Providence erupted last Friday out of a scene from Cold War Berlin or Prague, as if martial law had been imposed. Military vehicles and police ringed the Statehouse. The boarded-up buildings downtown were grim reminders of the looting that occurred a few days earlier.
Thousands marched to the capitol. They were black, brown and white, full of both anger and a we-shall-overcome hope that change will come.
Thousands demonstrated too in Bristol, Newport and New Bedford. In our corner of New England, these streets are steeped in the grim irony of how deep racism runs in America’s story. Providence, Bristol and Newport were slave trading ports that fueled some of the nation’s earliest fortunes. New Bedford was a depot for slaves escaping on the underground railroad. Times change but too often human nature doesn’t.
The nation is weaker, sicker, poorer, deeper in debt, more divided and less respected around the world than at any time in our recent history. These protests were ignited by horrible examples of police brutality, but something more is happening.
The past hangs over the present. We may be the richest and most powerful nation in history. But it doesn’t work for too many people of color. Advances have been made. But the hangover from the stain of racism remains. Hand-held phone videos depict violence and disrespect that too many white people believe is a relic from another century. The seething anger of generations of hate against blacks exploded in the streets. Even the Covid 19 virus has infected blacks proportionally more than whites.
Historians over the last week have said that the current protests resemble the horrors of 1968, the year that saw anti-Vietnam War attitudes rip the nation to shreds and witnessed the murders of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. There was more violence and death in the urban riots of the 1960s than today. But we had a functioning national government. In the U.S. Senate, both parties had senators from across ideological lines. Republicans had conservatives such as Barry Goldwater of Arizona but also liberals like Jacob Javits and Edward Brooke, the last black person Massachusetts elected to the Senate. Democrats boasted liberals Ted Kennedy and George McGovern, but also had such southern conservatives as John Stennis and Jim Eastland.
That meant you couldn’t get anything done without compromise. The great civil rights laws of 1964 and 1965 were enacted with bipartisan support. Can anyone imagine Republicans and Democrats nowadays working together on such momentous measures? The red state white backlash against civil rights killed the Democratic Party in the south and sent Republicans to the camp of white grievance.
Nobody got to the White House without a long resume in the messy business of democracy. Donald Trump changed all that. We face what is shaping up as the most consequential, and probably most contentious, election of our lifetimes. Yet the sickness of racism is bigger than actions at the White House or Statehouse.
The light here is that the marchers appeal to our better angels. It’s gratifying to see the outpouring of outrage, particularly from the young. But don’t be fooled. Carrying a woke placard through the streets won’t change anything unless the anger is channelled into action.
State Sen. Harold Metts is one of the few blacks at the Rhode Island Statehouse. He was 20 years old during the unrest in South Providence in 1968. He says the protestors must “wake up,rise up, stay awake and keep active.”
Change is never easy. Writing shortly after World War I, the poet William Butler Yeats said, the “best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
The way forward will require turning conviction into action, pain into voter participation and persistence over the backlash that is sure to come from political charlatans.
Before he was murdered in 1963, President John Kennedy said that those “who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.’’
At this moment, we must end discrimination and choose peace.
Scott MacKay’s commentary can be heard every Monday morning at 6:45 and 8:45 and at 5:44 in the afternoon.
