The Atlanta Riots - Part II

As I was writing the first part of this, I had this strange feeling of deja vu, so I went back to see what I had written in the past about this incident. I could not find it here, then remembered that I had probably written about this experience for the class I taught ten years ago! Although I won't be looking through the crates to see what I wrote then, it was interesting to look back through some of what I wrote here during that time period. Perhaps I need to repost and update a few things to demonstrate how my voice has evolved. Nevertheless, back to my analysis of the Atlanta Riots some 25 years later. 

I confirmed with a friend who graduated that year that my recollection of how the situation ended and quickly returned to what we would call normal was accurate. I went home, started a summer job, and here I am 25 years later trying to understand what we did and how it informs my opinions of what I see in police protests and interactions today.

Rodney King to Mike Brown to Freddie Gray
We were rightfully outraged by the King verdict, which to many of us proved that race almost always colors how people see the same incidents. None of us students felt that King's drug use justified such a savage beating. In hindsight, I still don't, especially as we compare it to the riots that engulfed Baltimore just two years ago or that took place in Ferguson, Missouri months earlier. The names are different, but the results and the finger-pointing are the same--the victims are blamed for escalating police behavior.

As we head into our first summer under the regime of a President who has been overtly supportive of the police tactics that have been practiced in all three of these confrontations, I am worried. It bothers me that when Rodney King was beaten for resisting arrest, we were told that he provoked their response. The same has been said about Mike Brown even though it is unclear if he resisted arrest. And as for Freddie Gray, that situation is so muddled and messy...

But what about those instances when the victim complies and still gets wounded or dies? What about Philando Castille, Eric Garner, Sandra Bland and Tamir Rice? How many more names do we add to that sad roll of inquiry before anyone acknowledges that the power to deescalate a potentially volatile situation resides with the person/people holding the lethal weapons with the power of the state encrusted on their lapels?

Public Protests and Black Lives Matter
I just happened to read another negative reaction to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and as I try not to dismiss that point of view, it occurs in the backdrop of a completely unrelated post a friend wrote about public Confederate monuments. However, in both situations, we are dealing with perspective.

And when I delve into how we perceive race and law enforcement in their historical intersections, then these two matters are not all that distinct. As a BLM supporter, I have never regarded the statement nor the movement as elevating one race over another. It has always been about demanding the humanization of black/brown lives. Similarly, as a person who has absolutely no sympathy for the Confederacy, I cannot regard monuments to the Lost Cause as honorable. Quite frankly, I believe that your revered ancestors died to preserve a system and way of life that did not regard black and brown lives as having any human value. Period.

Yet, when asked to consider the opposite viewpoints--that of law enforcement facing the hostility of an enraged mob or that of a Southerner seeking to reconcile the contradictions of family honor, I get it. Perhaps it is too easy to demonize police actions as overzealous in complicated situations. And maybe it is intellectually lazy to assume that every Confederate was an unrepentant racist. Alternatively, thousands take to the streets to march and protest in support of black/brown victims because we believe they had rights, irrespective of their bad or questionable behavior. If I can see the humanity in my neighbor who is a police officer or of a long-dead Confederate general who sincerely believed in my ancestors' inferiority, then surely you can muster up a modicum of human compassion for the mother whose child was taken from her prematurely under questionable circumstances.

We are all accountable for our actions--victim, oppressor, citizen, undocumented, insurrectionist, civil servant, rich, poor, black, white, President, soldier, civilian, sinner, and saint.


#Say Her Name
I mentioned Sandra Bland earlier and want to offer my spin on the role of women in the Atlanta riots and in the social justice movement that has evolved in the past 25 years.

I recall that the march to protest the Rodney King verdict actually began on Spelman's campus. I need confirmation of that, but I remember that there was a rally on our campus that marched out of our front gate to the street that connected the four campuses and then eventually made its way to downtown. That is significant for so many reasons.

Beginning with the fact that we lived in what was/is essentially a gated community. No one, and I mean, NO ONE could get onto our campus without permission. So when the rally was on our campus, it was contained and peaceful--all hell broke loose once it hit the streets (I could linger on that point for a spell, but I won't). And much was made of keeping us safe from the violence once it erupted, rendering most of the Spelman student leaders who spoke out marginalized in the aftermath by the visuals of male student arrests. And again, the dressing down we got from Dr. Cole felt every bit like being called before the Mother Superior principal to account for our "unladylike" behavior.

Which of course in many respects mirrors how things have evolved in the 25 years since. Women founded BLM and started the hashtag, but the most visible activists are men. No offense to my Morehouse brother Shaun King, who must spend every waking moment on social media calling out injustice, because that is what he does and he draws a lot of attention for doing so. Meanwhile the women are somewhere in the back rooms, channeling Jo Ann Robinson by planning and executing the work.

What happens when women become victims like Sandra Bland? Their stories linger in the background awaiting justice. Women have become more visible as leaders in the movement, but they must tread carefully lest they become the unfair targets of blame like Marilyn Mosby. And when a women takes on the unwanted mantle of the martyred mother/widow, her activism is either celebrated or denigrated on social media like Sybrina Fulton. There must be a better way of honoring our struggles and sacrifices.

Los Angeles, Atlanta and the Aftermath
I graduated from Spelman in 1994 a few weeks before O.J. Simpson was arrested for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown Simpson. I mention this because there are many who believe the acquittal in the Simpson case was some kind of poetic justice for the Rodney King verdict. I could see that based on a variety of factors that will need to be explored at another time.

In the two years between the riots and my graduation, Atlanta began to change because of the Olympics Games in 1996. I had always felt unconstrained to travel around the city, even into areas that were considered off limits, so I went everywhere the MARTA could take me. One of the reasons why the riots and the police response had been so upsetting was this sense that we needed to be contained. We were not supposed to venture beyond our campuses with our grievances--lest we empower anyone else's frustrations, even if they were legitimate. It was a rude awakening that Atlanta was still the South, despite the fact that it had begun to look and feel a little like DC. And I had no idea what life was really like beyond the interstate, or in other parts of the South until I moved to New Orleans, where I got quite another education on race!

In the 25 years since the riots, I have lived in New Orleans, visited Los Angeles once, moved back home to DC, and I've visited Atlanta many times. The constant in each of those communities has been change brought about through some traumatic set of events. My understanding is that South Central Los Angeles, the epicenter of the riots, is significantly different than the place described by the gangster rappers in the 1990s. Hurricane Katrina brought much needed infrastructure change, but also some demographic changes to a very segregated New Orleans. It took an entire generation for DC to rebuild certain neighborhoods after the 1968 riots, but once it began, the pace has never relented. Thanks to the economic development started by the preparation for the Olympics, Atlanta has become this sprawling urban area where many of my friends and classmates still live.

I learned from a current student that their experiences in the city are vastly different than ours. Spelman remains a gated community, and the protectionism we chafed against 25 years earlier is accepted as normal by students who rarely venture off campus unsheltered by Uber or their own cars. Despite being surrounded by development that brought many conveniences to the neighborhood, they believe Atlanta is unsafe. I honestly don't know how to process that mindset, but I am confidant that these students are just as capable of standing up to injustice if need be.

Thus, my hope is that in the next 25 years, we will have made more progress with respect to race and gender equality, relationships with law enforcement, and that economic development will not result in cosmetic change by demographic displacement. By that time, my daughter might have taken part in her own campus uprising, and I'm hoping that her issues won't be the same as our issues 25 years ago or today.