Killing of George Floyd normal in an abnormal society - Vijay Prashad

Tweet Killing of George Floyd normal in an abnormal society - Asia Times:

 EXCERPT:

System cannot be reformed

Historically in the United States, police aggression has come before
any unrest. In 1967, unrest in Detroit spurred the US government to study the causes, which they assumed
would be communist instigators and an inflammatory press. The riots,
the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders (the Kerner
Commission) said, “were not caused by, nor were they the consequences of, any organized plan or ‘conspiracy.’”



Instead, the Kerner Commission said the cause of the unrest was structural racism. “What white Americans have never fully understood,” the report noted, “is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.”



By “ghetto” the report’s authors meant the atrocious class inequalities in the United States that had – because of the history of enslavement – been marked by race.

Rather than address the deep inequalities in society, the US government chose to arm police officers heavily and send them to discipline populations in distress with their dangerous weapons. The commission proposed instead “a policy which combines ghetto enrichment with programs designed to encourage integration … into the society outside the ghetto.”



Nothing came of that report, as nothing has come of any of the reports that stretch back 150 years. Rather than genuinely invest in the well-being of people, the US government – whether run by Republicans or Democrats – cut back on social programs and cut back on welfare spending; it allowed firms to erode wages and it allowed them to diminish working conditions. What