Commentary on Amend: The Fight for America, Episode 3, "Wait"
Wait
Episode 3 of "Amend" is Wait. The wait is a weight; it is a shackle. The wait is a way that whites roll their debt by paying the interest without paying the principal. People are dying in the waiting room of justice, and people alive today are complicit in those deaths.
Ferguson protests and Mike Brown
The episode begins with the Ferguson protests and the murder of Mike Brown. Recently, Mike Brown's father demanded 20 million from the Black Lives Matter Movement. He says the movement has left the freedom fighters behind.
About protests, Brittany Packnett Cunningham says, "There's no acceptable protest if all you ever do is tell me to wait." She's right.
In the book the Machinery of Whiteness, Steve Martinot says, "when the police instruct a movement to keep its demonstrations peaceful, there is no response the demonstrators can give that will convince the police that they are peaceful because the existence of the demonstration is already an act of violence unless specially governed by police hegemony."
The existence of the protest is already an act of violence to the white power structure. That's an important point against false equivalencies.
King and the Constitution
In this section, we see Dr. King using the Constitution for justice like Frederick Douglass. How effective is it to use someone's words against them? I suspect using someone's words against them can only go so far.
Southern governments and "Separate but Equal"
Separate but equal is an influential phrase and philosophy in American life. It rationalizes white dominance and facilitates compartmentalization. Under Separate but Equal, whites didn't desire or tolerate equality. Whites continued to attack Black people they saw advancing. Separate but equal is a way to delay and maintain the status quo by denial. The phrase exemplifies the contortions whites would make to maintain power.
Much like the word "apartheid," which means apartness, separateness, and the state of being apart, the phrase separate but equal has meaning. Both apartheid and separate but equal appear to be colorblind and neutral. The power to separate and who does the separating is almost hidden. I wonder why they didn't name it "Equal but Separate"? What does the order say about the intention? For the anniversary of Brown v Board of Education, I wrote that the issue with schools wasn't so much the separate part but the equal part.
However, segregation or separateness is a key component in racialization. You need to isolate someone to deprive or enrich them. The belief in races is a belief in segregation. The act of making racism is an act of segregation. Without segregation, race cannot exist, especially whiteness.
Many people still see race as separate but equal. They say we have separate races, but they're all equal races, or they should be equal races. Separate-but-equal thinking is why people think they can substitute white for any other race. Separate but equal is a clear denial of the hierarchy in race. Race is by definition and by its functionality separate and unequal. Whites won't have it any other way.
Separate but equal is also a statement about the tension and paradox in white identity.
In the article "Whiteness as Property," Cheryl Harris says whites created the category of "slave" as a mixed category. It was a mixture of property and humanness. She refers to the slave category as "dual, contradictory, and hybrid." The slave category reflects white identity, and it helped to make white identity.
In Tressie McMillan Cottom's book "Thick and Other Essays," she implies that whiteness is a paradox. Whiteness has a dual and contradictory character. In his book "The Abolition of White Democracy," Joel Olson says, "white citizenship is simultaneously an identity of equality and privilege...The democratic problem of the white citizen is that the tension between the desire for equality and the desire to maintain one's racial standing."
The philosophy of separate but equal is still with us, and it needs to go.
Jim Crow
The mentions of "Jim Crow" in the episode reminded me that whiteness is filled with mockery. Separate but equal is another mockery.
White woman who says, "the more they try to force us, the worse the reaction will be"
This sentence is quick and subtle. A random white female makes this remark. And it reminded me of James Baldwin saying that it took "vast amounts of coercion" for whites to think of themselves as whites. It took force. When whites say "wait" or insist we can't force change, they deny the history of coercion it took to get whites to be white. Antiracism and democracy coerce.
14th amendment like a treaty
While watching this episode, I thought of the 14th amendment as a treaty that whites have violated.
Thurgood Marshall - Activism in pursuit of justice
In this section, the episode talks about the Doll Test. The test is famous, and it has been repeated several times with the same results. The Doll Test was used to prove segregation was unequal and wrong. The lawyers did not use it to make a statement about white racism in society. The documentary doesn't mention the counterpoint to the Doll Test.
Here's what I read in James Patterson's book Brown v Board of Education, "Clark's own studies had shown that black children in the nonsegregated schools of Massachusetts were even more likely than the black children in segregated schools to prefer the white dolls. One might well have employed Clark's findings to support the preservation of all-black schools, where black children did not face academic competition from whites."
The Doll Test is not a statement about segregation.
Massive Resistance to Brown
The massive resistance to Brown reminds me of my piece, "White Defiance to Compliance Demands Force." It's going to take force. Soulforce, sure. But force, force, too. There's an unwillingness to force whites to do anything, and that must change. Throughout history, whites flouted laws they didn't like, and that must change.
Dr. King - protests as launching pads to national platforms
The history of the Montgomery Bus Boycott in the episode skips Claudette Colvin in the timeline. And yet, we see based on Dr. King's life, and others today, that protests can launch national platforms. I'm not sure that's always problematic. But the history of Claudette Colvin shows only certain types of people are eligible to get a national platform from a protest.
JFK and MLK
Resources on the second Emancipation Proclamation
On the centennial anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, the desire for a second Emancipation Proclamation came as James Baldwin said the country was celebrating one hundred years of freedom a hundred years too soon. Baldwin said we could not be free until they (whites) are free. I love how Baldwin exposes the entire country as unfree.
King wanted Kennedy to issue an executive order, and Kennedy said, "wait." The episode doesn't address what we are waiting for today. Some have called on Biden to issue an executive order on reparations, but Biden says, "wait." Also, was the Emancipation Proclamation an antiracist document? I’m not sure.
George Wallace
The film misses his radicalization. George Wallace started his political career as a moderate and later became overt with his white racism after losing a race. He later said he changed his views. I noticed Wallace called the 14th amendment illegal. I noticed how whites use the law for white purposes. I noticed how whites call things they don't like illegal, including people and votes.
Nonviolent resistance and Bull Connor
This section of the documentary reviews nonviolent resistance as a tactic. I'm not sure nonviolence is the only effective tactic. One justification for nonviolence is that Black people are outgunned. But size and power don't always count. There are creative ways to resist forcefully and violently, even with a power imbalance. Sept 11 is an example.
Did you hear Bull Connor say law enforcement's job is to keep the Black and white separate? How's that for coercion? How's that for force? Conner was not lying, and he makes a case for defunding the police. Connor was clear on law enforcement's purpose, and keeping Black and white separate is still the job of law enforcement. Angela Davis has said the role of the police was to uphold white supremacy. Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth speaks about the police's role in the colonial world. White domination cannot exist without state power.
Domestic Terrorism and Birmingham
As the episode reviews the history of white domestic terrorism and Birmingham, it makes me feel like January 6 was a regular occurrence in Black life, except the "security forces" did not protect Black people. This quote by a man in the episode is relevant, "Nothing emboldens terrorists more than a legal system that willfully ignores their existence." The FBI still covers for white domestic terrorism with its terminology and its unwillingness to go after it with force.
"A Call for Unity" Clergymen of Alabama
Look at how history rhymes with today's call for unity. Calls for unity are a tactic, almost like nonviolent resistance, except it aims to stop progress. It is another way to say, "wait."
White Moderate
It's imperative to keep the white moderate in mind and understand the white moderate role. Joe Biden is a white moderate. Is the white moderate the one who causes waiting? Do civil and human rights move at the pace of the moderate? Is the moderate the one controlling the debate? The definition of moderate is insightful:
avoiding extremes of behavior or expression: observing reasonable limits
CALM, TEMPERATE
tending toward the mean or average amount or dimension
having average or less than average quality: MEDIOCRE
not violent, severe, or intense
professing or characterized by political or social beliefs that are not extreme 5: limited in scope or effect
not expensive
of medium lightness and medium chroma
verb
to lessen the intensity or extremeness of
to preside over or act as chairman of
to act as a moderator
to become less violent, severe, or intense
noun
: one who holds moderate views or who belongs to a group favoring a moderate course or program
White violence/Black nonviolence and White empathy
As I think about white violence, Black nonviolence, and how whites became temporarily empathetic to Black pain, I wonder in what way is nonviolence a call to respectability? In what way does Black nonviolence fulfill white needs and expectations? Today, outrage, spectacle, and shock aren't effective.
From the episode, I noticed the shift in public opinion on civil rights after protests: "Before the Birmingham Protests only 5% of Americans believe civil rights was the most important domestic issue in the United States, after those protests, 50% of people believed civil rights was the most important issue."
That shift in public opinion did not endure. After BLM protests last year, pundits wondered if the shift in public opinion among whites was a tipping point. The opinion polls from the civil rights movement provided the answer.
Wallace vs. Kennedy
In these scenes, Kennedy calls on the Alabama National Guard to force desegregation at the University of Alabama. Force is necessary. Coercion is necessary. As a white moderate, Kennedy needed extreme drama to push him so he could moderate the extreme.
March on Washington August 1963
I wonder why this section in the episode is one-sided. I hear Malcolm X saying something about an American nightmare. And yet, there's no mention of Malcolm here.
Civil Rights Act of 1964
Here we see protests create pressure for policies. But why? Why does it have to be that way? Like Malcolm X said, "If you are a citizen, why have you got to fight for your civil rights?" The two-party system forces protest movements because the two-party system marginalizes Black interests. In the book, Uneasy Alliances, it says, "Until the electoral structure is changed, movement politics remains the most vital option for African American representation.”
The 14th Amendment and the Expansion of Democracy and Humanity
The episode ends with a look at how the Women's movement took inspiration from the 14th amendment and the civil rights movement. Looking at the episode names, this documentary is going somewhere: Ep 1 – Citizen; Ep 2-Resistance; Ep 3- Wait; Ep 4-Control; Ep 5 – Love; Ep 6 – Promise. The documentary starts with the Black struggle, and it's ending with immigration.
My thought: Why does it seem like democracy and who's considered human in America have Old and New testament components? In the religion of whiteness, it's like the gospel of democracy and humanity were intended for white male property owners and then expanded to the Gentiles. The conservative old testament whites and the liberal new testament whites are still fighting over their doctrine. If the religion of whiteness is the system we’re under, we should all be atheists. Does antiracism have characteristics of atheism?