Black writer Adam Harris observed, “The current demonstrations against police brutality will end. They always do. When the crowds go home, politicians will resume their defensive crouch. They will call for reform—never again!—and form commissions. Some of these commissions may even be “blue ribbon.” These commissions will issue reports and the politicians will claim to have done something. But another commission won’t tell us anything we don’t already know.”

In fact, “On Tuesday, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio called for a national commission on race to have “a robust and inclusive national dialogue on racial inequities.” He hoped it could be packed with individuals such as former Presidents George W. Bush or Barack Obama who “have spoken eloquently about racism as a stain on our national character.” Harris warns that such work is really the work of eye-servants [folks who want to look like they are doing something] who “will issue informed and well-meaning recommendations. But they won’t be surprising. Because we’ve heard them all before.” [MORE]

In 1968 Howard Zinn similarly observed that despite “an endless succession of Civil Rights Laws” and Black appointments to high positions in all branches of government, “the processes of government have not been sufficient to change the plight of the black person in America.” While noting that Black protest had launched a so-called “social revolution” he explained that the protests “have obviously not been sufficient to do more than make people conscious of their own ineptitude inside the old channels; hence the eruption of riot and rebellion in the cities.”

In regard to liberal hopers looking toward the alleged “power and vitality” of the electoral process, Zinn explained that they “are living in an antiquated romantic dream very far from political reality. The people of Harlem, of the South Side of Chicago, and the ghetto of Detroit, unlike black people in the South, have been participating in electoral politics for a long time, have elected black Congressmen and city officials, but their basic condition has remained the same. It would seem from the evidence, that whether black or white people occupy the posts of the American political structure, there is something about that structure itself which does not permit the necessary changes to take place.” Zinn further states:

Evidence comes from the governments own reports, the Kerner Commission itself: The frustrations of powerlessness have led some Negroes to the conviction that there is no effective alternate to violence as a means of achieving redress of grievances. It talks of a widespread belief among Negroes in the existence of police brutality and in a double standard of justice and protection one for Negroes and one for whites. Remember the Commission is speaking here of Northern urban Negroes, who have had access to the electoral process and all the other channels Mr. Fortas talks about. Ghetto residents, the Commission reports, increasingly believe that they are excluded from the decision making process which affects their lives and community. It goes on to say: The political system has not worked for the Negro as it has for other groups.

“A little historical perspective might dull some of the glow Fortas casts over our systems capacity to deal with the race problem. We have had all the constitutional guarantees he speaks of, and the vaunted electoral process for a very long time; since 1870 we have had all that plus the specific guarantees of the 14th and 15th amendments and a series of powerful civil rights acts passed in 1867. And we have had the demonstrative actions of fourteen intense years, from the Montgomery Boycott of 1955 to the Poor Peoples Campaign of 1968. And after all that we have had the largest outbreaks of protest in the black ghettos.

Of course, one can point to gains. But so could the South of pre-1954; it also insisted its channels were effective, that militant action by Negroes was not required. The crucial point is: Are those gains adequate for the times in which we live, for the expectations that people have the right to hold in these times?

Dr. Kenneth Clark applied some of the needed perspective when he told the Kerner Commission:

“I read that report of the 1919 riot in Chicago, and it is as if I were reading the report of the investigating committee on the Harlem riot of 35, the report of the investigating committee of theHarlem riot of 43, the report of the McCone Commission on the Watts riot.

I must again in candor say to you members of this Commission it is a kind of Alice in Wonderland with the same moving picture re-shown over and over again, the same analysis, the same recommendations, and the same inaction.” [MORE]

Racist System of Coercive Authority. The rebel Larken Rose explains, “Contrary to what nearly everyone has been taught to believe, “government” is not necessary for civilization. It is not conducive to civilization. It is, in fact, the antithesis of civilization. It is not cooperation, or working together, or voluntary interaction. It is not peaceful coexistence. It is coercion; it is force; it is violence. It is animalistic aggression, cloaked by pseudo-religious, cult-like rituals which are designed P make it appear legitimate and righteous. It is brute thuggery, disguised as consent and organization. It is the enslavement of mankind, the subjugation of free will, and the destruction of morality, masquerading as “civilization” and “society.” The problem is not just that “authority” can be used for evil; the problem is that, at its most basic essence, it is evil. In everything it does, it defeats the free will of human being controlling them through coercion and fear. It supersedes and destroys moral consciences, replacing them with unthinking blind obedience. It cannot be used for good, any more than a bomb can be used to heal a body. It is always aggression, always the enemy of peace, always the enemy of justice. The moment it ceases to be an attacker, it ceases to fit the definition of “government.” It is, by its very nature, a murderer and a thief, the enemy of mankind, a poison to humanity. As dominator and controller, ruler and oppressor, it can be nothing else.

The alleged right to rule, in any degree and in any form, is the opposite of humanity. The initiation of violence is the opposite of harmonious coexistence. The desire for dominion is the opposite of love for mankind. Hiding the violence under layers of complex rituals and self-contradictory rationalizations, and labeling brute thuggery as virtue and compassion, does not change that fact. Claiming noble goals, saying that the violence is “the will of the people,” or that it is being committed “for the common good” or “for the children,” cannot change evil into good. “Legalizing” wrong does not make it right. One man forcibly subjugating another, no matter how it is described or how it is carried out, is uncivilized and immoral. The destruction it causes, the injustice it creates, the damage it does to every soul that it touches – perpetrators, victims, and spectators alike-cannot be undone by calling it “law,” or by claiming that it was necessary. Evil, by any name, is still evil. The ultimate message here is very simple. All of recorded history screams it, yet few have, until now, allowed themselves to hear it. That message is this: If you love death and destruction, oppression and suffering, injustice and violence, repression and torture, helplessness and despair, perpetual conflict and bloodshed, then teach your children to respect “authority:’ and teach them that obedience is a virtue. If, on the other hand, you value peaceful coexistence, compassion and cooperation, freedom and justice, then teach your children the principles of self-ownership, teach them to respect the rights of every human being, and teach them to recognize and reject the belief in “authority” for what it is: the most irrational, self-contradictory, anti-human, evil, destructive and dangerous superstition the world has ever known.”