalised group of people.
If the joke had been delivered to audiences which were predominantly Gypsy Roma and Traveller people this would not have been viewed as funny. To adapt Emma Dabiri’s (2021, p. 98) work, ‘a ‘joke’ in which the gag is that the person is [a Gypsy, Roma or Traveller] isn’t a joke, it’s just racism disguised as humour’ (2021, p. 98).
Carr’s joke should not be surprising as he prides himself on his use of homophobic, racist and misogynistic ‘career ending’ jokes and these jokes are enjoyed by many.
The anti-racist Twitter reactions to this joke could provide some hope that many people are becoming more willing to challenge racism. Some Tweets were aimed at increasing the awareness and calling-out racism. Many Tweets were kind, and others were asking for Jimmy to provide a genuine apology. Although, Carr’s words (plus the support of the audience and Netflix) are a symptom of a racist society, so does the focus on Carr’s interpersonal actions mean that people are being distracted from the broader structural issues of racism and white supremacy?
After scrolling though Twitter there was a clear divide between those claiming to be ‘anti-racist’ and those claiming that ‘the freedom of speech’ is more important than combating racism. This left me thinking,
How do we get to a point where people are willing to recognise that oppressive systems impact us all, but differently, in some way shape or form?
And;
How could people be encouraged to fight against unequal and damaging systems in a way that encourages social change and forgiveness rather than hate and division?
It seems that online activism might be useful for raising awareness and giving voices to those pushed out of mainstream media. However, if focused on just ‘calling out’ individual acts of racism whilst online there is a danger of being caught up in an online culture war and not actually doing much to change structural issues in the offline world.
Whilst the Jimmy Carr Twitter debates continue, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill which could further damage Gypsy Roma and Traveller lives is in the final stages of Bill passage. As well as this, inequality and misery is set to become further entrenched with the impending surge in energy bills. All of this is thanks to a government which is a mess, corrupt and devoid of any sense of morality. Even so, maybe Jimmy Carr should stick to making jokes about his own experiences of upper class tax avoidance next time.
Note: Thank you to Emma Dabiri’s What White People Can Do Next (2021) for helping me to articulte my frustrations with online Twitter debates.
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The Peace of ‘the Lamb with the Lion’ (Oh say, can you see?). Happy not Leap Day #BlackenAsiaWithLove
The peace of the Lamb with the Lion (Oh say, can you see?)
There is no peace between the lamb and the lion.
The lion will always feel hunger, and feast, nurture cubs, and prosper on lamb.
This becomes the lion’s nature.
The lion may grow greedy on the ease of his feed.
Wallowing on his back in the sun, him belly full o’ greed.
For the lion, none of this is the slaughter of the lambs.
🎵Them belly full but we HUNgry.
Black people were born into the American caste system hangry!
White people, on the flip side, were granted freedom to feed themselves, and
Gain capital if they agreed to cooperate – actively or passively -with the system of hate.
Many men did, many were coerced with the promises and benefits and power of whiteness.
Hunger and anger easily fester into animality, hell and hate – none of which leads to liberation. If we were determined to be free, merely mastering the masters’ tools could not be our fate. We have had to craft a culture of resistance… based on love. This is the antithesis of the Greed, Anger and Stupidity that fuels hate. In our resistance, we have forged the ‘strength to love’ ourselves, in spite of the ‘birth of the nation’. Humanists of all hues always find a way.
Early that winter after Emmett Till was executed and his Mississippi killers acquitted, the radical Mrs. Rosa Parks refused to continue to go along with riding Jim Crow in Alabama, and in so doing gave Dr. King his final cue. Down one summer from up north, apparently young Till had made some form of pass at a white woman in a shop in town. He crossed Jim Crow, for which he had to be promptly sacrificed.
Apparently, Mamie Till had sent out a powerful signal that summer by leaving the casket open for all to view her son’s dehumanized corpse – an honor killing, quite scripted and business as usual by that point in our nation’s still hopeful nascent democracy. Ms. Till resisted. She’d crossed a line by balling her fist, then pointing her accusing finger squarely at Jim Crow – that’s who’d snatched, brutally tortured, mutilated and murdered her boy. The lions had fed. “Dar he,” Till’s uncle, Moses Wright, said standing in court, pointing to the men who’d dragged the boy from his house, never to be seen alive again. They could no longer cooperate with a corrupt and deadly system.
Reading Rosa Parks’ cue, King rallied his congregation, and
Agitated the local community, and
Called for a boycott,
Not a storming of the state capital, which still sits just a stone’s throw from his church.
Teach-ins, sit-ins, rallies and marches followed.
They called them rioters-n-things just they do today.
Roaring, shouting, chanting, singing: We! Shall! Overcome (period).
They were met with guns and bayonets on bridges,
At schools, white parents mobbed Black children trying to make their way.
Now, Miss Betsy pays for her kids to go to private schools and ignores the public ones.
We were singing the blues for Mister Charlie.
This blues train was a just stop along long revolutionary tracks that have deep underground roots.
We’re talking ‘bout a revolution!
Bayard Rustin taught Martin Luther King the power and techniques of non-violent civil resistance. By 1959, MLK had assumed the rhetoric and role of Fredrick Douglas, and began
fellowshipping with Dalits while studying how Gandhi-ji had spearheaded a non-violent imperial defeat, which decolonized, yet ultimately, further splintered the sub-continent. Such solidarity still stands between oppressed and progressive peoples everywhere.
King’s call to conscience and action grew…the lambs bellowed out for solidarity.
King’s movement joined hands with people of all races, religions, all faiths, and
They marched arm-n-arm with the humanists among sinners, senators, students and sanitary workers, and
Gave the president the language of emancipation, and
Then Dr. King advocated against war,
Just as poor and Black soldiers were being disproportionately deployed to die on the front line.
They say that’s what got him shot-n-killed to death…
A casualty among many.
There are people around the world today singing “
GAS fuels hate!
This is why we can’t wait!
Progressives peacefully demonstrate to affirm our shared belief in humanism,
In spite our CONstitution’s original ill-fate.
Love is the true heart of patriotism.
Peace is what our actions illustrate.
So, get up and sing your blues today because #BLM:
🎵Get up! Stand-up!/Stand-up for your rights!/Get up! stand up!/Don’t give up the fight! [repeat infinitely]
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Rioting coverage of Week 1: I watched Faux News for Six Full minutes. #BlackAsiaWithLove
I watched Fox News today.
For 6 full minutes.
They had a panel of 3 cops to discuss the current unrest…or so it seemed.
Of course, a token negro in uniform was amongst them.
“Defund the police” is the headline of this comical sketch.
That’s not the actual proposition; proponents promote funding “public safety” measures.
But shutting down the police is all the sly Fox heard, and
Cunningly called on these cops to comment upon THAT, only.
The first white cop went off: “We’re here for business owners and hard-working people.”
He didn’t address the threat to Black life, espcially cops’ roots and roles in terrorism.
The host nods knowingly, and they summarily reduce all this unrest to law-n-order.
No mention of the brutality of cops.
No discussion of their pattern.
Predictably, the other white cop gave a worst-case scenario about Domestic violence.
What would citizens do without cops?
He says this as if cops have some awesome reputation of domestic intervention.
Also, I’m thinking: But…
Wasn’t that black chick just killed in Texas last year,
Inside her own house,
In response to a neighbor calling the police for care one night.
The neighbor hadn’t even called 9-1-1, but rang the non-emergency number, and
They still came in blazing as they are wont to do in Black households.
“I just wanted them to check on her…
Her front door was open… it was late…
So, I was concerned,” the neighbor later says matter-of-factly on the nightly news.
Atatiana Jefferson was a law-abiding citizen,
Playing video games with her 8-year-old nephew.
She got shot dead.
Check.
Black people cannot call the police.
Check.
Not even a concerned citizen.
Check.
Check this: In my hometown, Breonna Taylor was also a so-called law-abiding citizen.
Not only was Breonna law-abiding, but she was a medical worker –
Essential during a global pandemic!
But, she was Black.
She was shot to death in her own house,
Moments after the police arrived.
Fox don’t talk about none of this.
They go on with the implicit assumption that
Either Black people are not law-abiding,
Or, Black citizens never need the police.
“Cops need to be more sensitive, sure…” the other white cop says, then adds 12 butts!
He looks like an ass.
This whole faux news channel reduces today’s protests to rioting and looting, law-n-order.
They have met every effort at Black liberation with the same hostility.
Though openly devoted to non-violence,
Those pundits called the good Reverend Dr. King a “radical,” an “outside agitator,” and
Much, much worse!
When we peacefully took a knee just a few years back for the same cause,
These same pundits were quick to diss us,
Dissed Beyoncé for taking over the Superbowl in Black Power fashion!
Dissed Nike for sighing Collin Kaepernick – posting videos of them burning their own Nike gear.
They diss every Black person killed by the police as “disobedient” and “non-compliant.”
They consistently diss our resistance as unpatriotic – the oldest race card,
Because for them, racism is a game.
As if they didn’t twist their Bible to say slaves had to be loyal to their masters.
As if our efforts to breathe life into the Constitution weren’t patriotic!
As if Crispus Attucks wasn’t the first American to die for Independence!
As if this weren’t some strange and rotten fruit!
These pundits said the same about Martin Luther King, the FBI’s “an enemy of the state.”
They said all of this, of course, until he was martyred.
Then eventually, they called him a hero.
Now, even this faux news channel quotes Dr. King regularly.
Cleverly, Martin Luther da King gets pulled out of the Fox’s hat at the sign of any racial trouble!
The token negro cop gets asked the token question:
He’s asked to speak on behalf of all Black people.
Perform for your master, [N-word]!
Luckily, this man changes the narrative from dissing these hasty solutions to
Talking about real, systemic change to a systemic problem.
It’s not even clear that the other guests command this level of vocabulary, keeping it so simple.
The other cops were set up to denounce this solution, and
They were neither asked, nor chose to address any single way of improving policing.
All responsibility is implicitly shifted to individual citizens:
‘Policing is fine, Black people just don’t act right!’
I wish they’d just gon’head and say it!
Luckily, this Black man is neither stepping nor fetching their white supremacy for them today.
Not today, Satan!
Again, the faux media pundit circles back to defunding the po-po.
At present, this is only the legislative solution presented by any lawmaker thus far.
Weeks later, that message emanating from Minneapolis had spread,
Even to Congress, although
Aunty Maxine had already reclaimed her time on this one.
Predictably, this incites the white cop to repeat his singular talking point like a quacking duck:
“We’re here for business owners and hard-working people,” again, in THAT order.
‘We’re not to be called upon as citizens’, as Toni Morrison said after 9-11.
Check
Fox then seamlessly shifts back to “Agent Orange’s” economic talking points.
Cut to commercial.
After the ads, 45 comes back railing about saving Wall Street.
The faux host asks rhetorically if this will be “the greatest economic comeback ever!”
It’s like they can only ever speak in superlatives.
Finally, the host is optimistic in otherwise dreary times.
God bless America, and F everybody else!
I really wish they’d just gon’head and say it!
They gon’ be alright.
Checkmate.
—
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Someday at Christmas. #BlackenAsiaWithLove
Now that folks have returned to their normal lives, and the Christmas credit card bills have arrived, let’s reflect on the reason for the season. To get you in the mood, the writer suggests listening to Stevie Wonder’s Someday at Christmas alongside this read; lyrics included here.
Someday at Christmas men won’t be boys
Playing with bombs like kids play with toys
Today’s divisions are so profound, and illiberal tribalism runs so deep, that I believe only art can speak to them – they not hearing me when people like me speak. I’m clearly not an illiberal tribe member, and as soon as I open my mouth, my ‘proper’ American English is dismissed alongside the liberal elite media, Hollywood, etc. The tribe dismisses us, I surmise, due to our training and faith in the transformative power of critical thinking.
“If Republicans ran on their policy agenda alone,” clarifies one article from a prominent liberal magazine, “they would be at a disadvantage. So they have turned to a destructive politics of white identity, one that seeks a path to power by deliberately dividing the country along racial and sectarian lines.” This is lit-er-ally happening right now as the presidential impeachment hearings follows party-not-morality lines. Conservatives are voting along their tribe to support the so-called leader of the free world. Are they free?
Words like ‘diversity’ sound threatening to today’s illiberal thinkers. Those who tout PC-culture as going too far may as well go ahead and admit that they are anti-evolution! Those who denounce implicit racial bias have little to say about any form of racism, save for its so-called ‘reverse’. Those who would rather decry ‘feminism’ as man-hating have little to say about actual misogyny. Yet, it is the liberal candidate/leader/thinker who is held to a higher standard. Are we free?
Someday in a world where men are free
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
We are in an era of supreme conservative/illiberal tribalism. That’s the unique We are in an era of supreme conservative/illiberal tribalism. That’s the unique ties that bind America’s 45, to Britain’s BJ to Germany’s AFD, France’s infamous National Front (now in its second generation), Italy’s Lega Nord, Austria’s FPO– yes, the F is for ‘freedom’- all the way to India’s leading Islamaphobe. Let’s not forget Poland’s tiki-torch bearing PiS party that filthy-up the European Parliament joined by their brethren from Denmark to Estonia to Belgium and beyond.
EU’s Right-wingers!
Illiberal tribes are tricking masses of those inside cultures of power into voting against their own interests. This is not, as many commentators have noted, to suggest that their so-called liberal alternatives are virtuous. Of course not, but it’s clear that masses can be motivated through fear of the other, whereas organizing around widening the pool of cooperation and humane concern is simply not sexy.
Someday at Christmas there’ll be no tears
All men are equal and no men have fears
Today’s brand of conservatism is an entire illiberal ethic that clearly must be cultivated from birth. Either you get it, or you don’t. Imagine the folks they’re turning against, and tuning out in order to hold onto those values. Imagine the teacher, friend, colleague, schoolmate, neighbour of ‘foreign’ origin that a Brexiteer must wipe away from their consciousness in order to support the anti-EU migration that fueled the campaign. The ability to render folks as ‘other’ is not an instantaneous predicament. It’s well cultivated like a cash crop, say cotton, cane or tobacco! Going to the ballot box to support bigots can’t be an easy feat when we’re literally surrounded by the type of diversity we seek to eliminate.
Someday at Christmas man will not fail
Hate will be gone love will prevail
There are those who voted for Brexit under some false notion of British independence, despite clear and present evidence of British inter-dependence. Perhaps no nation has been more inter-dependent on its neighbors and former colonies than the British Isles. Yet this illiberal disease is global. Imagine the rich diversity of the Indian sub-continent, yet look squarely at the Hindu nationalism sweeping India right now (as if the Taj Mahal weren’t a global treasure that just happens to have a few mosques on board). Plus, I’m not the first to point out that the Jesus racists celebrate was Jewish and spent most of his life in what we now call the Arab world. No nativity scene without foreigners!
Maybe not in time for you and me
But someday at Christmastime
‘Someday at Christmas’ was written in 1967 for Stevie Wonder, then a 17-year-old bulwark of Motown. Wonder wasn’t yet writing all his songs, yet he was already introduced as the ‘Profit of Soul’. In 1980, he sang: “Why has there never been a holiday, yeah/Where peace is celebrated,” in a song aimed at getting Reagan to declare Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s birthday a national holiday. Wonder won. Happy MLK day!
Naturally, looking back we have to wonder if one could have predicted the impact Wonder would soon have on American music. He’d dominate pop music once he set out on his own, set his fingers to funk instead of pop, and began to bare his soul.
Someday at Christmas we’ll see a Man
No hungry children, no empty hand
One happy morning people will share
Our world where people care
In the summer of ‘67, Wonder’d released another record, I Was Made to Love Her, featuring plenty of his infamous harmonica solos. ‘Someday at Christmas’ was released four years before the other most infamous Christmas message song, John Lennon’s War Is Over. SMH, I get goose-bumps hearing a kids’ chorus sing melancholically “War is over/If you want it.” Much of the world was at war then, struggling to comprehend the incomprehensible devastation meted out on the tiny southeast Asian nation of Vietnam, from where I pen this piece – a virtuoso clash of titans. It’s not surprising that those two troubadours began their careers in popcorn pop, yet had to leave the genre to deliver their most potent, fiercest messages.
Motown was decisively a Popular music machine, specifically crafted to appeal to the wider/whiter masses. Motown steered clear away from ‘message’ songs, a real keel in the heal of the likes of Stevie, Marvin Gaye and eventually Michael Jackson. Each of those Motown troubadours has penned plenty of songs of freedom and ecology, and the ethical interdependence between the two. Those guys must be liberals. Ugh!
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A month of Black history through the eyes of a white, privileged man… an open letter
Dear friends,
Over the years, in my line of work, there was a conviction, that logic as the prevailing force allows us to see social situations around (im)passionately, impartially and fairly. Principles most important especially for anyone who dwells in social sciences. We were “raised” on the ideologies that promote inclusivity, justice and solidarity. As a kid, I remember when we marched as a family against nuclear proliferation, and later as an adult I marched and protested for civil rights on the basis of sexuality, nationality and class. I took part in anti-war marches and protested and took part in strikes when fees were introduced in higher education.
All of these were based on one very strongly, deeply ingrained, view that whilst the world may be unfair, we can change it, rebel against injustices and make it better. A romantic view/vision of the world that rests on a very basic principle “we are all human” and our humanity is the home of our unity and strength. Take the environment for example, it is becoming obvious to most of us that this is a global issue that requires all of us to get involved. The opt-out option may not be feasible if the environment becomes too hostile and decreases the habitable parts of the planet to an ever-growing population.
As constant learners, according to Solon (Γηράσκω αεί διδασκόμενος)[1] it is important to introspect views such as those presented earlier and consider how successfully they are represented. Recently I was fortunate to meet one of my former students (@wadzanain7) who came to visit and talk about their current job. It is always welcome to see former students coming back, even more so when they come in a reflective mood at the same time as Black history month. Every year, this is becoming a staple in my professional diary, as it is an opportunity to be educated in the history that was not spoken or taught at school.
This year’s discussions and the former student’s reflections made it very clear to me that my idealism, however well intended, is part of an experience that is deeply steeped in white men’s privilege. It made me question what an appropriate response to a continuous injustice is. I was aware of the quote “all that is required for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing” growing up, part of my family’s narrative of getting involved in the resistance, but am I true to its spirit? To understand there is a problem but do nothing about it, means that ultimately you become part of the same problem you identify. Perhaps in some regards a considered person is even worse because they see the problem, read the situation and can offer words of solace, but not discernible actions. A light touch liberalism, that is nice and inclusive, but sits quietly observing history written in the way as before, follow the same social discourses, but does nothing to change the problems. Suddenly it became clear how wrong I am. A great need to offer a profound apology for my inaction and implicit collaboration to the harm caused.
I was recently challenged in a discussion about whether people who do not have direct experience are entitled to a view. Do those who experience racism voice it? Of course, the answer is no; we can read it, stand against it, but if we have not experienced it, maybe, just maybe, we need to shut up and let other voices be heard and tell their stories. Black history month is the time to walk a mile in another person’s shoes.
Sincerely yours
M
[1] A very rough translation: I learn, whilst I grow, life-long learning.
Thoughts from the criminology team 