CULTURE

RAY MANNING: WHAT SHALL WE DO?

An old friend and I have spent most of the day in private conversation. The ‘what about’ is obvious. It’s always obvious and it’s always “what shall we do?” He thinks I’m anti-riot. I think he’s a little too riot-centric. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in the middle, halfway between MLK and Malcolm. But I promised him I’d lay out my argument at length, so here it is.

The heart of this matter is not what happens to those killers in blue today or tomorrow. Don’t misunderstand me. What happens is of critical importance. But we need more than episodic justice. If the justice that others take for granted, as in a right of birth, is our only goal, we may or may not succeed in achieving it. But, if justice is our only goal, we will have failed either way. The existential nightmare we wake into every morning includes justice for every latter-day, revivalist lynching. But justice, when it comes, always comes too late.

Always, by the time justice rides over the hill, some black body or other (it’s that random) has already been dead and buried for some considerable time. Surely the goal, beyond justice for any particular crime, is to stop the crime from happening in the first place? Surely our goal is to be seen, automatically and without doubt, as people to whom justice adheres by right of birth before the gun is pulled, the shot fired, the spine snapped, the breath choked off.

In aiming at this, over-arching, goal; riot is a sometimes useful tool. It’s a thing we can do. But it should no longer be the only thing we can do. Remind me. How does that famous definition of madness go? Riot is a tactic, not a strategy. There is no such thing as a perpetual riot. We could try. But a riot that persists must, by degrees, become an uprising. An uprising against an overwhelming and lethal force (we know that black Americans live under militarised policing: we’ve seen the pictures) is a suicide mission. Ask any Palestinian. It may well come to that. All out intifada. But we’re not there yet. I’ll mangle this quote but MLK said something like, “riot and disturbance are the screams of the voiceless”. He was right. But he said it sixty years ago. Do we really have no more of a voice now than we did then? Really? Even though the African nations are led by Africans? Still voiceless, even after a black POTUS?

Someone else said that the devil’s greatest victory lay in convincing humankind that he didn’t exist. The greatest victory of those who would continue to deny our basic humanity lies in convincing us that we are mute. In having us believe that all we can do is riot. (My friend says burning down white-owned corporate business is legitimate. I say they have insurance). That all we can do is scream. So as you see, while the frustrated children yammer and yowl, the police withdraw and let the children destroy the play-pen before placating us with scraps and sending us off to sleep in our own mess. Just another tantrum. It’s what these children do.

Is that all we’ve got? If so, there will be executions aplenty – judicial, non-judicial and extra-judicial – until the list of black people famous for the way they died becomes so long as to be infinite.

Holding the names of the dead in a single mind is already impossible. It can’t be done. How many more will there be if all we ever do is howl? When is it time to speak? Not in the spontaneous, ear-splitting screech of pain and despair that leaves us wrung-out and breathless. But, instead, in what I hear as a hum. An ever-present, purposeful and determined hum. A rising, falling but never silent note that we can sustain, that we can hold. A voice that we can raise with authority and which, because it carries a serious threat, will reverberate wherever it needs to be heard.

Our voice needs to be grassroots and global (or else it will never come about). We need organisation and messaging. We need an activity that every black person on the planet can engage with and feel connected to, in the place where they are, without fear of being shot and without disrupting the everyday business of survival. Then, when we make a sacrifice, it will be in the service of something that garners attention because it is attention-worthy on its own terms. Imagine, for instance, a day (just one!) when half the world’s black population (and anyone else that cares to join in) refuses to use Amazon, or Google, or FB. What would that cost you personally? What would it cost Amazon? Suppose we did it every month for a year.

Imagine, not a Million Man March, but a 20 or 30 Million March of men, women and children; young and old, rich and poor, in every city and every town, everywhere. Imagine if we blacks bought no Nikes. No hip-hop champagne. No NBA and no NFL franchise gear. What? No baseball caps? No. And no getting on the bus. Use what you have to get what you want. That’s our voice right there. One possible facet of it, at least. My friend says we’re tired of being tired. It’s the truth. One day we must surely grow tired of all the plaintive begging, pleading and beseeching that we do. Hear us. Hear our voice. We’re asking you to leave us our children. We’re asking you for justice. We’re asking you to see us as human beings.

We have a collective voice and it’s time we used it for something more than howling. The black voice has the potential to become something valued and respected in exactly the same way that the voices of those who take justice as a given expect to be valued and respected. Not out of uncommon pity or a surge of benevolence. But because we are a people inherently deserving of respect. In ourselves. For no more reason than because we exist and are human. And because justice accrues to us naturally, as is our global birthright.

By Ray Manning

All images © ImageCrate

Share this article

YOU also MIGHT LIKE…