by Bryan Proffitt
The Technician
North Carolina State Univeristy
(U-WIRE) RALEIGH, N.C. - When President Kennedy was killed in November of 1963, a young minister in the Nation of Islam named Malcolm X commented that JFK's murder was a case of America's "chickens coming home to roost."
From his perspective, this nation had long been sowing the seeds of violence, and the president just happened to reap the "reward." Well, with a quick look northward to the current state of the sleepy conservative town of Cincinnati, it becomes quite clear that America's coop may soon be in danger.
It seems that, again, a young, unarmed black man has been murdered by the police, and again, a city is being torn apart. The mainstream media are doing very little to present any information in regard to what is actually going on in the city, and passive observers are left reflecting that "they are destroying `their' own neighborhoods again."
From accounts that I've read on independent media and the University of Cincinnati's Web sites, the racial tension present in the city right now is thick, with the frustration manifesting itself in occurrences of open hostility toward white people in the streets; even those who support the rage expressed by the uprising participants.
And as I look around me in Raleigh, I can't help but wonder how it would go down if this happened here.
Raleigh, with a high level of residential integration, would face a much more complex situation than many of the cities in which police brutality or murder have spawned urban uprising. If the racial tensions in our midst escalated and erupted, the action would pit neighbor versus neighbor and friend versus friend.
Even here at the University, it seems that battle lines would be drawn and students, faculty and staff would be ill equipped to dam the flood of a city gone angry.
Would the frustrations be vented and contained in the southeast corner of town where developers have done a tremendous job of isolating the black community, or would Crabtree Mall burn? Would students at the universities involve themselves, or would they stay above the fray, intellectually debating the "effectiveness" of the rebellious strategies? Would white people be allowed to show solidarity with the frustrated masses of people of color, or would the nightmare of Reginald Denny reoccur?
See, while the uprisings in Cincinnati and L.A. were spontaneous in that one event catalyzed the fuse exploding, they were not spontaneous in the sense that the catalytic action was uncommon. In Cincinnati, the police have murdered 15 young black men in the past six years, so Timothy Thomas is no anomaly. And it wouldn't be an anomaly in Raleigh either, where stories of police brutality escape mainstream attention but occur nonetheless.
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Currently, I feel a great sorrow for the residents of Cincinnati. The lack of voice for people of color in the mainstream political and economic realm has rendered them powerless to fight back against the all-too-present oppression they feel, until now. And whether one agrees with their tactics or not is irrelevant; the people's voice is finally being heard, and that is important.
Concurrent with my sadness, however, I feel a twinge of optimism. Hopefully, cities across the country (wake up, Raleigh) will learn from these events and work proactively to quell the need for this reactive behavior.
Citizens' review boards of police, led by poor people and people of color and backed by the support of all allied people, must be established as a way to hold the police accountable to these communities. If this can't be accomplished legislatively, or "legitimately," then the people must police the police themselves.
Police officers are human too, and without the support of an intentionally anti-racist task force established to check their behavior, they will undoubtedly succumb to the pressures of the system in which they operate.
Let's let this be a lesson, Raleigh. Let's stop relying on reaction and actually work to prevent something before it happens. If we don't, then I'm afraid that Cincinnati's chickens will be roosting in Raleigh soon, and more of our cities and their residents' hopes will burn.
