Clearly the events in Ferguson, Missouri are sparking a national conversation about racism and policing in America today, but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything concrete will change.
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The ongoing confrontation between residents in Ferguson, Missouri protesting the recent killing of Michael Brown by a local police officer and heavily armed police this week is gripping America’s attention and the world’s. Both Missouri’s governor Jay Nixon and President Obama are already involved, and the story is being covered extensively in foreign news sources. Michael Brown’s tragic death has launched broader conversations on a range of issues, from the existence of racism in American society to the rise of so called “Warrior Cops” who seem outfitted and trained more for Fallujah than Ferguson.
The question that keeps popping up for me as an observer of political and social movements though is this: will all these demonstrations and conversations result in meaningful social change regarding these issues? Or, will this time be different?
If you’d like to see change, the answer is unfortunately mixed. We shouldn’t downplay the impact of these events on our current national consciousness. It’s pretty rare that we as a society talk openly about the experience that black people (especially black men) have when dealing with law enforcement, and how different that experience can be from those of us of different backgrounds. And so the fact that we are at least willing to talk about issues like systemic racism in the American criminal justice system is in many ways a watershed.
But at the same time, meaningful social change rarely comes because of big symbolic events. I know, that flies the face of the traditional version of American history that you’ve been fed, but unfortunately it’s true. We love to tell ourselves that segregation ended because Rosa Parks was very brave and Martin Luther King Jr. was an inspiring figure, and to be sure, she was brave and he was inspiring. But Rosa Parks and Dr. King played leading roles in a performance with a cast of thousands, a huge social movement that did things like raise lots of money; recruit legions of volunteers; help pass bills through Congress; and yes sit through an endless series of meetings, meetings, and more meetings. In short it ended because of an untold number of people engaging in the daily grind of day to day politics, month after month, and year after year.
And so these protests and the outpouring of support and emotions online could certainly be the beginning of a movement for significant social change on issues like criminal justice or how we as Americans address the issues of race and racism in our society. But it won’t be easy. To just highlight one problem with the potential to frustrate real change, there is not agreement yet on what the protesters and their allies concretely want. Some seem to have very immediate tangible goals, such as releasing the name of the police officer who killed Michael Brown. Others seem to want nothing less than the wholesale remaking of American society, going well beyond the cry for immediate justice. Any sort of social movement interested in moving forward from the current round of protests to concrete changes in policy will have to find some way of reconciling what various groups of supporters want. And then there is the daunting challenge of forming a consensus around legislative policy change.
And unfortunately for supporters of these protests, high profile coverage in the media is no guarantee of concrete social change happening down the road. The protests surrounding the so called Jena Six were, at the time at least, seen as a potential harbinger of a new civil rights movement. But that didn’t happen, as we can obviously see today.
The right to protest is deeply American. But protest doesn’t always bring progress. These events are at best the prologue to a much longer and ever more difficult journey.
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Photo by Huy Mach/AP